OpenLife

Interesting and very operational post by Brad Fitzgerald with Thoughts on the Social Graph.

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bradfitzgerald, socialgraph

This is no brainer! Please sign the petition at

http://www.openparliament.eu/

Citizens and stakeholder groups should not have to use the software of a single company in order to communicate with their elected officials or participate in the legislative process.

All companies should be given the chance to compete freely for contracts to supply ICT services to the European Parliament.

I am a citizen of the EU, and I want the European Parliament to adopt the use of open standards and to promote interoperability in the ICT sector.

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openparliament

Further to my posting Microsoft, a convicted monopolist, I have found (thanks, Kim!) this very telling leader from ZDNET.co.uk from 22 February 2008 titled World not open to Microsoft promises.

Microsofts’ real openness should not judged by its press materials, but by its actions:

We’ve learned by now that it’s what it does, not what it says, that matters.

A couple of week ago I gave a presentation for the Danish Counsel on Information and Communication Technology (IKT-rådet) which has as its chairman the Danish Minister of of Science, Technology and Innovation.

My presentation was about digital infrastructure and the importance of open standards for innovation and competition. One of my key points were that Denmark should seek to secure the use of open standards in all areas of digital infrastructure to support a new vibrant IT industry based on open source software, web applications and so on. I contrasted such an approach to the current policy of the Danish government that seems to highlight as one of the main achievements that Microsoft has established an after Danish measures large research and development unit in Vedbæk, north of Copenhagen, on premises which were previously home to Navision software acquired be Microsoft some years ago.

As part of my presentation one of my slides (the one in the picture above) read in Danish “More development centers for American monopolists?” questioning the current government policy.

After my presentation, which admittedly was provocative, I was approached by Jørgen Bardenfleth, who is the CEO of Microsoft in Denmark and a core member of IKT-rådet. Jørgen Bardenfleth is a very competent and sympathetic person but he made it clear to me that he thought that it was unfair that I had referred to Microsoft as a monopolist.

After the meeting I gave the remarks by Jørgen Bardenleth some second thoughts; maybe it was unfair to refer to Microsoft as a monopolist. Maybe, I had stepped over the line. Then I, however, I recalled a recent Economist leader:

and in particular I remembered the following quote (the italics are mine):

…its market share falls far short of the 90% that Microsoft boasts in desktop operating-systems and office-productivity software; and it is not a convicted monopolist. So to call Google the new Microsoft is, in many ways, unfair…

Then there was also the recent news that European Union regulators on 27 February 2008 fined Microsoft a record 899 million euros, or $1.35 billion, for failing to comply with sanctions. In essence, this huge fine was imposed due to Microsoft’s record of noncompliance with the Commission’s March 2004 decision.

I think that all these facts tells us that we are dealing with a hard core monopolists. And it is important to remind everybody that Microsoft is a monopolist. In particular, governments have to take this very seriously when they are considering the credibility of Microsoft’s constant flow of PR about that it is as a company is committed to openness. Governments should be very sceptical about adopting Microsoft’s OOXML as an open standard to be used in the public sector.

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microsoft, ooxml, competition

It is very difficult not to agree with Matt Asay on his remarks on Microsoft and openness.

It is like rehearing Microsoft employees chanting the mantras “We are only satisfying customers’ demand” or “Customers tell us…” when defending why not to open up some of its specs for its apps as demanded by competition authorities.

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mattasay, microsoft, openness, opensource

A letter to the Microsoft CEO with fait and reasonable request from the OpenDoc Society:

Microsoft Corp
attn. Mr. Steve Ballmer
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-7329
USA

Date: 22/01/2008
Telephone: +31 20 888 4251
E-mail: michiel@opendocsociety.org

Amsterdam, January 22nd 2008

Dear mr. Ballmer,

on behalf of OpenDoc Society I want to request the following:

we would like to have the possibility to enable the users of the
Windows platforms to work with the Open Document Format (ISO
26300:2006, or ODF for short). We think there is a significant amount
of Windows users that would be helped with this technology.

What is the price your company would charge us for pushing a mechanism
to your users through the AutoUpdate-facility of Windows and/or
Microsoft Office that should activate at the first encounter of a user
with an ODF file? Your operating system Windows should then prompt the
user with some information about the available software that works with
ODF, and how to install that software that would enable him or her to
make use of ODF. Preferably we would like the user to have as little
work as possible during the whole process.

Can you tell us what the different options are in this respect, and
what these different options would cost? Potentially, we would be
interested in some other file formats currently not available under a
vanilla Windows installation too - such as SVG, RDF and SMIL. Are there
other options available to us to have third party applications
installed in Windows when a user encounters them?

As you will understand, we are eager to start using this post-factory
file extension facility as soon as possible. Would it be possible for
you to respond by February 14th 2008?

Kind regards,

Michiel Leenaars
Board of OpenDoc Society

For correspondence please use:

OpenDoc Society Intnl. secretariat
Wibautstraat 150
1091 GR Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 20 888 4251
Fax: +31 84 712 2055

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odf, opendocsociety

I am trying to understand what OpenID is all about. Obviously, I like the idea of it being decentralised and based on a simple open standard. The concept, however, reminds me lot about Nikolaj Nyholm’s brainchild from 7-8 years ago: Digital Identity. Maybe, Nikolaj was simple way ahead of his time!

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nikolajnyholm, digitalidentity, openid

Normally, I agree with most of what Matt Asay writes about open source and related matters at his “The Open Road” blog at Cnet. But here he is wrong:

Opera, Microsoft, and competition: A plea for an end to the whining

Today, a lot of people are using Firefox, Safari and other alternatives to Internet Explorer, but they remain “alternatives”. Here in Denmark, Internet Explorer remains the clearly dominant browser to a large extent due to that public institutions “forces” users to use Internet Explorer. I am not at all convinced that market forces will for a long time level the playing field.

And as long as there is no real competition between different browsers in a lot of important areas I applaud that small players like Opera takes on the not all envious task of using the courts to remedy the situation - however ineffective this remedy might be.

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microsoft, internetexplorer, opera, mattasay

It seems that some people has seen through the ill-disguised attempt by the Danish government to secure Microsoft dominance in the Danish public sector:

Denmark Pretends MSOOXML Already an “Open Standard” and Mandates a Trial of ODF/MSOOXML: “Denmark has announced that open standards are going to be a requirement going forward there, starting in January, which is being hailed as a great step forward for openness. However, if you look closely, you will see that it is pretending that MSOOXML has already been approved as an open standard, equivalent to ODF. ODF is already an ISO approved standard. MSOOXML is not. It was specifically disapproved, and the next meeting will be in February, which is after the January starting date in Denmark. In short, Denmark simply doesn’t care about ISO approval.

Denmark ranks the two as the same, and mandates a trial of both. I wonder what the outcome of that trial will be? Why even bother to pretend?”

(Via GrokLaw.)

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ooxml, odf

Interesting news from the Netherlands:

Proposed legislation that would mandate the use of the Open Document Format (ODF) across the entire Dutch government has infuriated Microsoft. A group promoting open standards sees no threat, however, and has invited Microsoft to join its ranks.

On Wednesday the Dutch parliament will discuss a plan to mandate use of the Open Document Format (ODF) at government agencies. The proposal is part of a wider plan to increase the sustainability of information and innovation, while lowering costs through the reuse of data.

See Dutch government threatens to sideline Microsoft

If the Dutch government finds it reasonable to opt for one open standard - ODF - with a “comply or explain” provision why did the Danish government have to chose a double standards - ODF and OOXML - solution thus effectively securing that a large part of government will have to go for the OOXML Windows compatible standard?

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odf, ooxml