According to the ODF Alliance Newsletter, standards bodies in Brazil, South Africa, and Croatia have approved OpenDocument Format (ODF) as a national standard. In Brazil, ODF is the recommended format for government document interchange. In South Africa, “ODF will be the standard for document exchange between government agencies and the public.”

Because government documents are actually the property of the citizens themselves, it is vital that they be released in formats that are not tied to any specific vendor, that they use fully-open standardized formats. Perhaps there are a few people for whom being in favor of ODF means favoring vendor lock-in through competing format standards, rather than vendor-independence through unified formats being shared by competing vendors. Repeat after me: “Users of software benefit from ‘one format, many vendors‘. Only vendors benefit from many formats, each with a single vendor.”

It is great to see that the flurry of lobbying and other activities that helped to get a competing format standard approved at the ISO recently have not stopped countries around the world from continuing to press forward on the important groundwork of data freedom, including the very important ONE FORMAT, MANY VENDORS aspect. I look forward to renewing our efforts here in the United States to take control of our data away from corporations and put it back in the hands of individuals.

I have not been impressed with the way so many organizations have held on to the relatively insecure and non-standards-conformant MSIE 6, even after the US CERT recommended using anything but IE6 as a way to improve security.

Recently, I’m finally starting to see a move away from IE6 toward IE7.  I am all for that, even if I would prefer Opera or Firefox instead of IE7 or in addition to IE7.  This is good news for everyone except for the vendors whose obsolete products that are still in use depend upon some IE6-specific behaviors and the administrators and internal support staff at sites which are still using those products.  Installing IE7 does re-enable the language bar, so your staff members may have to touch every user's PC to turn it off.

The other thing is that SP3 for WinXP is available for download for at least some users.  It isn’t approved yet in my workplace, but I did see it on MSUpdate.

Hey, Adobe!  Why must you litter the desktop with icons for your PDF reader software?  Nearly 100% of users will open the application by double-clicking a file, rather than going to the desktop to open the application and then search through the file hierarchy for the file they want to read.

After two months at home, it is good to be back at work, except for the ceiling fragments dropping down my shirt.  I don't think I've ever been to Ohio before, so this is something new.  Marc, I'll come visit when I get a day off, so you can see my grandbaby pictures.

The day the music died [dive into mark]

Mark Pilgrim captures perfectly the reasons why it is self-defeating to buy your “content” with TUR, which the music and movie industries love to euphemize as DRM. Where previously, there was not really an example showing that customers lose access to the products they purchased once the vendor loses interest in that line of business, we now get to see an object lesson.

Now, I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as MSN Music. I generally buy my music on CD for just such a reason. When I just want a single song, I have MJ buy it through iTunes and burn it to CD for me. It is a sale that would otherwise not have taken place.

It really isn’t about Microsoft, because other music and movie vendors will do the same thing sometime. It is about people like you and I, and about the music we buy. It is about the move to openness that promises a brighter future, and about the entrenched corporate interests that are using any possible means to stay in control.

I had an important lesson in this area when my nephew was unable to renew his music on his MP3 player before it expired. All his bought and paid for music became unplayable. What a way to promote legal purchasing, rather than the music-stealing networks.

Microsoft hires SCO veteran as its Competitive Strategy guru | The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay - CNET Blogs

There were people who suspected all along that the SCO suits were a scam secretly sponsored by a somewhat slimy Seattle-area software-slinger. Seeing stories like this can only strengthen those suspicions. Microsoft has enough going on right now and does not need to attract additional scrutiny.

I cannot understand what MSFT sees in Gupta, discredited as he is. Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t about slamming either the man or his new employer. I just don’t see why the king of software needs someone else whose ethics may be questioned. I think it is time for the company to replace its CxO staff with people of unquestionable ethics and integrity, people who will scrupulously obey not just the letter of the law, but the spirit thereof.

I just upgraded three computers to Ubuntu 8.04. The process is long, mostly because of the humongous download. The "road dog" took me an extra day, mostly because I was packing for a trip to Ohio and not clicking on dialog boxes.

I just noticed that this includes a fix to GNOME's Galeon browser. For the past two or three months, trying to print would crash the browser. I just tried it out, and it works like a charm.

Extract and Parse ODF Files with Python

An ODF file is essentially zipped XML. This article from August 2007 shows how to use Python’s XML tools to get data contained with ODF files.

Thanks to Carol Geyer and OASIS for the link!

Tags: ODF

It is really pretty funny.  The Microsoft-Rules-Forever crowd co-opted the voices of freedom lovers like Rick Jelliffe¹ in order to push its next user-enslaving document format, OOXML, over the top.  And with all of the additional attention and the possibility of new doors opening for OOXML, they still feel that they cannot compete with ODF unless they use arm-twisting tactics.

If you disagree, you should take a look at the comments on this ThinkFree blog posting.  Here, let me help you:

We are also considering the ODF support in ThinkFree.
By the way, There is one obstacle for solving the problem…
That is MS Policy for ODF, Because of interoperability with MS Office in ThinkFree,
We still need the MS cooperation that support OOXML,,,
I think you can understand this situation & MS policy strategy…
But we plan to solve this political problems, and also We will make the detour.

How many of the known implementers of the OOXML formats could tell of similar arm-twisting?  Why is it that Microsoft feels that it cannot compete without misusing its huge market share to stifle the growth of more-open alternatives?

I mean, come on now.  With over 90% of the (paid) market for office suites, they have to use untoward arm-twisting to pass OOXML through ISO?  And then, after it passes, they still must use these techniques in order to keep companies like ThinkFree from implementing OOXML's more popular competitor, ODF?  How does Microsoft's vaunted "openness pledge" hold up, given these facts?

How about it, Altova?  Could this be the reason why your products do not support ODF?  I know there is demand, since up to 600 people a day come to this blog looking for the answer to one question: How can I open this ODF file someone sent me?  Are you really willing to give up that many potential opportunities to sell your XML software?  Is implementing OOXML so difficult that you must have MSFT's good will and thus cannot risk satisfying potential customers?

¹ One of the bad things about the way Microsoft and its minions misused Rick Jelliffe's influence is that even his good suggestions might be ignored.  And, no David, despite disagreeing with Rick on OOXML, I have not mistreated him.  In fact, I respect him for his expertise in XML-related fields.  I am looking forward to seeing his Schematron in action some day.

My XO laptop arrived yesterday, 2008-03-25. I can see
already that it is a severe threat to the established
hardware vendors, but I could not imagine just how
much the XO’s unique software threatens the existing
eduware vendors.

When MJ was younger, I got the “blaster” learning
games. While they were a great improvement over the
rote quizzes that characterized a lot of eduware of
the time, he soon saw through the entertaining
graphics to the quiz engine underneath. After that, he
played those learning games no longer.

It used to be that computers in schools were not used
for vocational training. Instead, they were used for
explorational learning with tools like LOGO, as well
as introductory programming in the BASIC and Pascal
languages. Somehow we’ve gone away from actually
letting students learn and toward the kind of
mind-numbing learn-by-rote that formerly only
described memorizing multiplication tables.

Teaching schoolchildren to click a particular set of
menu choices to perform a certain task is a tremendous
waste of time and money. By the time most of them are
in the workplace, the arrangement of those choices
will be different enough that the former student may
need retraining. Instead, we need to teach kids to
think for themselves and to be comfortable exploring
the computer to learn how to perform any specific
task.

About the ‘activities’ or software: I’m trying to
blend exploring into my already cramped schedule, but
I’ve enjoyed the Measurement activity (a moving graph
of the sounds around the unit which could be used as a
fascinating introduction to acoustics, wave theory,
and related topics), watched the Etoys demo, and
opened the TamTam music activities, browsed the Web
with the built-in browser, and opened the chat
activity. I am writing this using the AbiWord-based
Writing activity. It does not yet use ODF, but the real AbiWord (v. 2.4.6) still has problems with the format as well.

I can definitely see how this beats boring quiz games and word processing.

About the laptop itself: the keyboard is definitely
kid-sized, and it occasionally does not catch keys I
press, especially when I start to speed up. The screen
is bright and clear. I can read things at smaller
sizes than I normally can. The wireless picked up
more than double the number of networks than I knew
existed around here.

This thing is so much fun that I really hope that they
bring back Give1 Get 1. I think my family would like several.

Open Malaysia: How to Royally Annoy National Bodies

Doug Mahugh : Elephants have good memories

As a measure of just how desperate Microsoft is to force its unwanted DIS29500 (Ecma-376 OOXML, as amended) formats through the ISO-ification process, it seems that Doug Mahugh showed up as the VP of IASA Malaysia. When people questioned how an American from Seattle gets to represent Malaysian interests, he decided that it was “race-baiting”. Because the committee rules forbade vendor participation in the debate, they discussed chasing the vendors out of the room. (They eventually agreed to allow vendors to be observers, but Mahugh was already headed for the airport.) After all the game-playing such as packing the INCITS v1 committee, how can it not be a good thing to strictly limit the participation of vendors in such discussions?

Doug, you are not the only person who has packed on the pounds over the last couple of years. I am thirty pounds heavier now than I was in early 2006. Thankfully, I am not yet at the point where I feel that everyone is referring to me when they use terms like “elephant”. A few months on the road, eating at hotels and restaurants will do it to you. Why don’t you take a break after DIS29500 is decided? Get some rest, get a new perspective, get a new bicycle, you know what I mean?

While openness advocates such as myself to move to truly open, vendor-neutral file formats instead of closed or pseudo-open formats, you and others in the MS Office group have fought hard for continued vendor-specific preferences. You have been enthusiastic, indeed almost pitbull-like in your devotion to the cause of planting the OOXML flag and continuing MS’ sovereignty over the office suite space. You can pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing your best.

Technorati Tags: dis29500, ooxml, open standards

Introducing Document Freedom Day

The first official announcement of the Document Freedom Day: Introducing the Document Freedom Day: “On 26 March 2008, the Document Freedom Day will provide a global rallying point for Document Liberation and Open Standards. It will literally give teams around the world the chance to “hoist the flag”: A ‘DFD Starter Pack’ containing a flag, t-shirt, leaflets and stickers is in preparation and is planned to be sent out in the first weeks of March to the first 100 teams that sign up. Sixteen teams already signed up during the preparation phase of the DFD prior to this release. Sign your team up now!”

The list of DFD supporters includes both the FSF and Google, along with IBM, the ODF Alliance, Open Forum Europe, Red Hat, and Sun.

What they don’t really specify is what DFD is really about. Is it a day to call your company CIO and lobby for true open standards in the software used at work? Is it a day to call and write your congressional representative? Should we unfurl large banners near major intersections?

I’m in favor of DFD and whatever else will promote true document freedom, but I sure hope they get some guidance on that site before the 26th.

Technorati Tags: ODF, OOXML