“equally critical of proprietary and open source myths, advocating software choice beyond marketing and romanticism”
After the dispute about European definition of open standards happened after the release of the new version of the European Interoperability Framework, recently has been available the draft document on the basis of which the final EIF v2.0 will be elaborated.
A summary of reactions - to be sent at eifv2@ec.europa.eu by 22 September 2008 at the latest- will be published on the IDABC website and will constitute another input into the EIF elaboration.
Profoss last week organised an event on OpenOffice.org deployments in professional environments.
Running with the seagulls, by * Toshio *
The event was opened by Roberto Galoppini, who talked about the approach and methodology available for a successful OpenOffice.org migration. After an introduction to the OpenOffice.org community and the way OpenOffice.org has been promoted in Italy, with significant results (doubling of download year over year), Roberto went ahead with advices on OpenOffice.org migrations, based on his own experience. I won’t make a recap of this talk here, but as often, the most obvious points are those that are worth repeating: involve your users, evaluate the situation before migrating, etc. Worth noting is that integration of OpenOffice.org with other enterprise systems might cause troubles at some point. Maybe a repository of approved or certified OpenOffice.org extensions might be helping here, but Roberto doesn’t see a global initiative happening soon, or unrelated to commercial interests of a company.
Next was Eric Descamps, project manager at the Belgian Post for the pilot on OpenOffice.org. After evaluation of the business case of an OOo deployment at the Belgian Post, it was discovered that the returns were more or less the same if the deployment started in a window between now and in 2 years. As a result, the project is now frozen, but can be restarted anytime. I guess this is a good argument when negociating with Microsoft. Let’s hope it won’t be limited at that though. Because the pilot at the Post brought interesting information. As an example, most problems encountered by users where due to format conversions. And this is in agreement with Roberto, who advised to switch to ODF altogether when switching to OOo.
During the break, Bruno Lowagie, from iText fame, gave a demo combining iText and OOo for the generation of PDF documents: the template bring edited in OOo, and the final document generated by iText.
After the break, it was Machtelt Garrels‘ turn to talk. Machtelt is the co-founder of the Belgian chapter of the OpenDoc Society, and gave a passioned talk about avoiding the common pitfalls during a migration. As mentioned above, it’s funny to see the most obvious things be worth repeating. One such thing is that management has to give the example. How can an employee be motivated by a change to OOo if his own managers don’t take the step themselves?
Her talk was followed by a panel discussion where all speakers participated.
This panel discussion closed the third Profoss event, which was again highly rated by all participants.
Profoss was started one year ago to provide quality information about the use of free and open source software in professional environments. Open source technologies are still too often dismissed as unreliable, unsupported geek toys. This is a judgment generally based on unverified allegations or due to ignorance of the open source world. Profoss wants professionals to take their decision to use or reject open source technologies on hard facts.
To reach that goal, Profoss’ first initiative was to organise events bringing non-commercial, informative content.
This was followed by other initiatives like a news website, directories of software and professionals specialised in open source and a planet aggregating feeds from blogs talking about professional open source at planet.profoss.eu.
If you want to be updated about Profoss activities, you can join the newsletter.
Standards Today - sponsored by Gesmer Updegrove LLP - is a source of news, ideas and analysis relevant to those that develop and use standards.
EDITOR’S NOTE: ONE FOR ALL AND ALL FOR ONE
For centuries, the life of the author, inventor or researcher has largely been solitary rather than collaborative. Just another one of those cases where the Internet really is changing everything.
EDITORIAL: PATIENCE AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF COLLABORATIVE EXPRESSION
The full potential of the Internet to act as a platform for the sharing of content and information is only beginning to be explored. Many are embracing that potential, using innovative tools such as open source and Creative Commons licenses. Others would circle the wagons to prevent their content from being more widely reused than in the past. It may be that they have the most to lose if they are successful.
FEATURE ARTICLE: “OPENNESS” AND THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE
Until the advent of the Internet, the acquisition of knowledge was a slow and linear process of discovery/review/publish/read and start the cycle once again. The legal system that evolved to support that process ranked the rights of creators over users, because society lost little in the bargain. Today, the Internet has upset that equation, and creators of all types are voluntarily relaxing their ownership rights in order to mutually enjoy the benefits of greater access, faster development, and more useful collaboration.
STANDARDS BLOG: INTRODUCING THE HAGUE DECLARATION
A new non-profit called the Digital Rights Organization has been founded to promote “free and open standards.” Its first public act was to issue a declaration calling on governments everywhere to protect the standards upon which our human rights depend.
CONSIDER THIS: ALL STANDARDS ARE CREATED EQUAL (BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS)
Standards are the bullies of the design world, always telling every other part of a plan what it has to do. But everyone has a boss, and even standards sometimes have to kowtow to an Alpha Standard.
If you wish to receive future issues of Standards Today you can register or send an email to: consortiuminfo.org@gesmer.com with the word REGISTER in the subject line.
FR: Education Minister encourages Open Source use - Last month Mandriva and the French Ministry of Education agreed on a 60 percent discount for the purchase of the commercial version of the free software for all teachers and staff at France’s schools and universities. Austria too has plan to increase open source usage at school.
DK: Committee appointed to evaluate impact of Open Standards - The Danish government appointed five experts to evaluate the implementation of Open Standards in the country. The committee is part of a study requested earlier by the Danish Parliament. I hope Italy will soon consider similar investigations.
DE: Munich GNU/Linux desktop selects European Open Source licence - The development team of the most told migration project believes that having selected the EUPL will help other Open Source developers to implement and use their work. EUPL is one year old, but this project migration started back in 2003: what is going on?
Brazilian government lists preferred Open Source applications -The list is intended to prevent equivalent software solutions from being developed several times. Public managers should check out the portal before starting a new software development project, and if a solution exists the procurement can then be adapted to improve on that software project. It sounds a great idea, maybe the Italian Government could consider a similar policy.
LV: City council to provide OpenOffice courses - The city council of Ogre is providing free training for OpenOffice, an Open Source suite of office applications, to improve the competitiveness of the local businesses and boost the performance of the local government.
Sign up for the IDABC Monthly Open Source News Service if interested in similar news.
Microsoft announced that it will update Office 2007 to natively support ODF 1.1, Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5 and PDF/A. Microsoft will also join the OASIS ODF working group and the ISO/IEC JTC1 working group, actually on duty for ODF maintenance.
Promise of a new day by ۩ QTR974 ۩ عـــبـــدالله ۩
Andy Updegrove, Erwin Tenhumberg and NoOOXML seem happy about that, while John MCreesh is of different opinion advice.
OpenOffice.org is a large community, the Italian OpenOffice.org Association has taken part in the process and is expressing its opinion directly from the voice of its President, Davide Dozza.
The Italian OpenOffice.org Association PLIO could not do anything else than welcoming Microsoft’s announcement, considering our openness to dialog and cooperation with Microsoft expressed in our open letter on the 22th of February, expressed also at the OMAT conference on the 2nd of April.
The public dialog strategy is paying off, PLIO and Microsoft Italy today are bringing an important contribution to the software community as a whole.
Today users are winners.
IDABC, a Community Programme managed by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Informatics, is organizing an Info Day aimed to initiate the collaboration among volunteer Member States in the definition of a “Common Assessment Method for Standards and Specifications” (CAMSS).
The CAMSS Info Day will be held in Brussels on the 28th of May, and it will be open to discussion with the stakeholders.
The one day event will be organized in the frame of phase 1 of the CAMSS project activities, defining a common set of guidelines for the assessment of standards and specifications based on national best practices.
The morning session will focus on the presentation and the objectives of the project illustrated by Member State use cases; the afternoon session will be dedicated to the presentation of the CAMSS followed by panel discussions on possible following works.
The draft CAMSS will be published on the IDABC website, in June 2008 inviting external stakeholders to comment on it.
If you are interested to attend the CAMSS Info Day, please fill in a call for expression of interest no later than 13 May 2008 - You may download the privacy statement.
Draft agenda: 10h-16h.30
Morning session:
* Introduction by the Commission
* Use Cases by some Member StatesAfternoon session:
* CAMSS presentation by the contractor
* Panel discussions on CAMSS and possible following worksContact: Serge.novaretti@ec.europa.eu
[tags] open standards, IDABC, CAMSS, Setting Standards Organizations, International Standards Organizations [tags]
IBM Italia on Thursday hosted a conference on open standards, introducing the audience to standards’ risks and opportunities, in order to accelerate open standards adoption in the public sector. IBM Italia invited Italian stakeholders to meet up with Bob Sutor, IBM Vice President Open Source and Standards, along with representatives of Italian Central and Local public administrations involved with open standards’ policies and dissemination.
Rome in a glass by Geomangio
The event was held on the 8 of May at the IBM office in Rome. Bob Sutor’s keynote speech - Twelve Industry Challenges for Open Source and Standards - introduced the audience to the importance of global standards in relationship to current policies around formal International Standards Organizations. He invited attendees - from Italian public administrations like Consip, CNIPA, ISTAT - to adopt open standards policies that emphasize technical work developed by a community of stakeholders, encouraging them to deprecate de facto standards.
Besides open standards Bob spoke also about open source governance, inviting Italian public administrations to develop common models of FOSS use and governance, making use of FOSS as much as possible easy as proprietary software. In this respect he suggested also to consider developing more open source software, saying so he reported about Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework project as an example.
Last but not least Sutor spent few words about the importance of making new open source leaders and developers, a goal addressed by professor Roberto Di Cosmo working at the university of Paris on the idea of resumes FOSS ready. Evangelizing users on the availability of open source products like OpenOffice.org and Eclipse, eventually teaching children to let them learn the FLOSS value, was highly recommended in his closing remarks.
Flavia Marzano (Province of Rome), Vittorio Pagani (CNIPA Open Source Observatory) and myself (PLIO association) have been talking about open standards’ policies by Italian public administrations from different perspectives, giving the audience a broad view on the subject.
The second edition of the Italian Conference on Free Software will be held in Trento from the 16th to the 18th of May.
The ConfSL 2008 has multiple working sessions, addressing different point of view about Free Software (Open Session, Academical Session, a brokerage event and a mapping party).
1. Open Session
Dedicated to the widest audience, it aims to disseminate basic concepts around Free Software, with a special accent on well (and less) known aspects about its practical usage.2. Academic Session
The primary scientific goal is to catch the state of art of Free Software; seminars and workshops will afford to give an all-around survey about it in a multi-disciplinary fashion.3. Open Source 2008 - brokerage event
It is a partner event of ConfSL (managed by Trentino Sviluppo) member of European IRC (Innovation Relay Centre) network. It will be held friday afternoon and it will offer specific opportunites to exchange and transfer knowledge, know-how and experiences between Enterprises, Technology Providers, Associations, and Public Administrations. The main goal is to create concrete partnership opportunities, both commercial and technological, between participants.
My speech on standards conformance has been accepted, and I am glad to join the event both to talk about the importance to prove that software products are meeting open standards‘ specifications and to do some networking. See you there!
The OpenOffice.org Italian Association is proud to announce another record: the Italian release of the world’s leading free and open source productivity suite has experienced a surge in demand for its last version, OpenOffice.org 2.4.
OpenOffice.org experienced more than 16,900 downloads per day over the last 23 days, for a total of more than 370.000 downloads!
Davide Dozza, PLIO’s president commented the result:
While we were working on our april foul, downloads were running furiously, doubling the 2.3 rate, and quadrupling last year’s downloads. Likely the availability of new Italian linguistic tools, along with the support for PDF/A, are bringing more and more people to try OpenOffice.org, and learn about free software value.
I’ve been using OOo for quite some time now, more then four year, started using it around 2003, if I recall.
Last year I needed a feature in OOo index generation I quickly found out it wasn’t available, there were workarounds, but I didn’t like them.
Etched Rock by (sam)
Being OOo available in source code, I started digging into it until I found the code responsible for index generation. Built a patch for myself and solved the index generation problem, at least at my end of the line.
Then I proposed the change to OOo community.
As you can see in that thread, what came up was that ODF 1.0 didn’t support the index structure description needed to completely implement the feature.
So the discussion continued until I was suggested to post a comment to the relevant OASIS list to describe the proposed modification to ODF standard.
I did so, and after some discussion my proposed change was integrated in current ODF 1.2 specification draft.
Unfortunately that meant that the new feature would be implemented in OOo in the next main release, since it implied changing the ODF document format.
That’s the reason why you’ll find it in 3.0 release.
So I waited until the 3.0 source code was ready, when it was ready I implemented that new feature which is now part of the 3.0 functionality.
It was fun, actually.
You can find another comment in Mathias Bauer’s blog.
What’s the moral? A truly public specification can be upgraded by the public at large, provided the suggestion is a sound one.
Recent Comments