Open Forum Europe

Microsoft's problems with OOXML just won't go away. MS-OOXML was supposed to supplant the Open Document Format (ODF), but is becoming an embarrassment. As a format it betrays its hurried origins, and is over-complex. At best, it has technical problems. At worst, it is barely fit for purpose.

OFE Comment - Having just returned from the Govtech 2008 conference in Durban and having to endure a long 11 hour flight I've had plenty of opportunity to mull over this question. Govtech is now the largest IT event in South Africa, organised by SITA – the State Information and Technology Agency – it was attended by close to 2000 delegates, eat your heart out Europe. I had been invited by SITA to deliver a keynote on Open Source and eGovernment, their assumption (?) being that more is happening in Europe than Africa – maybe?   Read more 

Presentation to Govtech 2008

Gov TV Interview (14MB)

Several open-source providers are in the running for a new Becta framework covering the supply of software licences to the education sector.

Novell, Sirius Corporation and LinuxIT are thought to be among 21 firms invited to tender for the approved supplier catalogue, worth a potential £80m over four years.

Submissions for the final round have to be in before 13 August. The final list of up to 10 suppliers will be unveiled in October.

NATO has included the International Standardization Organization's (ISO) certified Open Document Format (ODF) in its list of mandatory standards to promote interoperability. NATO's standards list includes Rich Text Format (RTF), extensible markup language (XML) and Office XP formats as requirements for the sharing of data.

Researchers at the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego, have launched Adeona, an open source service aimed at helping consumers and businesses track the location of lost or stolen laptops.

The EU Competition Commissioner, Neelie Kroes, publicly supported the use of open source software. She encouraged the public institutions to use open standards and suggested a much more active role of the European Commission in promoting open standards in eGovernment applications, by adopting an internal policy not to buy proprietary software.

OpenForum Europe and the Open Source Business Organisations of Europe have jointly written to Commissioner Viviane Reding, congratulating her on Commission progress in supporting the development of thinking and research into the use of Open Standards and Open Source Software, but encourage her to now move from ideas into specific action.

Microsoft has admitted that, despite being one of the dominant names in IT for over 30 years, it had little or no experience or expertise around software standards until the company was mid-way through the process of getting Office Open XML approved by the International Organization for Standardization.

The ISO approved Open Document Format (ODF) standard has gained ground during Microsoft's campaign for its competing Office Open XML (OOXML) specification, a senior Vole executive admitted in a panel session about the long running ISO standards struggle over OOXML at the Red Hat Summit in Boston on Thursday.

OFE - Graham Taylor addresses the Irish Open Source Technology Conference (IOTC)

The adoption of Open Source products and techniques is growing in popularity worldwide, and its uses isn't just changing the business of software, it's changing everything!