Danish Study Recommends Open Standards for EU

PDAJames writes "The Danish government has wrapped up a two-year study of open source's potential for the public sector, and has some pretty interesting things to say. For one, it says that tie-ins to proprietary software effectively eliminate competition for government procurement and are inherently bad. For another, it recommends a public sector-led effort to adopt an XML-based standard document format, either that of OpenOffice or a new one developed by the EU. Will they push ahead with these plans or is it just more talk?"

OpenOffice vs. other office products

Why don't the KDE developer stop working on KOffice and support OpenOffice instead?

We need more people working on OpenOffice. OpenOffice is the only product that has a chance against MS Office.

Re:OpenOffice vs. other office products

Why don't the KDE developer stop working on KOffice support OpenOffice instead?

He is busy convincing the GNOME developer to just give up and support KDE.

Re:OpenOffice vs. other office products

Both KOffice and Abiword will adopt the OO.org file format! OO may be a technology trap. Concumers want choice. Programmers also want choice. This is not totalitarism, everybody is free to do what he wants. 1 + 1 2!! Your philosophy is the philosophy of state economy (one factory has the best economies of scale) or the big old industries. A market economy enforces competition.

Stop press..

Maybe, in the light of the release of Windows RG edition [onzin.com] they should rethink their position on proprietry software..

Theres the Killer

Open standards are the best thing imaginable for the customer. The data that software manages is consistently orders of magnitude more valuable than the hardware/software that does the managing.

This wont open up things entirely, there are still patented feature sets, and purely proprietary technologies. It will at least let the best product win, not the company that got their first.

Inherently bad?

it says that tie-ins to proprietary software effectively eliminate competition for government procurement and are inherently bad.

Well, I might say that if one were considering government procurement only, they might be inherently bad. But there absolutely *is* good software out there that is proprietary that is good, and better than anything available open source. This is not to say I am not in favor of open source. Quite the contrary, I believe in an open source foundation, but companies should be allowed to bid on contracts for their proprietary products as long as those products are either based on open source, or support open source formats and alternatives.

Re:Inherently bad?

>I would require that the ability to export data
>into an open format be included.

It is not enough.

It should save data to an open format by DEFAULT.

And if you choose an alternative format, it should not pop up an annoying dialog every time.

Well, at least some part of government has brains.

It's hard to imagine something smart to come from a country that sent a corvette, snow plows and other winter equipment and a submarine (that broke down before its first mission) to help in the war against Saddam.

Pure and beautiful XML document format won't exist

I've been thinking about the XML document format problem, and I don't think there will ever be a "pure and beautiful implementation" that will ever be perfect.

As the capabilities of the document format grow, people gain the ability to embed images, arbitrary objects, graphs, etc. Much of this can be written in a self-describing style (ie: plain text XML nodes,) but there comes a point where the developers have to simply hack XML and embed some nasty CDATA kludge.

Just looking at the embedded image problem alone -- static SVG is a great, pure-XML image format. Unfortunately, it will never have the power to describe the full set of images that you could create in a binary format.

Bundles are the answer!! NeXT had this years ago..

Better yet than XML... bundles!!!

Go research .rtfd files on NeXT and Mac OS X. They're basically super-RTF files. They are actually a folder ending with .rtfd that the operating system presents to the user as a single file (for mere aesthetic and encapsulation reasons). They contain an RTF file and all the non-RTF resources (images, sounds, etc) that are embedded in the document as separate files in their own formats. I believe images are saved as TIFF by default.

So why not combine open XML document formats and rtfd-style bundles! A complex document is really a folder full of files, but it appears to the user as a single file. This makes it easy to move around, esp from computer to computer, and presents a nice sensible metaphor to the user. It's also difficult to screw things up by messing with the components (but it is possible to get into the bundle if you need to). Inside these complex documents is an XML file that describes the components of the document. Then there are files that contain the components, in whatever (open) format you wish. RTF or OpenOffice or whatever for text, Ogg sounds, PNG or SVG images, CSV or more complex spreadsheet/table formats, all the fonts the document needs, etc.

One of the replies to the parent addressed the issue of pixel-exact rendering. That's easy - just use the same rendering engine everywhere! All Gecko browsers render exactly the same everywhere (assuming the same fonts are available). So just use a single homogenous rendering engine everywhere. (And include fonts in the document bundle).

I sure hope some brilliant application-software engineer reads this! :)

(Final note: Another, more risky option would be to provide an API for rendering modules written in some suitable language, which would then be included in the bundle. You want to render, say, Maya IFF images? Include the IFF renderer in the bundle. Of course great security precautions would need to be taken, and optimally the rendering modules would have access to nothing outside the document-world, and preferably only a buffer to draw into and layout above them would be managed by the program. This has been tried before, I think. But maybe its time has come?)

Re:Bundles are the answer!! NeXT had this years ag

This is exactly what xml word processors do.

OpenOffice uses zip to combine several xml files (one for content, others for meta-info and editor advice) and any image files or similar embedded content in their native formats. IIRC, KOffice uses tar.bzip2 and Abiword uses tar.gz, but I don't have those in front of me at the moment.

That XML buzzword again

For another, it recommends a public sector-led effort to adopt an XML-based standard document format, either that of OpenOffice or a new one developed by the EU. Will they push ahead with these plans or is it just more talk?

What's wrong with good [asciitable.com] old [indiana.edu] reliable [w3.org] existing [tug.org] formats?

nooooo!

either that of OpenOffice or a new one developed by the EU
Just what we need: another XML document format. As if we didn't already have enough.

my government

I must say that I am a bit confused. Not long time ago our "beloved" government (I even voted for them) were in favor of software patents and the use of industry standard software (read Microsoft) ... Open Source has been discussed in the Danish parlament for some years, even before the current government (2 years old in a month). The former government promised to change all state-institutions to OSS, but still nothing has happened. SSLUG [sslug.dk] (Skane Sjaelland Linux User Group, biggest LUG in Denmark) have had some discussions on this topic without much succes ... but saying this, I am looking forward to a initiative from our very quiet IT-minister. The report is from the Board of Technology, that have many good and forgotten discussions.

Largest product development center MS has

The largest product development center Micrsoft has outside the United States is in Vedbaek, Denmark.

Should be interesting following this story...

sweet!!!

nice...if the EU uses a public open format, their economic power will force MS to have filters for the format!!

Well, go for competition and drive M$...

To add a filter for the very open OO format. Nothing stops M$ from adding support for OO's file format, it is right there for the copying. This excerpt from the report:

However, the report recognised that establishing a existing alternative or a new format would be an uphill battle, given that Microsoft Office cannot read OpenOffice documents or other formats.

is real simple to correct. Start using OO format (via OO/SO) in government and M$ would be compelled by competition forces to support OO format...of be locked out of government. An OSS developer could also whip up an OO document "viewer" of small size so people could easily download this "plugin" and view OO government docs on their M$ systems (for those unwilling due to bandwidth constraints or obtuseness to simply install OO/SO).

It is wrong to essentially require people to spend lots of money for a specific, propriatory wordprocessor just so they can view government documents. It is another thing entirely for them to "have to" download and install a free-of-charge office suite to do the same (though a plugin would alleviate most unreasonable heartburn). Even if they didn't do either, the contents of the document are still fully available to them in a cluttered form if they simply unzip the OO document and look at the ascii contents. Can't do that with word docs.

MS FUD

And now we only have to wait for the FUD to come along from Redmond on this topic too ...

Garbage In - garbage Out

What could have been a good paper was, sadly, another example of researcher bias. Perhaps the the worst of it is their cite of a 2001 IDC comparison of Linux vs. Unix TCO. IDC claims that "Linux, which is open source, and Unix, which is proprietary"! Really? Haven't they heard of BSD? How about OSX? They really dig themselves into a hole further down where they explain this claim!

There's a table comparing Unix and Linix item costs. Somehow "deinstallation and disposal" costs 7x more for Unix (RICS/Unix) than Linux. This may be true for really cheap x86 hardware vis-a-vis mid to high end RISC, but a more realistinc RISC system like the Blade100 would be at most 2x its x86 analog. They completely left out Solaris x86, Mac OSX, and Linux SPARC? A monkey could see that this is comparing apples and oranges.

The Danish Board of Technology/IDC also indicates that "website management" administrative costs are 60% higher for Unix than Linux, among the other similarly biased garbage out.

The very next table indicates about the same level of selective garbage in for software cost comparisons. Makes you wonder exactly what they're smoking^H^H^H^H^H using.

It's too bad too. You'll never sell MS buyers on Linux or Unix, much less MacOS, with such shoddy and easily shot down "research". 5 to 10 SuSE funded the paper and supplied the "researchers".

r7

All talk

As a dane I can safely say that this is all talk and no they want push ahead with anything. Denmark is one of the most Microsoft-centric countries in Europe. What a shame.

Looks good but....

Ive hears about these initiatives in my country before, and well talk is cheap. I'm a free software user and supporter. We need at least open standards for all companies wanting to do business with our goverments. Open source would be nice, but i could settle for open standards as the next best thing.. ;) And yes we danish are a lot more than pastry, for years we were known and feared as the notoriuos vikings at sea. Tro det eller lad vaer - Believe it or not.. ;)

EU to decide, what about the others globally?

On such issues the EU should not show itself to be as parochial as mainland China and the US Congress and President. The EU should request action by the UN to develop such globally important standards.

Such "Open Technology" actions that do not focus on the UN as the only path towards success are counter productive for humanity and wasteful of valuable and limited resources.

"Open Technology" for all of humanity to develop. Learning Environment Independent Architecture (LEIA) technology from digitized common format content to global broadcast hardware and software open source/standards. Research and Development (Medicine, Science, Technology, ...) centers that translate voice and/or documents on-the-fly (real-time) for Collaborative Learning Interactive Communities (CLIC), ... continue to all the benifits for developing nations and global business/commerse/markets/...

GET MOVING ASAP for all humanity.

OldHawk777

Reality is a self-induced hallucination.

Errors in the original posting.

As one of the authors, I will point to one major and one minor error in the original posting: - It is not a report from the government, but from the Danich Board of Technology - an independet, public technology assesment board. - It was not a 2 year study. Work started in jan. 2002 and the Danish report was published on oct. 12, 2002. The English translation (financed by EU Commision) was published last week. The report is available from www.tekno.dk

Re:Speaking of

Actually they are using a warped XML - not TRUE XML. Just like they did with Palladium - took over someone else's format and warped it.

Re:Where?

Hah! You revealed that you knew that the Danish government is located in "Denmark", a word not provided by the article. So you are probably stupid but most likely not American.

The Danish come from Danland

A small island situated somewhere around Europe or somewhere like that.

See the CIA World Factbook Entry [cia.gov] for more info.

Re:Speaking of

Actually only the metadata (author and title of document) is formated in XML, all the rest is just in a new proprietary binary-format contained in XML.

Re:Speaking of

This probably refers to the German (Schleswig - Holstein) based initiative 1dok e.V. They want to establish a standard file format for word processing [1dok.org] based on XML.

Re:Where?

The Kingdom of Denmark is actually located both in Europe and North America (we gave up on Wineland aka New Foundland). It includes Denmark, The Faroe Islands and Greenland. The country and state Denmark is the "little hat" you see on top of Germany. And happy to tell this, we are still feared in east-England because of our past (even the CIA calls us raiders! :)

Re:Where?

Oh please! You don't need to insult us fellow Americans. Look it up.

From Webster's
Danish: a light pastry leavened with yeast and often filled with cheese, fruit, etc ...

So, it's obviously in a bakery! Get a clue!

Re:Speaking of

I can show you mine.

Can you show me yours? :)

KFG

Re:Danish

Ain't that something you eat?

Det kan du bande paa, det ikke er!

Re:What about Office 2003? But...

Samples of MS-XML have been posted [slashdot.org] here on /., and they are pretty opaque. They don't seem to be using base64 tricks, but they're doing everything else.

Just because XML is open doesn't mean everything built on it is open. TCP/IP is open, but there's plenty of proprietary applications and data flowing over it.

Re:Speaking of

Using an XML foundation doesn't assure openness of the file to other "interpreters", ie, other word processors. M$ may use XML as a basis for the layout of their docs, but they still fill it to the rim with closed, propriatory slop in an attempt to make it only renderable in Word. No good.

The desire for open + XML means that a document in this format would be fully transportable between wordprocessors. This is a good thing (tm), particularly in government. Anything else effectively gives ownership of all government documents to the company that supplied the closed, propriatory format. When that company goes under (ALL companies will die out at some point) it's file format dies with it.

Government documents belong to the PEOPLE for eternity, not to private companies. They must be accessible without artificial restriction (via propriatory, closed file format) no matter what happens to some vendor supplying the parent wordprocessor.

Re:Where?

It is a dark and fearsome land, beyond the scary edge of the world. So, Americans can't go there - you'll fall off...

Open Standards != Open Source

I think we need to make a clear distinction between Open Standard and Open Source. They are very different beast and should not always be confused. The Report seemed to be more enthuisatic about the standards than the source.

Open Standards are all about interoperability creating a level playing field where companies can compeat to produce the best readers and writers of the standards. Consumers and Govs are free to choose which suits them best. This is one of the reasons the web took off as html was essentially an open standard, even though there were no open source browsers about in the early days.

Open Source is a different beast. I don't think the the benifits for a company to open source its products are as clear. Yes there are advantages with transpanancy for govemental use. Yes its great for hobbyiest, probably great for products aimed at developers. But the economic model is dificult, the viral licencing can cause problems.

In general I'm much more passionatle about Open Standard than Open Source.

Re:Speaking of

Difference is, the OOo flavour of office document XML is going through Oasis standards (from memory.... if not, then another standards organisation!) and I believe KOffice is going to support the same standard.

MS were invited, but said they didn't want to play... not suprising really given the cash-cow status of MS Office, but it does clearly conflict with the objectives of open government.

Obligatory Shakespeare Reference...

Just follow your nose.