French Government Recommends Standardizing on ODF

Juha-Matti Laurio writes "From the InfoWorld article: All French government publications should be made available in OpenDocument Format (ODF), according to a report commissioned by the French prime minister. The new report also suggests that France ask its European partners to do likewise when exchanging documents at a European level. It is recommended that the government will fund a research center dedicated to open-source software security as well, adds the article."

How long before the Microsoft rebuttal report?

[Mostly a lurker]

I am sure the French report's recommendations are sound, but much less sure they will be implemented. Microsoft has plenty of money to produce its own "independent" reports objecting to the imposition of a "monopoly" based on open standards, as well as playing up areas where MS Office is arguably superior. That same Microsoft money can also buy support for their point of view in influential circles.

ohhh, finally a standard!

[sporkme]

While I do wish that this order was that documents would be distributed *only* in .ODF, that is just blue-sky-software-politics.
The headline should read "French Government Recommends Standardizing on ODF, too!"
Because most people use .DOC, that is the de facto 'standard' wether we like it or not.
The real news here is the big F-U to Microsoft: We are sick of using only your software. Our governments are beginning to reccommend using alternate methods because we do not trust you. If you continue to develop software the way you do, we will proceed with our plans to isolate our governments from you. To illustrate, TFA:
--

In the report, Carayon also recommended the government fund a research center dedicated to open-source software security, and set up a system to help national and local government agencies exchange information about best practice in the use of open-source software. He also suggested that the European Union should create an agency with the ambitious goal of ensuring its technological independence.

Technological Independence. It is almost like there is going to be a Bretagne Tea Party, complete with euro-geeks dumping crates of Microsoft software into the Atlantic; What a sight they would be acting out in defiance of a monopoly of taxation without defragmentation. Bleh. Not bloody likely. Bring on the funding for OSS security, François!

Re:How long before the Microsoft rebuttal report?

[zeux]

Unfortunately for them, Microsoft's money doesn't buy a lot in France. Recently, the whole administration switched to Firefox and Thunderbird. It started with the state police (300000 computers if I remember correctly) and then continued with the rest of the state employees (I don't have the number but it's definitely a lot).

Basically, and from what I heard, the idea is to first swith the Windows softwares the administration uses to equivalent softwares that do exist on other OS the ultimate goal being to switch from Windows to Linux when all the applications are replaced. I guess the ODF switch is just another step in that direction.

Government websites and web services are already all built on open source software. I'm happy to hear that my government is spending less on windows licences and I do really hope that they'll make it and that it will be used as an example for other European countries.

Re:The French attitude

[rozz]

u may be right that the french like standards ... and a lot of the standards used today have french originsd or connotations ... like the metric sytem which afaik was set at a conference in paris and some french museum has the honour of keeping THE meter ... and the circulation on the right side of the road which afaik was set by napoleon

but your "french attitude" is a bit missplaced .. if u want a sample of stubborness in applying standards, u better look at the UK.
they are quite funny in that respect too ... they "proudly" refused napoleon's standard and kind of forgot they use the left side of the road because the romans imposed that on them ... they refused the metric system and also forgot that their system was imposed by another conqueror (the measurement system based on multiples of 3, 4 and the dozen is actually germanic)
history is quite funny sometimes ;)

Re:The French attitude

[infofc]

What confused view are you talking about. You mean like torn between hate and love? Nah, the only ones that look at the world in a WW2 perspective are anglo-saxons. The french are just bitter that they invented pride, and the US hijacked the pride concept. i.e. bitter that they lost the cultural dominance game. And what a shame it is, french culture is 10x more charming.

Re:You can have any flavor you like, if it's vanil

[Daytona955i]

There's a difference between "free" and "open." The internet was built on open standards. This is why when you get e-mail or access a web page, you can use any e-mail client and any web browser. (We'll ignore the html restrictions certain browsers have imposed and focus instead on the http protocol)

Open standards actually encourage innovation because no one has to write their own e-mail protocol or web protocol. It also does not hinder the adoption of new products because if I can just replace my current e-mail client with a new one seamlessly, I'm more likely to try it out.

This is why MS Word is the defacto standard. Because it's the best product? No, because anytime someone else tried to come out with a different product there was a high barrier to entry because the new word processor would not be able to use the current word processor files.

I think Open Standards help innovation because they allow anyone to create new software that can be easily adopted. The only person they don't help is any current monopoly. And as others have mentioned, if a newer, better way of doing things come up, there's no reason you couldn't adopt the new standard while retaining backwards compatibility with the old open format.

Re:The French attitude

[jabuzz]

For over 30 years the USA harboured convicted terrorists and openly allowed them to fundraise. This included the current administration. It was not till 9/11 that they decided to clamp down on it. In the meantime hundreds of innocent victims in Western Europe suffered or died as a result of US financed terrorism. Oh I forgot the IRA are not terrorists because they are not Muslims. I believe the French had issues with some Algerian terrorists being given haven in the USA.

Re:much more hardcore

[Edoko]

There are risks to legislating compatibility. However, in this case, legislation is probably required.

• One useful piece of legislation would be to require that all software marketed in the European community be compatible with the open source standard. This would require Microsoft as a matter of law to provide compatibility "save as" with ODF.
• Legislation could also require Microsoft to set as its default format ODF.
• Finally, should Microsoft fail to comply, it could be subject to "conversion" fines to compensate users for the cost of converting their files to ODF format.
• An even better solution would be to place an extra 10% tax on all Microsoft products with that 10% of revenue being targeted for support of European research on ODF type standards.
• Another useful idea would be to hold Microsoft liable for the costs and damages of security failures and vulnerabilities in its software if it could be shown that it was negligent in design of its software, e.g. knowingly allowed defective software to be placed on the market.
• And one final idea is that software should be treated like pharmaceutical patents: the copyright should be set to expire after a few years, whereupon it becomes legal to "clone" it.

Re:You can have any flavor you like, if it's vanil

[1u3hr]

Things didn't always convert that well.

I know all about that. I work in DTP and have had to deal with all kinds of files. Now of course when people say "file" they mean "MSWord file", and are baffled at the idea that there is any alternative, which makes me rather sad; especailly as I am forced to use this myself. But "MSWord file" is no guarantee of compatibility. After a file has been passed back and forth between several people the style, layout, spelling, fonts, page size.... all change with no one really knowing how or why. A good part of my work is stripping layers of crap from such files before I can actually get to the creative part of the job.