It looks like Ms Neelie Kroes, the Competition Commissioner for the European Union is in agreement with governments and their agencies for choosing proper open standards, as reported by the New York Times:

“I know a smart business decision when I see one — choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed,” Ms. Kroes told a conference in Brussels. “No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one.”

So its apparent that Malaysian agencies like MAMPU are also doing the right thing in adopting true open standards like ODF as their document file format, despite the fact that Microsoft Malaysia is constantly lobbying and interfering with MAMPU's decisions. The reaction from Microsoft's lobbying is certainly interesting. I think people are getting tired of their underhanded tactics, and false cries of "competition" and "fairness".

Ms Kroes continues to applaud the efforts of governments in making the right choices:

She praised the German city of Munich for using software based on open standards, along with the German Foreign Ministry and the Gendarmerie Nationale, France’s national police force.

Ms. Kroes, who is Dutch, encouraged the Dutch government and Parliament to continue moving toward use of open standards. EU agencies “must not rely on one vendor” and “must refuse to become locked into a particular technology — jeopardizing maintenance of full control over the information in its possession,” she said.

A policy by the European Commission adopted last year to promote the use of software products that support open standards “needs to be implemented with vigor,” she said.

It would be great if she could look into the running of the Netherlands National Body which is was forced into a "abstention" decision not because of any technical ineptitude to review OOXML, but because Microsoft held the 'veto' to find no full consensus amongst the TC members, as described here:

The result of this intensive process was that during the last meeting on the subject on August 16th 2007 in Delft - where the vote was to be cast - after a majority rejection of a proposal for an "Approval" a final proposal for a so called conditional approval (i.e.: a no vote that would turn into a yes vote if a number of reasonable and already determined conditions were met at the next stage) almost got unanimous support - from all but the local support branch of Microsoft. This isolated position caused the vote to fail and the Netherlands to automatically vote for an "Abstain".

Ms Kroes is of course no stranger to the wrath of the Microsoft machinery, having to battle with them for over 4 years with regards to Microsoft's bundling of their proprietary products, and their indignation in defying her orders. What is interesting is that governments and regulators are getting tired of Microsoft's antics and are starting to bite back.

Ms. Kroes did not name Microsoft in advance copies of her speech, but she made her meaning clear by referring to the only company in the history of EU antitrust enforcement that has been fined for refusing to comply with commission orders — a record held by Microsoft.

“The commission has never before had to issue two periodic penalty payments in a competition case,” she said.

I wonder when the Ministry of Domestic Trade will wake up and realise that they are practising uncompetitive behaviour by mandating that all PC's should be shipped with operating systems from a single vendor? Surely consumers should have a "choice"? Why isn't the Institute for Software Choice / CompTIA lobbying Dell to have more choice in their OS offerings for their desktops? Ubuntu/Fedora/openSolaris/FreeBSD? Why aren't those being offered?

What is ironic is that we are being told by Microsoft that their rushing of OOXML is due to the EU's request for more open standards in their products. Unfortunately in their haste to push OOXML through the ISO process, they caused such a mess in terms of their relationships with governments, agencies, national bodies and more importantly the media, that Microsoft is now being investigated on their attempts to play the ISO system for OOXML, as reported by The Wall Street Journal in February 2008.

So things aren't looking so swell for Microsoft. Their OOXML is currently in limbo, and will not be published on schedule, because 4 countries (Argentina, Brazil, India and South Africa) have appealed against the ISO stamp of "approval". Additionally, the final draft as promised by the BRM is still not available to National Bodies to review, 3 months on (directives clearly state that it should be available within 1 month). Unless of course they don't want to see any changes between the final draft and published text because of the restrictions imposed due to the "Fast Track" process?

Lets see how the Microsoft machinery reacts to this set of interesting news, and see how they spin in.  How much has this fiasco cost them? What did they get out of it? A chance to be more open? Can you see a change yet?

yk.

Nearly One Million Beta Users, 24 Languages, Web 2.0 Extensions, New Technical Support Services for Enterprises


In September last year, I posted on the introduction of IBM Lotus Symphony - beta version. Symphony is a suite of free desktop software for word processing, presentations and spreadsheets based on ODF. Lotus Symphony supports Microsoft Office and can export content in PDF format, too.

Now it's out of beta! You can download it here, for free, of course.
 

Here's the text of the IBM press release:

ODF Comes of Age: IBM Lotus Symphony Turns 1.0

Nearly One Million Beta Users, 24 Languages, Web 2.0 Extensions, New Technical Support Services for Enterprises

ARMONK, NY - 03 Jun 2008: Open Document Format (ODF) comes of age today as IBM (NYSE: IBM) announces the commercial-grade, general availability of Lotus Symphony (http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony), a suite of free, ODF-based software tools for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

This announcement affirms IBM's commitment to evolving office productivity software from static, financially draining software to a dynamic, cost-effective tool that allows businesses to invest in more innovative pursuits.

While Lotus Symphony remains a free, easy download from the Web with free online, moderated support, IBM is also announcing fee-based services to support the needs of large organizations. This optional service, IBM Elite Support for Lotus Symphony 1.0, delivers unlimited remote technical support at a level consistent with other IBM software products via an annual subscription to IBM's Passport Advantage or Passport Advantage Express volume licensing programs.

Lotus Symphony could save a company with 20,000 employees $8 million in software license fees or potentially more than $4 million in software renewal fees. If it chose to switch to Symphony for only half of its employee population, it could still save several million dollars in license or renewal fees, even if it subscribed to IBM's Elite Support services at $25 per user for 1,000 employees.

Launched in September 2007, Lotus Symphony has been downloaded by nearly one million individuals in an open public Beta program. Lotus Symphony is a truly global product, available in 24 languages, developed by a worldwide team anchored in Beijing, China, and improved through the community of individual users on the Symphony Web site.

"Major technology vendors are lining up to support ODF -- even those previously opposed to it," said Steve Mills, SVP of IBM Software. "Symphony -- backed by enterprise customer support services -- is ready for business."

A growing number of businesses are considering decisions to renew their Office licensing agreements, and move up to Office 2007 and Vista. Lotus Symphony 1.0 provides a timely and cost-effective alternative tested by nearly one million people worldwide and backed by IBM.

Plugging Into the Power of Web 2.0

Another noteworthy benefit of Lotus Symphony is aligned with Web 2.0 -- the newest Internet technology -- not the fading era of the personal computer. In the spirit of Web 2.0, Lotus Symphony individual users have the ability to influence the development of the software through feedback on the Symphony site, much the way that content is continuously revised and updated through Wikipedia.

More importantly, IBM offers a set of powerful, open APIs for extending Lotus Symphony with a wide range of plug-ins -- including Eclipse and Universal Network Object component model and others. This can empower business people to harness powerful business processes such as enterprise resources planning and customer relationship management directly from their desktop. Companies and governments can integrate Lotus Symphony tools into their custom applications and connect to myriad data sources that allow individuals to work in a single view while presenting and updating data from multiple sources instantly.

IBM is offering a free developer toolkit on the Symphony site that enables individual users of Lotus Symphony, as well as independent software developers, to create plug-ins, or software adaptors, and composite applications, or mashups. These can transform static documents into living information streams capable of managing primary business functions such as shipping, sales and fulfillment.

The three core tools comprising Lotus Symphony -- Lotus Symphony Documents, Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets and Lotus Symphony Presentations -- handle the majority of office productivity tasks that most people perform. Quick reading reference cards and online tutorials on the Lotus Symphony Web site show how easy it is to transfer documents between Symphony and Word, PowerPoint or Excel.

Symphony Provides a Foundation for SMBs

In a related development, Lotus Symphony is being extended to small businesses within a new turnkey collaboration product called IBM Lotus Foundations (www.ibm.com/lotus/products/foundations), commercially available today. Lotus Symphony will serve as the office productivity software within Lotus Foundations, which also includes Lotus Notes and Domino mail, file management, directory services, firewall, back-up and recovery, anti-virus, and anti-spam features. Lotus Foundations is part of a broad IBM initiative code-named "Blue Business Platform" to simplify information technology for small businesses.

Local IBM Business Partners are the primary route to market for Lotus Foundations. A variety of third parties, such as Linux distributors, media companies and IBM Business Partners from North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region are offering Lotus Symphony either as a free, standalone download off the Web or for sale with customized applications.

When Patrick Durusau wrote that Microsoft had no opposition to ODF, he was indefensibly and gloriously wrong. Those of us involved in national standards bodies and on government policy panels have had the dubious honor of having to defend against Microsoft's desperate attempts to kill any possible introduction of ODF as a voluntary standard. Perhaps even worse was having to witness first hand Microsoft making loud complaints against any internal government policies of the usage of ODF and any software which uses ODF (OpenOffice.org being the most prominent). And, of course, many of us have faced the intense lobbying campaign carried out by Microsoft against open source governmental policies.

So when Yasmin Mahmood, Microsoft Malaysia Managing Director, made the famous statement that "It's not about choosing, but about having a choice" with reference to ODF and OOXML, we assumed this was a new chapter in Microsoft history.

Then came along a recent blogpost by Harisfazillah Jamel, "Apabila Membuat Pilihan Dipersoalkan / When Choices are Questioned", on the right of government agencies to make choices. It's written in Malay, but it has been translated by Yoon Kit for the benefit of our international readers. It makes for extremely interesting reading on the pressure Microsoft Malaysia is placing on a government agency because of their choice to use OpenOffice.org/ODF over Microsoft Office:

Apabila Membuat Pilihan Dipersoalkan (When Our Choices Are Questioned)

Ada yang sebuah syarikat ICT yang kononnya mempunyai satu lagi standard bagi satu perkara adalah satu pilihan kepada pengguna. Sedangkan pengguna, mana-mana pengguna juga faham, standard, mempunyai standard bermaksud kita telah membuat pilihan, membuat satu pilihan daripada pelbagai pilihan yang terbaik untuk pengguna.

There is an ICT company which has one more standard for one more application for one more choice for consumers. While consumers, many users understand standards, having standards means we have made a choice, a choice which  is the best for users from many options.

Wakil mereka di Malaysia dalam satu muka surat sebuah akhbar menyatakan, kejayaan mereka mendapatkan iktiraf standard bagi satu format adalah satu pilihan kepada pengguna. Teruskan membaca, apabila membuat pilihan bukan kehendak mereka, adalah bukan pilihan mereka.

Their Malaysian representative, in a page of a newspaper stated that their success of having the standard as a format is yet another choice for users. Read it, if we make a choice not to their liking, it is not their choice.

Lalu sebuah agensi dalam kerajaan Malaysia telah membuat pilihan. Membuat pilihan bukan dalam kehendak syarikat ICT tersebut. Pilihan setelah panjang membuat penilaian. Pilihan atas dasar untuk memberi sokongan dan pilihan kepada agensi-agensi lain. Pilihan yang dibuat atas kehendak sendiri tanpa  tekanan mana-mana pihak. Pilihan yang dipesetujui diperingkat pengurusan tertinggi hinggalah keperingkat bawahan.

An agency in the government of Malaysia had already made a choice. The choice was not the choice of the said ICT company. The choice was made after a long study. The choice was based on principles to bring support and choice to other agencies The choice was made on its own needs without any pressures from any party. The choice was agreed by the highest level of management to the lowest level.

Sekarang timbul isu, syarikat ICT itu tidak senang dengan pilihan yang dibuat oleh agensi itu. Mereka merasakan agensi ini mahu menentukan dasar yang keras terhadap pilihan yang telah dibuat. Oh ya betul, mereka tidak senang dengan pilihan yang dibuat oleh sebuah agensi kerajaan Malaysia dan mula menjalankan kerja-kerja melobi untuk memaksa agensi ini, menurunkan maksud polisi penggunaan standard yang telah dibuat oleh agensi ini.

Now this issue has surfaced. The ICT company is not happy with the choice that was made by the agency. They felt that the agency wants to set a policy which is incompatible with the choice that they prefer. Oh that is true, they are not happy with the choice that was made by an agency of the Malaysian Government and have started work lobbying to force this agency to dampen the meaning of the policy of using standards that was announced by this agency.

Polisi yang telah disusun, dibincang dengan panjang lebar dan diluluskan dalam pengurusan tertinggi agensi ini mahu diubah oleh syarikat ICT tersebut kerana ia tidak menepati pilihan yang kehendak mereka. Bahawa diingatkan polisi ini adalah khusus hanya untuk agensi ini supaya memudahkan pelaksanaan atas satu standard. Itu maksud tujuan standard, memudahkan pelaksanaan kepada satu pilihan.

The policy that was prepared, was discussed widely and in detail, was approved by the highest level management of this agency, is to be modified by the said ICT company because it is not inline with their needs. Whereas it is reminded that this policy is specifically for this agency such that it  can easily implement one standard. That is the meaning and purpose of a standard, the ease of implementing one choice.

Yang buat saya marah, adalah teknik yang saya panggil, kilas tangan dengan kasar memaksa agensi ini tukarkan polisi agensi ini. Ya memaksa, walau apa pun cara yang digunakan, bagi saya ia masih panggil ia memaksa, agensi ini tukarkan polisi dari segi pelaksanaan.

What makes me angry is  what I call their heavy handed technique of forcing the said agency to change its policies. Yes force, by any means possible. I still call it force, to get the agency to change its policies on implementation.

Bagi saya, campur tangan dalam urusan sebuah agensi kerajaan Malaysia terutama melibatkan polisi, dan nyata sekali polisi ini adalah untuk penggunaan agensi tersebut oleh sebuah syarikat luar negara merupa satu campur tangan asing... Sebuah bentuk penjajahan ...

For me, their intervention in the business of an agency of the Government of Malaysia especially when it involves policies, and especially when this policy is stated for the use of this agency, by a foreign company represents ... a form of colonisation ...

Siapa mereka untuk tentukan dasar dan pentadbiran sebuah negara.  Saya sebagai rakyat Malaysia cukup marah dengan campur tangan sebegini. Perkara ini telah lama diperhatikan sejak daripada melobi penerimaan standard yang kononnya adalah satu pilihan.

Who are they to define the policies and the running of a sovereign country. I, as a Malaysian citizen, have enough with their interference of this nature. This behaviour has long been witnessed ever since the lobbying efforts of the standards which is claimed to be yet another "choice".

Saya tidak akan duduk diam dengan bentuk penjajahan cara baru ini. Saya tidak akan berhenti menulis dan berkempen untuk mendedahkan apa jua yang dilakukan oleh syarikat ICT ini untuk terus memaksa penggunaan produk mereka.

I am not going to sit quiet with this new form of colonisation tactic. I am not going to stop writing and campaigning and resist any action by this ICT company which forces the use of their products.

Banyak sudah duit rakyat, duit rakyat mengalir keluar daripada Malaysia, hanya untuk pembayaran lesen. Pembayaran hanya atas kertas, tiada hasil kepada kita rakyat Malaysia, hanya menjadikan syarikat luar negara atau individu luar negara lagi kaya.

Too much of our citizens money, money of the people has flowed out from Malaysia, only to purchase licenses. The payment is only for paper, without any value to us Malaysian citizens, only to make a foreign company or individual foreigners rich.

Sedangkan duit yang berjuta-juta itu boleh dialirkan kepada industri ICT negara kita dalam bentuk pelaksanaan sistem sokongan, penyelidikan dan pelaksanaan kepada aplikasi sumber terbuka atau Open Source Software.

If only the multi-millions of riggit could flow to our ICT industry in the form of system support, research and implementations in Open Source Software.

Mengapa perlu kayakan orang lain sedangkan rakyat ini yang membayar cukai tersebut perlu lihat sahaja duit itu keluarkan. Sedang sudah ada pilihan, pilihan yang setelah dikaji, boleh mendatangkan faedah yang banyak kepada rakyat Malaysia.

Why must we make other people wealthy while citizens have to pay the tax. Just see the expenditure. While there is already a choice, a choice that has been evaluated which can bring much benefits to the citizens of Malaysia.

Polisi dan dasar sudah ada. Mengapa tidak sokong? Soalan yang hendak tanya kepada ahli-ahli politik negara kita ...

The Policies are already defined. Why is there no support? These are the questions which need only be asked to the politicians of our country ...

Apa yang saya tulis ini adalah pendapat peribadi, akan tetapi saya mahu ia dipandang  serius oleh banyak pihak. Lama mana kita mahu dijajah ... ???

What I have written is just my personal opinion, but I want this viewed seriously by many. How long do we ever want to be colonised ... ???

I really must commend Patrick Durusau's innate capability of writing the most inflammatory and outrageous publications, publications that are so divorced from reality that one cannot help but think that the dude must be hoarding some seriously good weed to be able to live so completely within his own defined existence. His latest publication, "Not With a Bang, but With a Whimper", has been receiving flak from the collective open standards community for exactly that reason and rightly so.

Patrick writes that:

Signs the document standards war was entirely fictitious have been around for quite some time. Where was the Microsoft opposition to OpenDocument in standards bodies such as OASIS and ISO? Perhaps they forgot? Didn't get the memo?

Given that we at OpenMalaysiaBlog, as open standards supporters, have been at the forefront of receiving the brunt of their vicious (and often personal) attacks on ODF, I find Patrick's assertions as ridiculous and cockeyed at best, and deliberately offensive at worst.

Microsoft has been running an anti-ODF campaign in favour of OOXML for a long long time now. In Malaysia, their campaign started with opposition to Malaysia's proposed adoption of ODF ISO26300:2006 as a voluntary standard by invoking Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt on the ODF standard. The campaign continued on by personally attacking members of the technical committee who were in favour of ODF, by casting undue aspersions on their characters, in particular, insinuating that we were subversive agents of IBM intent on the destruction of Microsoft (apparently, anybody who supports truly open standards is a biased IBM agent).

In fact, during a technical standards meeting on ODF, senior management of Microsoft Malaysia printed out an unrelated and personal blog post from Yoon Kit (in which he was slightly critical of a Malaysian government agency whose representative was also present during the meeting), passed it around to all members present in the meeting and demanded for proper ethical conduct from members. That's right, folks - he printed out a non-technical blog post and attempted to cast a false and misleading charge on the character of a member of the technical meeting.

To the credit of the representative of the government agency in question and the chairman of the meeting, the meeting was quickly brought to order. The representative of the government agency did not have a problem with Yoon Kit's blog post but Microsoft Malaysia did. Note that this is not hearsay, I witnessed this first hand and was thoroughly shocked at the extent Microsoft would go to destroy any perceived threat to their Microsoft Office cash cow. The Microsoft Malaysia representative in question also distributed printed blog posts from OpenMalaysia and circled the name of a member of this blog who also happens to be an IBM employee, insinuating to all that members of OpenMalaysia are influenced by IBM in pushing for a pro-ODF stand. This happened during a meeting to discuss the technical aspects on ODF!

That particular meeting was followed by an anonymous smear campaign against one of the TC members. A letter was faxed to the organization of the TC member in question, accusing the TC member in question of helping politicize the issue (which is, of course, untrue). I too had the dubious pleasure of hearing first hand how Microsoft attempted to remove me from the TC (they did not succeed, thanks to integrity and cojones of the organization I am affiliated with).

If this unethical behaviour by Microsoft was not sufficiently despicable, they did the unthinkable by involving politics in what should have been a technical evaluation of the standard by writing to the head of the Malaysian standards organization and getting its business partners to engage in a negative letter writing campaign to indicate lack of support of ODF in the Malaysian market. Every single negative letter on ODF received by the Malaysian standards organization was written either by Microsoft, or a Microsoft business partner or a Microsoft affiliated organization (Initiative for Software Choice and IASA).

That's right, Patrick, every single negative letter on ODF can be traced back to Microsoft. And you ask where was Microsoft's opposition to ODF? Here is a letter by Yasmin Mahmood, Microsoft Malaysia Managing Director to the head of the Malaysian standards organization, opposing ODF as a voluntary standard (note that I have digital copies of all the letters in questions, if you wish to read them):

Patrick, you write that:

Need more? Watch the reaction to this announcement by Microsoft. Remember the cry has been that Microsoft should adopt OpenDocument. Microsoft has now adopted OpenDocument and it will be devoting resources to its development. For those unfamiliar with the concept, that means Microsoft will be making a positive contribution to the ODF development effort.

My recommendation is that everyone put up their noise makers and welcome Microsoft to the OpenDocument community and prepare to work with them to advance its development

Patrick, you make the assumption that those who are opposing OOXML are doing it solely because we oppose Microsoft. You couldn't be more wrong and I think it's high time you recognize the most excellent effort by many parties in helping improve the OOXML specification.

Yoon Kit and myself have spent countless weekends and many, many, many man hours finding ways of improving the proposed standard. My report to the TC, based on the reading made of the proposed standard, have always been on a solely technical basis, and Patrick, you of all people, should accede to the fact that there are/were severe technical deficiencies in the proposed standard and that input from members of National Bodies helped improve the specification.

The campaign against Open XML was at its start, in the middle and at the end an anti-Microsoft campaign. The merits or demerits of Open XML were simply a convenient launching point for criticisms of Microsoft.

Making the dangerous argument that "the merits or demerits of OOXML were simply a convenient launching point for criticisms of Microsoft" works to undermine the important constructive value of  criticism, which is to improve the proposed standard in question. The logic you have employed, that any attempt to criticize the technical deficiencies in OOXML is equated to criticism of Microsoft, is superfluous. By any measure, our criticism and feedback has helped improve the proposed standard immeasurably and you simply must recognize that, if intellectual honesty carries still carries weight with you.

Patrick, to further claim that we are solely "noise makers" does irreparable damage to value of the work we have put into improving the proposed standard. In fact, some of the decent folk at Microsoft (yes, they actually exist) helped arrange a conference call to Brian Jones, whose input helped clarify some the issues I was attempting to understand. I subsequently revised my technical contribution to the TC based on the clarification by Brian Jones. Your assertion that we are doing this so as to criticize Microsoft is an unfair charge and only serves to undermine your already dwindling reputation among the open standards community.

Now, when I was first told about Microsoft Office support for ODF by a Microsoft employee, my reaction was: "Awesome!". Then I puzzled for a minute over why they didn't do this two years ago and avoid opposing the passage of ODF as a Malaysian standard. In any case, the following day, I relayed this message to Yasmin Mahmood, the Microsoft Malaysia Managing Director, with an invitation for OpenMalaysia Blog to interview her on this positive and constructive development. I've not heard back from Yasmin on my invitation, but let me publicly assure the lady that the invitation is still open and we are committed to publishing the interview verbatim (word for word). Yoon Kit and I also offered to publicize the good work Microsoft is doing on ODF by running an interview with them. Brian and Doug, that invitation is still open if you choose to accept it by answering the questions we sent to you 11 days ago.

So all in all, Patrick, you owe us an apology for your thoughtless remarks, your unfair insinuations and biased connotations on our character.

May 17, 2008 is Open Malaysia blog's 2nd. birthday!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

The first post 2 years ago declared, "This is a blog
about openness, saying that the changing times call for innovation through open collaboration." Open innovation, ODF, open standards and open source were what we championed then and what we still champion today.

Malaysia had voted Approval of ODF as an ISO standard just before this blog started 2 years ago. OOXML came into the picture since then, but in the last one year, Malaysia cannot be considered to have officially accepted OOXML -- the Malaysian National Body committees  (TC4, then ISC G) voted Disapproval of OOXML, and the Malaysia final vote of Abstention decided by the Minister is at best non-committal to OOXML.

On the blog's 1st. birthday on May 17, 2007, there were 194 posts and 163 comments. In the one year after that, we added 111 posts but the number of comments tripled to 512 comments within the same one year! The worldwide dialog created by this blog was awesome.

In the 1st. year, we had 32,000 visits (by Sitemeter). In the 2nd. year, the month of March 2008 alone had 32,000 visits, with a total of 100,000 visits in the whole of this 2nd. year. The most popular post was definitely The Last Lap on the OOXML results which attracted thousands of visits every day.

Yes, the times they are a-changing. I leave it to you to recount the changes you have seen in "openness" in Malaysia and elsewhere over the last year -- do write your comments below.

South Africa has taken major steps in recognising ODF as a national and government standard.

Back in October 2007, it was announced that South Africa mandated that ODF (ISO/IEC 26300) would be in the Minimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in government (MIOS).

The plan then was to have all government departments to view ODF documents by March 2008, all published government documents to be in ODF or non-proprietary formats by end of 2008, all internal government documents by March 2009 and finally a conversion of legacy documents to ODF or non proprietary formats.

So now, the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) approved ODF as a national standard to make ODF as a standard more visible and accessible to South African citizens. The latest update:

Aslam Raffee, chief information officer at DST (Department of Science and Technology), says that the deadlines for ODF adoption in government have already been set and are underway. The initial deadline was March this year for government department to be able to read documents in ODF format. By September it is expected that all departments will be able to read and write in the Open Document Format. Finally, in 2009, ODF will become the default document format for South African government departments.

Raffee says this process is progressing well and at this point “citizens should be able to send documents in Open Document Format to departments”

What is significant is that South Africa was one of the countries which voted "Disapprove" OOXML consistently as an abnormal candidate for the "Fast Track" process. Its concerns against OOXML is reiterated in SABS final comments submitted to ISO:

The overwhelming majority view of the South African committee is that the scope of the overlap between the proposed standard and the existing ISO/IEC 26300 standard is significant.  A significant majority view is that South Africa sees no benefit in adopting another standard for document formats in this area.

If Microsoft thinks it can now inject its immature OOXML as an alternative format in South Africa's MIOS, they certainly are facing an uphill battle. SABS and DST will undoubtedly expect to hear a lot of whinging about "choice" and "market forces" lobbied at certain Ministerial Departments. Will CompTIA and ISC please step up?

This goes to show that certain Ministries of Science and Technology can stand up for the interests of their citizens, and not have to feel pressured by a single foreign multinational. If only this independence was more prevalent around the world.

yk.

The ODF Alliance released the following statement at their ODF Alliance blog:

ODF Alliance Statement on the ISO Vote on OOXML

Washington, DC, April 2, 2008—ODF Alliance managing director Marino Marcich issued the following statement regarding the ISO vote on Microsoft’s Office Open XML.

“The ISO vote on OOXML has raised awareness at the highest levels of government of the importance of preserving access to public information and records. For too long, this information has been locked into the closed, proprietary format controlled by a single vendor. This is increasingly unacceptable. For this reason, governments around the world have been adopting the already-ISO approved OpenDocument Format (ODF).

ODF will continue to be the document format of choice that best meets the needs of governments interested in ensuring access to their own information, now and in the future. The process itself brought to the fore OOXML’s deficiencies that will prevent its use by public administrations, chief among them that OOXML remains a “community of one”—undocumented features, IPR restrictions, and features and functionality linked to other Microsoft products that will prevent OOXML’s use in other software products. Governments will naturally take a “buyer beware” attitude toward OOXML and its lone implementation, Microsoft Office 2007. Nothing about the process will provide governments with any more confidence in OOXML’s openness and interoperability than they had before the vote.

The vote shined a spotlight on OOXML that will not dim. Only in response to growing public pressure has Microsoft promised to make changes to OOXML, and, to be sure, similar promises have been made on numerous occasions. To avoid any questions concerning the legitimacy of the vote, which included many documented irregularities, Microsoft needs to ensure that these promises made to national standards bodies are actually delivered. 

If anything, this vote has galvanized the ODF community, making us more confident than ever of ODF’s emergence as the document format of the future.”

I don't know what the attraction is, but somehow we all love the morbid fascination of Zombies in action. First, Microsoft^H^H^H^H^H CompTIA hires Mr. Jan van der Beld, Ex-Ecma Secretary General, to fly all the way here to KL, for an event supposedly about "good multiple standards".  There he challenges us to find a better way to Fast Track large, immature vendor dependent specifications. The answer is of course: "Don't do it." Later on that same day, like a man possessed, he turns up at a PIKOM meeting only to rant and thump tables.

Then yesterday, our fantastic broadsheet turned tabloid "The New Straits Times" featured a "Comment" by our so called "cooler head" Datuk Dr Mohd Ariffin Aton entitled "Walking the Talk on neutrality policy". If you've forgotten about him, you may be forgiven, but he is or rather WAS the CEO if SIRIM Bhd. Yes, another Ex-Somebody. He was the one with the inane explanations on why TC4 was shut down last year:

"There has been unprofessional conduct and a lack of ethical standards among some members of the technical committee," Ariffin said. "This is the first time in my 11 years at Sirim where ethics have not been followed." He, however, declined to name the individual members involved, citing his own ethical reasons. Ariffin said some TC/G/4 members had taken to belittling other members who did not share their pro-ODF views, both during committee meetings and in personal blogs.

First he said that he did not want to name 'em, because of his ethics, then immediately indicates who they are. Isn't it bizarre that a CEO would shut down his own TC without telling the TC what was wrong in the first place, and then going to the press to talk about it? How shameful is it that you can't keep your own house in order?

So yesterday, on Page 25 in the Malaysian Daily, he writes some amazing comments, which would make any Microsoft shill orgasm with delight. For you 'cold-heads' who are actually using your brain, please wear some protective gear around your gray matter, to prevent your head from from exploding!

Here goes:

So, after Doug voluntarily excused himself from TC4 [as we did not 'throw him out' as he claims], and after I gave my presentation on the BRM, and after Ditesh gave his technical evaluation of the resolutions, the TC4 Chair opened the meeting to the floor. Mr Cheong Yuk Wai, from IASA Malaysia, volunteered. We expected him to delve into the technical matters which Microsoft should have braindumped him.

Instead, we got a rant.

He started off saying that back in the old days of e-commerce, he was in discussion with the board of major banks trying to work out the best way to do internet transactions. The Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) payment method was decided to be the best method, which protects both Banks and Merchants. It failed miserably. He didn''t elaborate why, but I'll answer that later.

The issue, was that SET was designed by people in the boardroom without the proper input of the people that mattered; the Customers. I tried to find a link to our discussion here, but the next point was that "That is why we shouldn't just have one standard as we may have made a wrong choice" ... in reference to ISO 26300 (ODF) I'd assume. He did after all have the same preamble last year when he tried to present the case for TC4 not to send contradiction comments to ISO. After a year and a bit of think about this, I still do not see the link. Ho hum.

Anyway, after that, he demonstrated his Google skillz. Or so we thought. In a snazzy pre-recorded vidcast, Google was brought up, and searched for "patrick odf". The first entry of course was Patrick Durusau's plead to adopt OOXML as an ISO standard in his open letter entitled "The Importance On Being Heard". Not sure why a simple URL to the file wouldn't have sufficed.

Now Mr Cheong said that Mr Patrick Durusau was the ODF Author, Ditesh interjected and said that that was not accurate. He is the ODF Editor. There is a big difference being and author and an editor. I also wanted to interject to say that Patrick was making his remarks in a personal capacity, and his official capacity should not have been brought into discussion, nor relevant. But Mr Intel, who was suppose to remain an 'Observer' decided to play the role of the Chair and asked me to remain silent to give Mr Cheong a chance to speak. I let that slide.

Mr Cheong then went on to highlight some sections of the open letter:

"That point of agreement is that everyone at the table was heard. That may not seem like a lot to an Oracle or IBM, but name the last time Microsoft was listening to everyone in a public and international forum? At a table where a standard for a future product was being debated by non-Microsoft groups?"

With this Mr Cheong said, and I have to paraphrase, because I too am trying to grasp the logic: "See, here is our chance as Malaysia to be AT the table! So that we can contribute to the development of this format!"

[I digress here, but I think this paragraph is worth mentioning:

"... name the last time Microsoft was listening to everyone in a public and international forum? At a table where a standard for a future product was being debated by non-Microsoft groups?"

I love this subtle trick which Mr Durusau managed to get ALL the Microsofties to openly admit that Microsoft has the bad reputation of NEVER listening to the public in the development of their products. I mean All of them, in their zeal to reprint the Durusau letter, had to include this paragraph in their blogs and Press Releases, and it just made them admit that they have been all the time customer insensitive. Tee Hee]

The Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) has announced that the agency will be migrating to OpenOffice.org office suite as well as adopt the OpenDocument Format (ODF). In addition, Microsoft Office is to be phased out by end of 2008. The press release follows:

Putrajaya, 19th March 2008 - The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), today officially adopts a policy to migrate to the OpenOffice.org open source productivity suite. This is in line with the Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Master Plan, which calls for government agencies to reduce costs, increase freedom of choice and interoperability.

From April 1st, MAMPU will start adopting the OpenDocument Format (ODF), standard for all new documents created. ODF the ISO open standard for electronic documents is also the default format for OpenOffice.org. The agency will also uninstall all copies of Microsoft Office by the end of 2008.

To ensure a smooth migration, presently over 80 agency staff have been trained by the Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC). Additional staff will then be trained internally by the IT department, which will also provide support for OpenOffice.org.

[Update by Hasan, 1:32 PM, 19 March 2008: Below are my translations of the MAMPU 2-page policy statements on the move to OpenOffice.org and ODF]

--- Page 1, originally Polisi Penggunaan OpenOffice.org MAMPU (in Malay) ---

The case for open source software has been made with general acceptance of its promise of better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility and lower cost. Now is the time to hasten execution.

Y.Bhg. Tan Sri Sidek Hassan
Chief Secretary to the Government of Malaysia
December 2007

OPENOFFICE.ORG USAGE POLICY

1. Document distribution

a) Internal within MAMPU, in the basic OpenOffice.org format

b) Going outside of MAMPU, in PDF format if not necessary to be edited and in OpenOffice.org or MS Office if to be edited

2. All preparation of documents need to use standard fonts that have been stipulated.

3. Mandatory for every PC or Notebook to have OpenOffice.org that has been stipulated.

4. Every MAMPU citizen need to own OpenOffice.org to support prevalent usage of OpenOffice.org.

5. Before 1 April 2008, every user need to complete back-up of MS Office documents.

6. From 1 April 2008, new documents need to be produced using OpenOffice.org and templates that have been stipulated.

7. From 1 July 2008, MS Office software will be uninstalled from every PC and notebook.

Released on 19 March 2008

--- End of Page 1 ---

--- Page 2, originally Mengapa Bertukar Kepada OpenOffice.org (in Malay) ---

Increased Interoperability, reduced costs and vendor lock-in, and increased growth of knowledge-based society are among the compelling reasons for moving in this direction.

Dato' Normah Binti Md yusuof
Director General MAMPU
Prime Minister's Department
December 2007

WHY CHANGE TO
OPEN OFFICE.ORG?

1. Saves software licensing cost

2. Prevents supplier lock-in situations

2. Increases compatibility and interoperability

4. Stimulates growth of local ICT industry

5. Aligned with Malaysian Public Sector OSS Master Plan

--- End of Page 2 ---

I'm at USM (Universiti Sains Malaysia) in Penang, Malaysia today and noticed the toilets for the disabled are labeled as for "orang kelainan upaya" (literally: persons with different abilities) instead of "orang kurang upaya" (persons with disabilities) which is the usual terminology. The Vice Chancellor of USM said, "This ["disabled"] designation is not only unfortunate but inaccurate. The reason is plain enough: the so-called "disabled" person is only perceived as such by those who regard themselves as "abled" in appearance, not necessarily substance."

Does OOXML meet the accessibility needs of "persons with different abilities"? The ODF Alliance posted an Issue Brief, ODF's Benchmark for Accessibility that discusses these questions.

Excerpts:

"There are "grave issues with respect to the accessibility of Office Open XML as a format and potential standard that should prclude its adoption at present," according to Jutta Treviranus, Director of the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, and Dr. Stephen A. Hockema, faculty member of Information Studies at the University of Toronto, who authored a paper, "Accessibility Issues with Open XML" Many National Bodies, including Canada and New Zealand, noter the OOXML deficiencies with regard to accessibilty that need to be resolved before OOXML can be approves as an international standard."

"Governments should demand that digital documents be accessible to all. A  comprehensive accessibility analysis of OOXML by industry is needed. Until completed and shortcomings addressed, OOXML remains an “inaccessible document format and not suitable for international standardization nor widespread adoption.”"

Is OOXML diff-abled or disabled?

Talk about retaining and opening documents for posterity, the ODF Alliance highlights Microsoft's Service Pack 3 cutting off old file formats from being opened!

Excerpts:

"That means users – citizens, government employees, small business owners, etc. – will not be able to open their own documents saved in file formats used by Corel (Wordperfect), Lotus, and most versions of MS Office products before 2000."

"If any large-scale document conversion is in your future, as the result of this recent Microsoft file “block,” governments would be well advised to consider moving to ODF. With ODF, users get multi-vendor support, flexibility and longevity rather than one vendor's dubious history, documented here, of unstable “legacy” support. The ODF Alliance advises governments to demand choice – not of standards – but of the products that support open standards for file formats. Without choice of products, long term document access may be in jeopardy."

Read the full 2-page document, Microsoft Cuts Off Access To Old Documents: What happened and why open formats matter!

Erwin Terhumberg just did this excellent post about dispelling myths around ODF. Check it out at http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/dispelling_myths_around_odf

If you haven't heard already, ODF is a National Standard in South Korea for a couple of months now. See the news linked below (also transcribed) -- Ditesh, urr... would you be able to translate to English?

[Update 14 Nov 2007: I just appended the English translation after the piece in Korean below. Thanks to YH Woo for the translation.]

The proposal for ODF to be accepted as a Malaysian Standard by SIRIM, Department of Standards Malaysia and ultimately the Minister of Science, Technology & Innovation is dormant for more than a year now. Four months after the Malaysian proposal went to sleep, Italy made ODF a National Standard. Eight months after that, Korea has followed suit. With this Korean news, perhaps the Malaysian proposal will be awakened.

The Korean news (thanks to my colleague ,YH Woo):

http://www.dt.co.kr/contents.html?article_no=2007082802010760600004

ODF `오피스 문서` KS로 제정
국내 유일…공공기관 등 문서표준 채택 영향 미칠 듯

개방형 프로세스로 개발
작년 5월 ISO 표준 채택

오픈 도큐먼트 포맷(ODF)이 국내 오피스 문서 형식 KS로 제정됐다.

기술표준원은 개방형 표준 문서 형식인 `오픈 도큐먼트 포맷(ODF)'을 한국산업규격(KS)으로 제정했다고 27일 밝혔다.

워드프로세서, 스프레드시트, 프레젠테이션 등 오피스 애플리케이션의 문서 형식에 대해 KS가 제정된 것은 이번이 처음으로, 이번 KS 제정에 따라 ODF는 국가 표준의 지위를 갖게 됐다.

KS가 강제 준수사항이 아니기 때문에 KS로 제정됐다고 해서 사용자가 이를 지켜야 할 의무는 없지만, 오피스 문서 형식 분야의 유일한 KS라는 상징성으로 인해 향후 정부 공공기관 등에서 사용할 문서 표준을 채택할 때 영향을 줄 수 있다는 점에서 의미가 적지 않다는 것이 전문가들의 시각이다.

확장성표기언어(XML)를 기반으로 한 ODF는 문서의 콘텐츠가 특정 애플리케이션이나 벤더의 파일형식으로부터 독립되는 것을 목표로 삼고 있다. 이에 따라 전 세계 사용자 커뮤니티로부터 의견을 수렴해 개방적이고 투명한 표준화 프로세스를 통해 개발되고 있는 것이 특징으로, 지난해 5월 국제 표준화 기구인 ISO로부터 파일 형식 표준으로 정식 승인을 받아 위상이 크게 강화됐다.

당시 한국을 비롯해 투표권을 가진 23개 회원국이 모두 찬성표를 던져 아무 이견 없이 ISO 표준으로 채택됐다.

기술표준원 관계자는 "ODF는 여러 벤더가 참여하는 개방 정신을 구현하면서 특정 벤더에 종속되지 않는다는 점에서 이견 없이 ISO 표준으로 채택됐으며, 이번에 KS로 제정된 것도 ODF의 이같은 특징이 크게 작용했다"고 말했다.

강동식기자 dskang@

[English translation below:]

My article on All for open standards was published in the Tech&U section of the New Straits Times newspaper yesterday (22 October 2007).

Not too long a writeup, so check it out by clicking on the image on the left to view its full size. See what you think of the article.

The only inaccurate part of the article is my pic -- should have sent them an updated one with my now shaved hairdo....

:-)

[Update 29 October 2007: Full text of article transcribed below.]

This is a cut and paste of Sun Microsystems Malte Timmermann's blog. This plug in is a must have for MS Office users who believe in Open Standards but are locked in for what ever reasons ;-)

Mansur

http://blogs.sun.com/malte/entry/sun_odf_plugin_1_1

Sun ODF Plugin 1.1 for Microsoft Office available now!

The newest version of our ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office is available, you can find it here.

We have fixed the installation problem that occurred on some systems, and have made many improvements to the filters.

The biggest difference compared to 1.0 is that we have support for different languages now!

It's still just one package to download and install, but the Plugin will detect the languages from your MS Office and your Windows installation. When support for that language is available, the Plugin UI within MS Office will use you current MS Office language, while the menus and dialogs in the system tray use the language from your operating system. If your language is not supported, the fall back is English.

There was a press release about Netherlands adopting ODF. Here is the English translation of the press release:

Obligatory use of open standards by the government

17/09/2007 Press release subject: ICT policy

The government has to use open standards software from April 2008. This will increase the openness and accessibility of the government for the public, decrease the dependency from ICT-suppliers and it will give innovation more chance to take place.

This is a plan posed by the Deputy Minister of Economics, Heemskerk, which he sent to the parliament on Monday 17^th of September 2007. The Deputy Minister of Domestic Affairs, Bijleveld, also supports this plan. On the very same day he gave a speech on the conference ‘Grenzeloos samenwerken’ (cooperation without borders) to further outline his plans.

Through open standards and the use of open source software, the dependency from ICT-suppliers will be decreased. Furthermore, more opportunities will be created for designers of this type of software. In addition, the exchange of information between citizens and the governments will become easier.

From April 2008 on, government entities have to consider software with open standards if they purchase or modernise their software. Only in exceptional cases, for example when operations are endangered, proprietary software can be considered.

From the 1^st of January 2009, all government departments need to have a strategy for the use and purchasing of open source software. According to the deputy minister it is good that politicians are looking into the ICT policy since it is not only a technological tool but also an important part of modern Dutch society.

Open source software is software of which the source code is freely accessible. A well-known example is the operating system Linux. The main features of open standards is that everybody can use it without paying for a license.

My only comment on this would be for those in Netherlands championing this initiative to look out for Comptia and other allegedly neutral vendor organizations who would probably have already started lobbying against such initiatives in the dubious interest of maintaining technology neutrality (in layman's terms, "technology neutrality" would basically mean to  "maintain the status quo of using proprietary software from a software vendor found guilty in the US and the EU of abusing its market monopoly").

Fresh off the heels of IBM's last week's announcement of joining the OpenOffice.org open-source community (e.g. see this link), now comes IBM Lotus Symphony, a suite of free desktop software for word processing, presentations and spreadsheets based on ODF. Lotus Symphony supports Microsoft Office and can export content in PDF format, too.

See the news article on this from The New York Times here, and IBM's press release here. I am now downloading it from here and will compare it with OpenOffice.org and the previous IBM Workplace.

Via Erwin Tenhumberg's blog, the Netherlands just decided to adopt ODF:

"Thus, ODF will be introduced step by step for reading, writing, exchanging and publishing document, and by 2009 all ministries should support ODF."

Ditesh, translate this (web page in Dutch that has the information).

Update 19 September 2007: Click here for the translation -- thanks much to Ditesh and Linda for the effort.

This is a long delayed post on Doug Mahugh's (Technical Evangelist, Microsoft US)  talk on OOXML at TechEd SEA 2007. Yoon Kit has already written a post on it, this post covers my perspectives on Doug's talk.

Well, to start off, we were almost late for his talk. Not because of tardiness of our part, but rather because I insisted we go collect Yoon Kit's bag from the Handout counter. But no matter, it seemed that we didn't miss anything because as we sat down, Doug had just started.

Doug spoke about XML being a 10 year evolution and observed that with 6,000 pages, everybody agrees that OOXML is a big topic. He then gave a 20,000 feet birds-eye visual overview of the entire spec and explained the individual sections in the specification. The meat, according to Doug, is in Part 4 (Language Reference) which in itself is 5,000 pages according to Doug. He quipped that "Nobody would sit down and read it, a statement that raised a number of eyebrows in the room. The remark did seem to be a non-sequitur. After all, how does one implement a specification without reading exactly how the specification is to be implemented?

Doug went on to describe the WordML and SpreadsheetML architectures. He is a most excellent presentator and I truly enjoyed his description of the OOXML specification. The examples he gave were fairly instructive but I must say that a few people did get lost (I saw one guy give his colleague a bewildered look) because Doug's talk required some basic understanding of the structure of document formats.

On one point, he mentioned that independent implementations of OOXML would differ from Microsoft Office 2007's implementation of OOXML because of "arbitrary details of (Microsoft) Word's implementation". He showed an example document from Microsoft Word which had a "Word" folder and he indicated that the folder contains data that Word always writes. Given there is no independent reference implementation of OOXML to date and that Microsoft Office 2007 would be used by most people as a reference implementation, one wonders if this would lead to a splurge of OOXML documents requiring the use of the "Word" folder as an unfortunate necessary dependency.

Doug went to speak about SpreadsheetML and outlined four optimization goals of OOXML's spreadsheet approach:

• small tag size
• shared strings
• shared formulas
• sparse markup

He mentioned that each of these bullet points represents a specific method of speeding up loading spreadsheet documents. While the focus in speed is clearly necessary, I would only be convinced if Doug would provide publically available code that actually demonstrates speedups in non-trivial spreadsheets.

Doug also spoke on PresentationML and gave some examples. He noted that VML and DrawingML were two methods of representating shapes but gave no good reason for the reason VML was in the specification when DrawingML would clearly get the job done. Well, he did say it's "very simple to use VML" in passing, but given the feedback technical observers have made on this apparently unnecessary duality, one would have imagined he would have spoken on it.

Doug then showed an interoperability demo (running on Tomcat/Linux in the backend) where some OOXML documents were manipulated by a backend engine. This wasn't particularly impressive, at least to me, given that I had actually written an extensive document manipulation engine for the document standard which would eventually become ODF 3 years back. As one can imagine, trivial document manipulation is easy - real interoperability, however, requires extensive tests running on nontrivial real world documents and use cases.

Doug also presented the MindManager Map interoperatibility demo, which actually did not work the first time around. I was particularly concerned when Doug showed DOCM and indicated that macros are not necessary for interoperability. Sorry Doug but given the extensive use of macros in today's documents, I really beg to differ on this point.

Doug outlined some developer tools for OOXML on various platforms:

• Available .NET libraries
• Microsoft OOXML SDK is provided. The SDK, unfortunately, is .NET based which means that developers are forced to use C#. I wrote previously on this blog that Microsoft's focus on building interoperable tools seems to only focus on the Microsoft stack. Guess I wasn't wrong on that one.
• Package Explorer (only on Microsoft Windows)
• Altova XMLSPy (only on Microsoft Windows)
• File convertors (only on Microsoft Windows) to convert OOXML backwards to binary formats
• and several other generic XML processing tools for Linux and the Mac

In response to a query by an audience member, he mentioned that OOXML allows for document software to use custom defined encryption algorithm as OOXML "does not specify encryption algorithms". Does that mean document readers need to implement all known encyrption algorithms, no matter how flawed the algorithms may be, to be able to correctly read OOXML documents? Does that mean document creation software can use patented encryption algorithms? How does that pass for an open standard? In this day and age where encryption algorithms are vetted and standardized by expert bodies, it seems a backwards move to not explicitly specify acceptable encryption algorithms. Not to mention that this design choice would raise implementation costs and efforts by third party vendors.

Well, time was running short and the session had to be wrapped up. We later had the opportunity to ask him some questions directly:

• On ODF vs OOXML: Doug mentioned that ODF was an "elegant" document format.

• On what happened at ISO: Doug was frank and said that the current ISO processes are not really suitable when the proposed standard is contentious and when there are substantial commercial incentives behind OOXML and ODF.

• On what will happen after the ISO Ballot Resolution Meeting: Doug has no idea. But he mentioned Microsoft will continue extending the OOXML specification. Oh, wait a minute. Isn't OOXML an Ecma standard and no longer in the control of Microsoft?

• On whether OOXML is in the control of Microsoft: Doug looked like deer caught in headlights of an oncoming truck. Then he grinned and said "Freudian slip".

That's as good an ending as we could have expected :)