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.

Pic: On flag off day, 27 May 2008, Adnan Osman with Dato' Dr Low, Commander-in-Chief of St. John Ambulance Malaysia

My uncle, Pak Nan (Adnan Osman) is 65 years old. He's cycling all 9,000 km from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China! This will take him 2 months, from Malaysia through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and into China for the summer Olympics.

Datuk Johan Jaaffar first highlighted Adnan's quest in the New Straits Times early this month. Datuk Johan said a duo will be cycling to Beijing, but no, when I called Pak Nan last weekend to wish him well, he said he and his partner will cycle to the Malaysia-Thailand border town of Bukit Kayu Hitam; from then on he will ride alone!

You can read updates on his adventure at his own blog: http://oadnanxtreme.blogspot.com -- please post your comments there and lend your support!

Update 1 June 2008: Join the Facebook Group: Adnan Osman Cycling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing

God, and all people meeting him in Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and China, please take care of Adnan Osman. When I was 21, I cycled from KL to Langkawi. That was not even 1,000km. But my uncle is making history. It's arduous, but I know he will make it. Safe journey, Pak Nan.

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.

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.”

Tersebutlah al-kisah si botak yang bernama Tak Mahu. Dalam satu drama di pagi Jumaat. Drama minggu ini.

Tak Mahu yang tak malu. Kita orang Melayu ada adab. Tapi takkanlah Tak Mahu faham adat atau adab Melayu. Kita kalau tak diundang malu nak hadir. Tapi Tak Mahu tak malu. Tak diundang pun masuk jugalah rumah orang!

Congratulations, India!

Full text from tech2 at time of this posting:

Breaking News: India's Final Vote On MS Office File Standard Is 'NO'
By: Abhimanyu Radhakrishnan   |   Mar 20,2008

News has just come in that the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), has made a final decision on the document file format OXML (Open eXtended Markup Language). Sources tell tech2.com that with 13 Against, 1 Abstain and 5 For, the technical committee entrusted with deciding whether Microsoft-backed OXML format will be accepted, has stuck by its earlier decision. The "Yes" votes came from industry body NASSCOM, Microsoft itself and Indian software giants Infosys, TCS and Wipro.   

Thus ODF (Open Document Format) backed by IBM, Sun, Red Hat and Google among others will continue to be the only "standard" file format as far as India is concerned. The ODF alliance has been at the forefront of the campaign to deny OXML similar status alleging that it's not truly "open".

Dr. G. Nagarjuna of the Free Software Foundation of India, told tech2.com that "a standard that developers cannot independently decode and re-implement without an MoU with the vendor cannot be called open." He said he was satisfied at the outcome of the vote.

The BIS is a P-member at the International Standards Organization (ISO) and thus its vote is important in a global context as well.

According to Wikipedia :

For the measure to pass, 2/3rds of "P" members (participating, as opposed to "O" members: observing) must approve and less than 1/4 of all voting national members must disapprove. The balloting shows 53% approval by "P" members and 26% disapproval from the total votes.

The BIS had earlier voted "No with comments" in a five-month long global ballot that ended in September 2007. Since OXML got only 53% approvals (less than 2/3 rds) and 26% disapprovals (more than 1/4th), the process went into a Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) in Geneva in late February where, according to Economic Times, four Indian representatives were expected to attend. All members who voted "No" had a one month long period after this BRM to change their vote.

It is alleged that hectic lobbying took place this past month, with both sides putting immense pressure on the BIS. Although India's stand is now clear, a few more naysayers changing their mind could still swing the vote in Microsoft's favor at the ISO within the month.

Although this doesn't mean that you have to stop saving files in MS-Office immediately, the ramifications are fairly large in the e-governance space. The Union Budget 2008 allocated Rs. 1,680 crores towards e-governance including ambitious plans for State Data Centers and the technical committee advising the government is expected to push for usage of open standards in all its projects.

We're awaiting comments from all the players and will keep updating as they come in!

UPDATE 1:

Microsoft has issued a statement: Excerpts:

While we are disappointed with the decision of the BIS LITD 15 committee, we are very encouraged by the support of IT industry players like NASSCOM, TCS, Wipro and Infosys who voted in favor of Open XML becoming an ISO standard.

The concerns raised by the LITD 15 Committee have been addressed by the ISO and Ecma International (the proposer of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 Office Open XML) with a majority of the comments getting addressed at the recently concluded Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) at Geneva. We hoped that 98.73% of the total 1027 comments from all National Bodies stood resolved at the BRM would be welcomed by the BIS, as it has been by the National Bodies of numerous countrie

Saturday's General Elections in Malaysia had voters swing heavily to the opposition. I had expected the opposition to win more seats than in 2004, but the size of the wins (some call "tsunami") went beyond my expectation, and from what I read beyond the opposition's expectation, let alone the ruling coalition's. See "BN Retains Power With Reduced Majority, Loses Four More States."

I had seen the news and commentaries on the Internet about views on the state of the nation which were not in the mainstream media. I had not thought that the alternative media would have much impact on the General Elections, especially because some of the alternative views were extreme and polarized. At least I thought the impact would be greater in future General Elections when access to the Internet would be more widespread than the mostly urban access now. I was right and wrong. I now think that technology (especially Internet blogging, YouTube and SMS) did contribute significantly this time already!

Of course, information dissemination and election campaigning using other means, and a host of other factors have played their parts in the result of the elections (for example the world view of Kelantan people is unique, so they keep the ruling PAS party for reasons that are different from other states).

Kuala Lumpur had 10 out of 11 federal parliament seats swung to the opposition. Penang had 11 out of 13 parliamentary seats to opposition and 29 out of 40 state seats (creating more than 2/3 majority to form a new state government). The Internet must have had an impact in KL and Penang! Also the major towns and cities in Selangor state, for example Petaling Jaya (Selangor, too, will have a new state government after the opposition won 36/56 seats).

I cannot conclude that the Internet played the major factor, but the Internet did reveal a few sensational issues, as in the report by Reuters entitled "Malaysia opposition win shows power of cyberspace", giving examples of 2 bloggers who actually won elections seats.

These major urban areas did matter in the final tally that combines with rural areas, to deny the ruling National Front coalition 2/3 majority at federal level and to have the opposition gain the states of Penang, Kedah, Perak and Selangor, in addition to Kelantan.

The trend of technology, especially Internet blogging having impact on the Malaysian scene cannot be underestimated.

FSFE (Free Software Foundation Europe) just published this paper -- Interoperability woes with MS-OOXML: Unspecified binary content, Lack of conformance clause, Legal uncertainty that "highlights three examples of how the proposed specification and its practical implementation in MS Office 2007 hinders interoperability, fosters vendor dependence and results in market distortion."

Excerpt (last paragraph in the Conclusion section):

In our view there is only one reasonable response by national bodies: move DIS29500 out of the FastTrack process by voting "DISAPPROVE, with comments" and suggest methods of handling the proposed specification through the normal ISO process, ideally by convergence into ISO/IEC 26300, the Open Document Format (ODF).

[ Update at 01:42 PM on 05 March 2008:

• Groklaw's commentary on this press release is at: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080304063417316

• <NO> OOXML website included this press release in their post on "More reports from the BRM" found at: http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-44713/more-reports-from-the-brm ]

[ Update at 10:26 AM on 07 March 2008: ZDNet Asia covered the release and entitled it "Malaysia comes down hard on OOXML bid" at: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62038603,00.htm ]

Originally found at http://www.standardsmalaysia.gov.my/press%20release%204%20March%202008.pdf,
Malaysia's Department of Standards (Standards Malaysia) issued the following statement about last week's  Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva.

------------

4 MARCH 2008

PRESS RELEASE

Malaysian delegation at the ISO meeting in Geneva (25 – 29 Feb ’08) finds the technical issues in the draft standard OOXML unresolved satisfactorily

Cyberjaya, 4 March 2008 - Malaysia's Department of Standards (STANDARDS MALAYSIA) recently found the Draft ISO standard, ISO/IEC DIS 29500: Office Open XML (OOXML) specification for electronic document formats, had the majority of its technical issues still not addressed satisfactorily.

STANDARDS MALAYSIA sent a delegation to attend the "Ballot Resolution Meeting" (BRM) in Geneva, Switzerland where they deliberated on OOXML submitted by Ecma International, a standards setting organization.

Malaysia voted to 'Disapprove' by default on Ecma's dispositions due to the quality of their technical responses during the week. Malaysia approved on certain resolutions, which were found appropriate and discussed during the BRM, but this was by far in the minority. There have been structural changes and important contributions to the Draft by other National Bodies which alter the Draft significantly. Malaysia will review these changes before making a decision on its final vote by end March 2008.

Puan Fadilah Baharin, Director General of STANDARDS MALAYSIA who was in Geneva to oversee the Malaysian delegates said, "The Malaysian delegation actively participated in the BRM, including making good technical suggestions on how to improve the proposed standard. We were impressed with the commitment and professionalism shown by all the technical experts represented by the various National Bodies."

The original specification had more than 6,000 pages, an unprecedented volume in ISO for the Fast Track process.

At a previous stage of the process, after a 5-month ballot period ending on 2 September 2007, the drafted ISO standard failed to get the required vote from participating countries, failing 2 of the 3 criteria for approval. This process also resulted in more than 1,000 unique comments from the countries.

On 14 January 2008, Ecma International provided proposed dispositions to these comments which were discussed at the BRM.

The meeting was scheduled for 5 days from 25 to 29 February in accordance to ISO/IEC "Fast Track" rules. The time of deliberation is fixed and will not be adjusted according to the volume of comments. This is the limitation imposed due to the Fast Track process.

"Malaysia had submitted 23 comments and more than 70% of them were not addressed satisfactorily by Ecma's proposed dispositions. We intended to resolve these technical issues at the BRM, but we could only raise 2 concerns due to the time constraints imposed," Fadilah said.

After 3 days, it was apparent that there would be no time to review all the items within the remaining 2 days on all substantial concerns against the Ecma standard. The 32 National Bodies, including Malaysia, were then requested to submit a vote on all the items which were not discussed at the BRM and told to vote on Ecma's remaining dispositions to 'Approve,' 'Disapprove' or 'Abstain.'

"Malaysia decided to vote 'Disapprove' to these undiscussed issues," Fadilah elaborated, "The limitation of the BRM process clearly showed that such a task of approving this draft standard does not fit in the Fast Track process employed by Ecma International. Malaysia and other country delegations worked very hard which extended into evenings after the BRM sessions. All the technical experts from diverse backgrounds, including from Microsoft, the original proposer of the Draft, put their heads together to fix the specification. Malaysia approved the counter proposals by many National Bodies which were discussed during the BRM. Unfortunately there were just far too many to fix within the given time."

Last year, many countries raised concerns against the appropriateness of the voluminous OOXML draft standard submitted by the Ecma International to ISO for a Fast Track process. To date, our observation to these concerns have yet to be addressed better after the BRM. Malaysia’s concern is currently being shared greatly by many other National Bodies from Asia including India, China and Korea; as well as from the US and Canada.

The process now entails discussion within the 87 'P' and 'O' countries who first voted on 2 September 2007, for them to evaluate the instructions from the BRM and return to ISO a final vote whether to approve OOXML as an ISO standard, by 30 March 2008.

STANDARDS MALAYSIA will convene a SIRIM Technical Committee meeting soon to decide Malaysia's final vote on the quality of OOXML as an ISO/IEC standard.

------------

Originally found at http://www.odfalliance.org/press/Release20080303.pdf, here is the statement from the ODF Alliance on last week's OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) in Geneva.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Kathryn Brownlee, Rational PR, 202-429-1833,
                     kathrynbrownlee@rationalpr.com
                    Marino Marcich, ODF Alliance, 202-789-4450,
                     mmarcich@odfalliance.org

BRM Concludes With Myriad Undiscussed Problems for OOXML

Washington, DC, March 3, 2008. At the conclusion of the Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) concerning Microsoft's Office Open XML's (OOXML), Marino Marcich, Managing Director of the ODF Alliance, issued the following statement:

“The ODF Alliance commends the spirit of cooperation that prevailed among the participants from the national delegations. Despite the hard work by the many national standards bodies and ISO/IEC, the results fell far short of fixing the most important errors and omissions in OOXML. More than 80 percent of the comments from national bodies were not discussed. It has again been demonstrated that the standardization of OOXML in a fast-track process was entirely inappropriate."

With the major unresolved problems highlighted below, the BRM reinforced the outcome of the initial ballot, in which OOXML failed to achieve sufficient votes from national standards bodies during the ballot period that ended on September 2, 2007.

• Many critical problems identified by national bodies were not discussed or resolved during the BRM. The revised DIS 29500 that will emerge from the BRM failed to address numerous fundamental concerns by national bodies when they rejected OOXML during the first round of balloting on September 2, 2007.

• Intellectual property rights issues were left completely out of the BRM process. Resolution of well-founded intellectual property rights concerns are critical to the IT industry and governments and are legitimate issues for national bodies to consider as a group. Microsoft has a patent promise, the Open Specification Promise (OSP) and a Covenant Not to Sue relating to OOXML, but developers and competitors who want to implement OOXML with confidence that they are not infringing on any intellectual property rights should be mindful that the coverage has serious gaps. There are also serious issues with respect to the accessibility of Office Open XML as a format.

• Ecma and Microsoft bear responsibility for the fact that only a small fraction of the problems identified by national bodies were actually discussed during the BRM. Of the 3,522 comments submitted by national bodies, reduced to approximately 1,100 on the BRM agenda, only approximately 200 were actually discussed and resolutions agreed. This is not the fault of national standards bodies, who cannot reasonably be expected to analyze a 6,000 page specification, 3,522 comments, and 2,300 pages of proposed resolutions from Ecma. Ecma and Microsoft chose "fast track" when the usual and more appropriate ISO approval process was available to them for a specification of this enormity. National bodies attempted to raise these concerns at the BRM and were told they were out of order and regardless there is no other option. In fact, there is no proscribed limit to how long a BRM can take place, and other ISO/IEC standards have taken considerably longer than five days to conduct a BRM.

• Maintenance of OOXML is not sufficiently resolved to be approved as an ISO standard. The maintenance regime for OOXML (should it become an ISO Standard) is of critical importance, but it has yet to be determined. Ecma put forward a maintenance proposal (see http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0885.pdf) but the issue was put on hold until the next meeting of JTC 1 SC 34 in April, 2008, after the close of the OOXML ballot reconsideration period.

• A path is available for national bodies to ensure that Microsoft and Ecma make good on their recent promises. Microsoft has made promises at the BRM and most recently with what was described as a "major announcement" regarding interoperability principles. Only by voting "disapprove" will national bodies ensure that Microsoft will not simply pocket the ISO seal of approval and fail to deliver on these promises, among them implementing DIS 29500 in its own products. A vote to “disapprove” need not be the NBs final say on OOXML because Ecma and Microsoft will still have available the usual ISO approval procedure instead of the “fast-track” which is appropriately reserved for ripe standards – widespread implementation and use (e.g., PDF). The “fast track” option is not appropriate for a specification that was proposed for standardization before it was shipped in a single software product.

"The inability to address all the concerns underscores that OOXML should be rejected by national standards bodies," concluded Marcich. "Ecma and Microsoft should seek technical harmonization with the OpenDocument Format, already an ISO standard. Alternatively, they can pursue the usual ISO approval procedure instead of the 'fast-track' which is appropriately reserved for mature standards of reasonable scope and size."

The OpenDocument Format Alliance is an organization of governments, academic institutions, non-government organizations and industry dedicated to educating policy makers, IT administrators and the public on the benefits and opportunities of ODF.

# # #

The <NO> OOXML website published the following post several hours ago (full text):

BRM in Geneva is over: big failure for OOXML

Summary:
The BRM in Geneva is over and, predictably, it failed to reach any consensus on support for OOXML.

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!

If there are awards to be given to categories of worst dispositions provided by Ecma in response to comments by National Bodies for the OOXML balotting on 2 September 2007, then the ODF Alliance's list of top 10 (plus 1 bonus!) is a good one. The categories are:

10. Worst Ignored Request
9. Worst non-Answer
8. Worst use of XML
7. Worst Introduction of Security Holes
6. Worst 'Back Door' Tactic
5. Worst 'Baby and Bathwater' (part of a popular US phrase that means throwing away the good with the bad)
4. Worst Standardizing of a Microsoft Bug
3. Worst 'Most ways to Skin a Cat' Answer
2. Worst Dueling Answers
1. Worst Case for spending days of my life reading through these answers

But wait, there's a Bonus Worst ...:

Worst 'We'll Get to it Later'

Read the document at this link.

Countries should vote "No" to OOXML as an ISO standard. In the coming round after a Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) on 25-29 February 2008 that discusses the draft proposals by Ecma to address comments raised by country National Bodies (NBs) on 2 September 2007, countries are to vote again, changing their vote from the previous round if necessary. Countries should vote "No" this time.

As seen from the ODF Alliance document just released called "Ecma's Proposed Disposition of Comments on OOXML: How we got here; What is missing; Why you should vote No," there are at least 8 reasons why Ecma's proposed "dispositions" or handling of the NB comments are not satisfactory:

A. What is Missing? Time. Legitimate defects acknowledged by Ecma, why rush?

B. What is Missing? Harmonization. Why not move toward one standard?

C. What is Missing? A Clear Name. Why deny obvious confusion?

D. What is Missing? A technically sound standard. Why introduce new errors?

E. What is Missing? Interoperability. Why ignore re-use of proven standards?

F. What is Missing? Support for legacy documents. Why deprecate in Version 1?

G. What is Missing? Consistency of Fixes. Why does a disposition of a comment made to one National Body contradict one shared with another National Body?

Have a read.

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.]

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.

Marc O'Brien of Projity sent this email:

Hello everyone,

I just read your latest ODF newsletter.... Projity has come to the open source party with our announcement at LinuxWorld.  We announced OpenProj, a complete free and open source replacement of Microsoft Project.  Project is part of the Office family of solutions and has been a key strategic solution for Microsoft without any alternatives...... OpenProj has been downloaded an average of every 23 seconds around the clock since we launched and are already in the Top 10 applications in Sourceforge.  We are hitting 100,000 downloads in our first full month... on our way to 7-11 million users :-)

OpenProj is free and open source software that is a complete replacement for Microsoft Project. OpenProj has equivalent functionality, opens native Microsoft Project files and is available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows.  Microsoft Project resides on 7% of all Office desktops and is part of the Office family of solutions (retail is $1,000 or to be precise $999.99).   However, Project is not included in any Office Suites so it is not pre-installed on any computers which means even Windows users need to purchase very expensive software for their project needs.  OpenProj is free and also cross platform.  It is interesting that Microsoft's market far exceeds $1billion a year and drives their other business software solutions as it is by far their most popular business program.

The leaders in the marketplace have clearly identified the problem without an alternative to Project.  This is now resolved with the OpenProj release which is why this is so important.  We are already eating into their business and expect 100,000 downloads at some point in September.  In addition, there are roughly 100 million OpenOffice users worldwide and an enormous additional market worldwide. We expect the 7% ratio to actually increase since there are no budgetary constraints.  This puts OpenProj usage in a very large pool of users.......    I have pasted a couple of articles below.  We have English, French and Spanish versions and will have additional languages shortly.  You can see the French screenshot in the attached photo.  If you want to download OpenProj feel free (download here).   

All best and hopefully we can get some coverage in your markets,

Marc

Here is a nice article out last week that really speaks to the impact Projity is having on Microsoft.  The link is here ... here is an excerpt.

"It’s not often I get to review a product that seems to have no downside. I sometimes feel I should say something negative just to show I’m neutral and balanced. But honestly, with OpenProj, I’m struggling to say anything bad about it. What Projity has done is astonishing. Well done guys."

Hasan's comment: I haven't downloaded and used OpenProj yet -- those who have, please let us know what you think.