Summary: Leaked documents from the UK reveal the role Microsoft played in derailing standards in the United Kingdom

THE thugs from Microsoft are waging imperialist wars again. They do this via mercenaries of sorts — front groups that pretend to be “local”.

“So MS got the UK Cabinet office to use a broken definition of Open Standard,” says iophk. “Strange that the office was so malleable.”

Herein we see standards getting replaced by Microsoft “interop” nonsense, just like Novell-type deals with their new propaganda. The sheer abuses (including bribery) Microsoft used for OOXML were covered here closely. Rather than recall them now we’ll just say with conviction that Microsoft is a criminal company, as evidenced around 2007 and 2008 when Microsoft attacked international standards bodies, many professionals (those whom Microsoft did not manage to bribe), etc.

“MS has been pushing RAND for more than a few years now,” iophk explains. As we showed in prior years, Microsoft is using the BSA and other front groups to achieve this.

Here too we have a new report which shows what Microsoft has just done (based on a leak):

The British government withdrew its open standards policy after lobbying from Microsoft, it has been revealed in a Cabinet Office brief leaked to Computer Weekly.

The Department of Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) also formerly opposed the policy before Cabinet Office withdrew it. BIS supported Microsoft’s position against open standards, the backbone of the government’s ICT policy. The Business Software Alliance, infamous for its lobbying against open standards policy in Brussels, also lobbied against the government policy.

Microsoft took up direct opposition to the ICT Strategy’s pledge to give preference to technologies that supported open standards of interoperability between government computer systems, said the briefing paper.

The software supplier was concerned this would prevent companies from claiming royalties on the point of exchange between those systems.

It complained specifically about the wording of UK procurement policy, which in January 2011 established a definition to explain its edict that open standards should be used in government computing wherever possible. UK policy specified that “[open standards] must have intellectual property made irrevocably available on a royalty free basis”.

Microsoft said it supported the aims of UK open standards policy – specifically that government systems should be interoperable, that it should be possible for government to re-use purchased software components, and that government should not be “locked-in” to using particular technologies.

[...]

Microsoft refused to talk to Computer Weekly about its consultation with the Cabinet Office.

It said in a written statement: “Microsoft fully supports the Government’s ICT strategy and its goals of reducing cost and complexity, and increasing information sharing, interoperability, openness and re-use.”

The BSA said in a written statement it also supported government’s policy aims.

“However,” it said, “reducing public procurement expenses in the UK does not require the adoption of a policy which undermines the value of Intellectual Property and Innovation.”

Cabinet Office said in a written statement: “No lobbying has taken place that has affected our approach in creating an Open Standards definition that works for government.”

BIS also refused to discuss its differences with Cabinet Office. It said in a written statement: “Discussions are still ongoing between the departments with many options being considered.”

Glyn Moody was filled with fury over this. He wrote:

Although I am not surprised by this revelation, I remain incredibly angry about it – and I think everyone who cares about computing in this country should be too. It confirms that the UK government’s fine words about supporting open source and open standard are truly the typical and cynical political sweet-talking before you are stabbed in the back at the behest of lobbyists that wield so much power. No one should take anything the UK government says in this context seriously again.

What’s truly shocking about this episode is not that Microsoft has once again interfered with a sovereign nation’s decision to create a level playing-field – that’s just par for the course for the convicted monopolist. What’s really disgusting is that UK government has let them. This is a total scandal: anyone involved with this pathetic kowtowing to US business interests with any sense of decency would resign immediately. And those that don’t should be fired.

Free Software Magazine wrote, “look who’s behind it?”

It is at times like this I recall the Free Software Foundation’s opposition to the use of the term Open Source. Just as with “Open Standard” it is way to open to interpretation.

So once again the UK Government falls behind the pack in terms of freedom, transparency and accessibility for its citizens. This is not a party-political thing by the way – it’s a politician thing. In the UK there has been a backlash lately over the influence that the media (in particular the print media “barons”) has over government policy. Isn’t it about time the same spotlight was cast upon the influence that big business (many of them not British) have over government policy as well?

I find it saddening, disheartening and somewhat ironic that the one part of the software industry that is continuing to provide real innovation and progress is being locked out of Whitehall because of lobbying by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills!

Microsoft’s role in these situation is easy to see, even when Microsoft hides behind front groups. Over in a smaller country we find news about another FOSS-hostile government position:

A state which has been popular for using FOSS has now entered in a conditional pact where they ‘willingly’ chose to spend money on proprietary software despite the availability of free and open source alternatives.

Bribes come from proprietary software and overpriced goods. It should not be surprising that politicians turn their back on Free/Open Source software. █

Summary: Europe’s transition to Free/Open Source software is stifled by the existence of Microsoft’s fake ‘open’ format

THE SUBJECT of OOXML/ODF was covered here thoroughly in 2007 and 2008. We showed a great deal of lies, corruption, and cover-up.

Putting aside the corruption behind OOXML, the anticompetitive aspect of it returns to haunt Europe. Ryan says that “they should get rid of it and use ODF” and notes that the “Open Source Business Alliance” has created a new working group – “Office Interoperability.”

“Business Alliance,” notes Ryan, is similar to the BSA and many times before we explained that interoperability is just a weasel word used to marginalise open standards. “I smell Ballmer,” Ryan says, but the report is not so amusing. To quote:

IT authorities from Germany and Switzerland have announced that they are working together, under the auspices of the Open Source Business Alliance, to improve the way that LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org display and process OOXML-formatted documents. The authorities involved include the IT groups from the cities of Munich, Jena and Freiburg im Breisgau, the Swiss canton of Waadt, the Swiss Federal Court and the Schweizer Informatikstrategie Bund (Swiss IT Federation) whose representatives met at a workshop in Zurich in October to launch the “Precise reproduction of OOXML documents in Open Source Office applications” project. Slides for the workshop provide more details of what was discussed.

This was the purpose of OOXML all along — throwing users back into the same loop and the same lock-in/trap. █

Summary: Encouraging new signs in Australia (an OpenOffice.org pilot) amid a major blunder for Microsoft, whose dirty OOXML secrets are leaking out years after the acts

THE Cablegate stash has made available key evidence which we have covered a lot since the beginning of this month. The OOXML-related exhibits (cables) have gotten quite far by now, with articles that were written not just in English. The importance is this is that it brings back to international awareness the fact that OOXML relied on corruption at all levels. We most collected evidence to show this in 2007 and in 2008. Cablegate is like a wormhole that takes us back in time and lets us see back room string-pulling this will hopefully affect this AGIMO review of document standards in Australia. “Last month,” claims this new report, “Department of Defence chief technology officer Matt Yannopoulos revealed that 100 corporate staff had been using OpenOffice in a year-old, “semi-formal” trial.”

This is good news. They will hopefully realise that their initial leaning towards OOXML was a mistake also due to public awareness that OOXML correlates with crime, as once shown using a bar chart, just after a vote on OOXML (corrupt countries were more likely to vote “Yes”).

Cablegate posts will resume shortly. It’s just a matter of dedicating free time to the task. There is enough in there to last for a long time and have considerable impact. █

Summary: The impact of leaked diplomatic cables on current affairs and perceptions people have about companies, government, and elected officials

OVER the past day or two we have been receiving a record number of links to this site, mostly pointing to Cablegate posts. People from all over the world share with their friends what they previously suspected but could not prove.

One person from Brazil is pulling skeletons out of Microsoft’s closet and embarrassing the cowardly, supine government at the same time. Following some blog posts about American diplomats lobbying for OOXML (including our own post), we are notified about this very detailed post which provides further background to the leak from someone who was nearby:

Let me make clear here that I don’t believe that this meeting between Microsoft and the major representative from the American Government in Brazil has been a personal initiative of Mr. Michel Levy, but for me it was an corporative initiative. Even being a Microsoft employee, Mr. Michel Levy is a Brazilian, and I prefer not to believe that he has, on its own initiative, decided to start an initiative to put the American Government against the Brazilian Government, thus violating our sovereignty and our national technical merit.

The first question that I leave here is on how many other countries that voted NO to OpenXML the same kind of initiative also happened, and how much of these countries “have accepted” an eventual intervention by the U.S. government.

Yes, the intervention may have occurred, because if you notice the general line of argumentation used here in Brazil, the national technical decision is presented as being an initiative against the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), and one of the things that cause retaliation in free trade agreements with the United States are eventual IPR violations. I have my own collection of rumors from the times of OpenXML, where possible sanctions motivated by IPR violations were brought to the negotiation table to get the governmental votes in some countries (if your country has changed the vote after the voting in September 2007, please investigate and you will probably find a ‘key’ governmental role on that vote changing). Maybe one day, WikiLeaks could help us to investigate that too!

[...]

Finally, they try to insinuate that the ODF is an anti-American standard. I confess that I would like to know what IBM, Oracle, Google and Red Hat (and other North American companies) think about the that, since they work hard on the past years on its development and worldwide adoption. Actually I prefer that these companies explain directly to the American Government if the ODF is anti-American, and I still hope they ask clarification from the American Government about Microsoft’s similar initiatives in other countries during the 2007 and 2008 years.

For those who did not follow the whole story, the ODF was adopted in Brazil, OpenXML rejected here and just didn’t had a major role on the international scene, because we were silenced on the last day of the BRM, just when we would submit a proposal that could change the end of this history. I’ve already told this story here.

Special thanks to WikiLeaks, for helping us get the skeletons out of the closet. For those who want to understand how Microsoft deals and negotiates with governments that have pro-FLSOO policies, it’s worth reading this other cable here.

Well, now there is proof too.

Several days ago we found out what American government officials were saying about Neelie Kroes. We published this yesterday and Jan Wildeboer notes that there is plenty more where that came from. Sooner or later we shall get around to it. This promises to change the way Microsoft and its lobbying practices are widely perceived. █

Summary: Microsoft’s Michel Levy uses propaganda to daemonise a pro-ODF policy, insult the president’s pro-freedom policies, and pressure politicians to permit proprietary lock-in

IN THE YEARS 2007-2008 we spent a lot of time covering OOXML corruption. Microsoft had done in a few months the amount of misconduct most companies do not do throughout their entire existence. James Love has found this newly-release cable which shows lobbying for Microsoft in Brazil, at taxpayers’ expense and against the interests of taxpayers. Quoting Mr. Love:

Levy claimed to be in possession of unsigned letters from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (which is referred to as “Itamaraty” in the cable), to foreign governments, asking that they collaborate to support the open source ODF as the international standard. Of course, if this was true, it would not be surprising, since at the time, there was broad support among non-US governments, non-Microsoft software companies, consumer groups and free software advocates to push for ODF as an open standard for file formats.

The cable says that Microsoft was seeking confidential advice, rather than advocacy, from the Ambassador. Such advice was forthcoming: “Ambassador Sobel did offer advice on various SIPDIS approaches Microsoft could take in generating support for standards that would have room for both ODF and XML software.”

The subject of the original cable is “MICROSOFT SEES GOB ATTACKS AGAINST IPR” (GOB is Government of Brazil and IPR is a propaganda term for copyrights and patents). Here is the original Cablegate cable:

ZCZCXYZ0026
 OO RUEHWEB
DE RUEHSO #1001 3551359
 ZNY CCCCC ZZH (CCY ADDED CAPTION AD04181F2 MSI3697 508,
 O 211359Z DEC 07
 FM AMCONSUL SAO PAULO TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 7773
 INFO RUEHBR/AMEMBASSY BRASILIA IMMEDIATE 8916
 RUEAWJF/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHDC IMMEDIATE
 RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHDC IMMEDIATE
 RUCPDOC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
C O N F I D E N T I A L SAO PAULO 001001
 SIPDIS
 SIPDIS
 (C O R R E C T E D C O P Y: ADDED SIPDIS CAPTION)
 E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/20/2017
 TAGS: ECON[Economic Conditions], ETRD[Foreign Trade], ECIN?[Economic Integration and
Cooperation], PREL[External Political Relations]
SUBJECT: MICROSOFT SEES GOB ATTACKS AGAINST IPR
Classified By: Econ/Pol Chief James Story for reasons 1.5 b and d. 

¶1. (C) SUMMARY: In a December 20 meeting in Sao Paulo with Ambassador Sobel, Microsoft
Brazil President Michel Levy stated that current GOB policies are antagonistic towards Intellectual
Property Rights (IPR). According to Levy, the GOB through the Foreign Ministry (Itamaraty) has
mounted an international campaign to discredit Microsoft's proprietary XML format and is pushing
for countries to adopt the ODF (Open Document Format) at the expense of XML at the March
meeting of the International Standards Organization in Geneva. Levy sees both ideological issues
as well as commercial interests at work in the GOB position. END SUMMARY. 

¶2. (C) Microsoft Brazil President Michel Levy requested a meeting with Ambassador Sobel
on December 20 to discuss ways forward on working with what he characterized as an
antagonistic GOB. According to Levy, Itamaraty has pressured the purportedly independent
Brazilian Technical Standards Agency, ABNT to adopt a more aggressive posture against
using XML as one of two possible standards, along with ODF, in Brazil. In addition, Levy
stated that he is in the possession of unsigned letters from Itamaraty to various foreign
governments requesting that the governments work together to support only the open source
ODF as the international standard. 

¶3. (C) Levy believes that this issue has turned ideological and is a manifestation of
anti-Americanism within Itamaraty. He cited President Lula's Chief of Staff Dilma Rousseff as
well as high-ranking advisor Celso Alvarez as being the chief architects of an anti-IPR, anti-royalties
strategy within the GOB. According to Levy, these advisors have convinced President Lula that
there is no difference between ODF and proprietary XML software. His main concern is that the
GOB will use the ABNT to adopt an ODF only standard by decree rather than going through
Congress where Microsoft would at least have an opportunity to explain the differences between
the software systems. Levy used as an example that all of Embraer's designs are created through
XML and that the current ODF software simply can't do the same job. If ODF is the only
standard, Levy argued, there could be economic ramifications for Brazil. 

¶4. (C) Levy then pointed out that commercially Microsoft faces an uneven playing field in Brazil.
He stated that in addition to several bills in the Brazilian Congress that would deny the
GOB the ability to buy proprietary software, there are reports that many recent bids that
went to tender had specific, if unwritten, instructions that disallowed any Microsoft bids. He
further stated that the issue of cross-retaliation on IPR from the cotton subsidies case is alive
and well and could potentially come to pass in 2008. 

¶5. (C) While Levy made it clear that Microsoft is not asking for any USG advocacy at this point,
and in fact requested that our communication be kept strictly confidential, Ambassador Sobel did
offer advice on various SIPDIS approaches Microsoft could take in generating support for
standards that would have room for both ODF and XML software. Specifically, the Ambassador
thought Mircosoft should work through various trade groups to begin a discussion with the GOB
on this issue. The Ambassador also indicated that Microsoft should get Brazilian companies to put
this issue high on the agenda of the CEO Forum meetings to take place with Department of
Commerce Secretary Gutierrez early next year. 

¶6. (C) COMMENT: The debate among various international standards (GPS, telecommunications,
etc.) is not new in Brazil, and Levy's concerns about an anti-American ideology in the Brazilian
Foreign Ministry are not only Microsoft's concern. Microsoft's concerns that the GOB is seeking
to adopt one standard that does not allow for proprietary softwear, bears watching. A multi-industry
push for a strategy that allows for Congressional debate over the relative merits of the software systems
will certainly yield better results than Microsoft fighting this issue alone. END COMMENT.
 WHITE

Microsoft is trying to portray distrust of Microsoft as hatred of the US, which is a trick it pulls a lot. The above says that “Levy believes that this issue has turned ideological and is a manifestation of anti-Americanism within Itamaraty.” If there is any “anti-Americanism”, it is because of the likes of Levy who seek to disrupt policies overseas and turn entire massive populations into clients of some American monopolist that rose to power through criminal activities. Notice the daemonisation of Lula as well, using the “anti-IPR, anti-royalties” terms that mean nothing but protectionism and artificial monopoly enablers. Also mind this part: “The Ambassador also indicated that Microsoft should get Brazilian companies to put this issue high on the agenda of the CEO Forum meetings to take place with Department of Commerce Secretary Gutierrez early next year.” Also see: “Microsoft’s concerns that the GOB is seeking to adopt one standard that does not allow for proprietary softwear [sic], bears watching.” How so? It is when the government accepts lock-in and code that cannot be audited that one should be concerned. It’s the public which pays for it after all. █

Summary: The company which made viruses so abundant (and whose operating system is insecure by design) is using excuses and tricks to daemonise WebGL

WE HAVE seen it all before. Whether it was the case of not supporting ODF or even something like Ogg, Microsoft never blamed competitive reasons; it’s just not good for PR and the whole antitrust karma too would be impacted. See how Microsoft used security FUD to promote OOXML [1, 2]. It sure is amusing when Microsoft spinner Mr. Bright excuses Microsoft for avoiding WebGL by citing its talking points (headline says “Microsoft: no way to support WebGL and meet our security needs”). Truth be told, there is clearly more to it considering what’s done with Silverlight (hardware acceleration and Web integration, even with proprietary software).

For Microsoft it is not unusual to snub new standards and create its own proprietary extensions that require Windows with IE. It is no secret that even Microsoft’s Web developers write hacks especially for IE6 (and they detest IE for this reason, based on comments found in page source). Watch Microsoft’s booster Bott spotting a new “Microsoft security versus Microsoft Web” gaffe. Of course he is spinning this. It’s his job.

Microsoft makes shoddy Web products because it wants to turn the Web into a sandbox of lock-in, not interoperability. Instructions for this come from the top. █

“In one piece of mail people were suggesting that Office had to work equally well with all browsers and that we shouldn’t force Office users to use our browser. This Is wrong and I wanted to correct this.

“Another suggestion In this mail was that we can’t make our own unilateral extensions to HTML I was going to say this was wrong and correct this also.”

–Bill Gates [PDF]

Summary: A look back at how Microsoft distorted the market of office suites and a candid suggestion for IBM to open up on the real issues, not the minor details

THE “RUTHLESS” Bill Gates is nowadays buying newspapers to call himself something else and distract from his evil side, rewriting history to a sufficient extent so that people will forget his poisonous legacy that everyone suffers from, to this date. It is called reputation laundering. Today we would like to go back and show people the real Bill Gates. Later this month we hope to get a helping hand from another editor who can help show some of today’s offences from Gates (but that’ll be left aside for now as it is partly off topic).

“On another occasion Gates showed not only his hatred of standards and interoperability but also his love of patents.”So yesterday we wrote about how IBM becomes a key player in ODF. IBM and Microsoft are rivals as much as Apple and Microsoft are rivals. They actually collaborate in some areas where it is beneficial to both companies (not necessarily to the externalities). Microsoft, which is is run by sociopaths, has quite a history of copying and also breaking Lotus. We showed this using Comes vs Microsoft court exhibits. A Techrights informant has just reminded us that, in Comes vs Microsoft, “PXE 3078 has Lotus working for interoperability and MS working against it.” We covered this several years ago. Bill Gates said that giving out the Office 2000 formats to competitors seems crazy and this type of remark occurred later too. On another occasion Gates showed not only his hatred of standards and interoperability but also his love of patents. On several occasions he tried to use software patents against OpenOffice.org, even resorting to patent blackmail against Sun. A lot of publications speak of the OpenOffice.org news in the context which excepts and excludes patents (see examples at the bottom of this post). This is a mistake. To give just one example of a typical interpretation of this announcement:

Continuing what it likes to describe as its “long-standing commitment to open source,” IBM has this week confirmed that it will now take an active role in the new OpenOffice.org code base submitted to The Apache Software Foundation Incubator.

IBM and open source you say? Should that be unusual?

This does not tell the whole story. Remember what we wrote about the Apache licence some weeks ago (this led to FUD). Remember who likes this type of licence, which Microsoft proponents sometimes champion (and Microsoft now gives money to the ASF too). As we stated yesterday, too much would have been written about the news and we wish not to bore with repetition. But what we shall say is that Microsoft is vehemently opposing interoperability (the problem is at the core, including Bill Gates), so we must defend ODF, even if it means tolerating IBM. But IBM should not be treated as our friend here (nor should The Document Foundation, which has some residues from Novell). After many observations were being made in our IRC channels we have reached the conclusion which some of us accept. It is possible that IBM, which cross-licenses (software patents) with Microsoft, can now take its proprietary version of OpenOffice.org (Lotus Symphony) and further extend it legally without contributing back the changes. That’s what an Apache licence will do assuming that the passage of copyrights to Apache works as IBM hoped. This whole thing shows the dangers of copyright assignment agreements (pay attention, Canonical) and if the LGPLv3 is abandoned as Bradley from the FSF suspects [3], then it will be possible for IBM to make Symphony the only patents-’covered’ derivative of OpenOffice.org (indemnification for example). The big vendors are playing evil games to increase their own power and ODF gets wedged somewhere in the middle. IBM could have joined hands with LibreOffice and its umbrella organisation. It hasn’t done so yet. There were even snide remarks from IBM. One person who urged IBM’s most relevant Vice President in this area claimed that the latter has not approved his comment, although after some discussion and an E-mail from this vice president we learned that he was too busy (which is probably true and not an excuse/afterthought). Anyway, IBM needs to clarify two things now: 1) will it join LibreOffice? 2) Where does it stand on the subject of licensing/copyrights and patents? IBM is generally a silent company after the antitrust complications, so it has communications problems (even when it communicates it is trying to hide the communication). █

References:

1. Statement about Oracle’s move to donate OpenOffice.org assets to the Apache Foundation

   The Document Foundation would welcome the reuniting of the OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects into a single community of equals in the wake of the departure of Oracle. The step Oracle has taken today was no doubt taken in good faith, but does not appear to directly achieve this goal. The Apache community, which we respect enormously, has very different expectations and norms – licensing, membership and more – to the existing OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects. We regret the missed opportunity but are committed to working with all active community members to devise the best possible future for LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org.

2. Oracle gives OpenOffice to Apache

   IBM’s Kevin Cavanaugh, VP of Collaboration Solutions., which lobbied for Oracle to spin OpenOffice off after it became clear that Oracle wasn’t going to put much, if any, resources into OpenOffice, said in a statement, “IBM welcomes Oracle’s contribution of OpenOffice software to the Apache Software Foundation. We look forward to engaging with other community members to advance the technology beginning with our strong support of the incubation process for OpenOffice at Apache.”

3. Ditching Copyleft to Compete with a Fork?

   I was disturbed today to read that Oracle will seek to relicense all OpenOffice code under the Apache-2.0 license and move OpenOffice into the Apache Software Foundation.

   I’ve written recently about how among the permissive licenses, my favorite is clearly the Apache License 2.0. However, I think that one should switch from a copyleft license to a permissive one only in rare circumstances and with the greatest of care.

   Obviously, in this case, I oppose Oracle’s relicense of OpenOffice.org under Apache-License-2.0. It is probably obvious why I feel that way, but I shall explain nonetheless, just in case. I’m going to mostly ignore the motives for doing so, which I think are obvious: Oracle (and IBM, who are quoted in support of this move) for their own reasons don’t like The Document Foundation fork (LibreOffice) of OpenOffice.org. This is a last-ditch effort by IBM and Oracle to thwart the progress of that fork, which has been reported as quite successful and many distributions have begun to adopt LibreOffice. (Even non-software sites sites like Metafilter have users discussing changing to LibreOffice .)

4. Oracle proposes OpenOffice.org to Apache Incubator

5. The issue of bringing harmony to copyright assignment

   There is an entirely different class of CAAs where you give a company full right to your code, however. Sun (and later Oracle) demanded this for contributions to OpenOffice.org. They need this to be able to incorporate the contributions into non-free versions of OpenOffice like StarOffice or IBM’s Lotus Suite. So in essence, you have to give them the right to sell non-free versions of your code or you can’t contribute. As far as I’m concerned, this is clearly not a good use of CAAs!

6. Oracle gives OpenOffice to the Apache Foundation — should we care?

   I guess Oracle thought the same thing. They ignored OpenOffice and its contributors after buying Sun. Sure they killed OpenSolaris first. It was only a matter of time before they ankled OpenOffice.

Summary: OpenOffice.org is moving to Apache, which helps IBM after a short moment of uncertainty and doubt

PR blunders aside (IBM PR telling me, “if you blog about the end of this case, none of this information came from IBM, okay? Cheers…”), it has just been announced that, as SJVN told us all last night, OpenOffice.org is going to Apache and the IBM folks are quick to issue remarks about it, led by Brill, Weir, and Sutor. Weir says that:

Oracle has followed through with their earlier promise to “move OpenOffice.org to a purely community-based open source project.” OpenOffice is moving to Apache.

Prior to that Weir also said: “Disappointing to see so-called open source proponents desperately trying to squash an open source project. It must be Tuesday.” It is not clear if he was referring to the petition to Oracle. Perhaps he should clarify his statements, e.g. with a link.

Remember how IBM reacted after Oracle had sued Google. The issues of patents will be discussed here later. IBM almost bought Sun.

Sutor writes:

It’s been an interesting road to get to this point over the decades, with well and not-so-well publicized twists and turns, but I’m glad we got here.

We’ll have more about this shortly, hopefully something unique (although the Internet will be flooded by pundits). Let us remember that OpenOffice.org is Free software and so is LibreOffice. There is a lot to be said now which probably will be said by every FOSS/Linux site.

In defence of IBM, the company is bigger than Microsoft, but it is not fundamentally against Free software. Scale is not the problem (SCO, for example, was always quite small). Prepare for a lot of FUD from the Microsoft camp, which harbours the #1 cash cow. █

–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Summary: A key participator in the OOXML fiasco mocks an attempt to establish real standards

MICROSOFT zealots are quite the bunch. Those zealots love to characterise freedom lovers as what they themselves are, carefully using stereotypes to portray appreciators of rights, standards and transparency as the “bad guys”. We saw many examples of that last week in ZDNet and days ago we got a reminder when we saw Microsoft's "fox" speaking utter rubbish again. Alex Brown [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21] wants to be seen as a professional, but he keeps dodging the questions that matter. Moreover, rather than apologise for helping a corrupt process be corrupt (knowing all sorts of things which turned out to be true later, including patent traps), he carries on moaning and playing dumb. What does it say about him? With UK acceptance of ODF he must be rather bitter. After all, his reputation was burned like an effigy after all he had sacrificed everything for his beloved OOXML. Strong language is all he can descend to now, writing phrases like: “Faced with such clueless fuckwittery it’s tempting simply to ask: what’s the point?” The context is “UK Open Standards”.

Andy Updegrove has responded to this one:

Presumably, being involved in standards activities that are highly relevant to the consulting and implementation business of Alex’s firm, Griffin Brown, has no impact on its fortunes at all. And engaging in some other type of community service – say, volunteering at a homeless shelter, or becoming a Boy Scout leader – would avoid all that tedious travel to the excessively dreary locations where SC 34 (the format standard working group) insists on holding its meetings. Places like Tokyo, Stockholm, Paris, Copenhagen, and Prague.

[...]

The problem, it appears, is that Alex thinks that only those that participate in working groups like SC 34 are competent to judge what should be in a standard, or which among competing standards might be superior. Never mind, of course, that legions of formal standards have never been widely adopted at all, or that consortium standards are frequently adopted over formal standards. But forget that. Those who aren’t inside the formal standards process just don’t get what standards are really and truly all about, so why don’t all you ignorant sods just bugger off?

If the name Alex Brown rings a bell, don’t be surprised. Alex was the convenor of the one week OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting held in 2008 – you know, the one that thought that a one week meeting was an intelligent way to resolve over 1,000 comments on an over 6,000 page specification in order to formalize an open standard. During that meeting, Alex made multiple decisions that were later condemned by many. Four countries filed formal appeals. Alex remains serene about that meeting, the decisions made, and the outcome.

Standards, you see, are not to be questioned by those that are expected to use them. They are to be accepted with the deference to which their developers are entitled. We, who are increasingly utterly dependent on what standards allow us to do, or not do, are never, ever to question the judgment of those that create these precious gifts.

Our role is to take what we’re given, and do what we’re told. Anything else would be “clueless fuckwittery.”

My God, Alex. Where is there an end of it?

“Do take a look,” remarks Groklaw, “and if you are in the UK, you might let the government know what standards are important to you. If you are not one for surveys, it says you can alternatively email cto at cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk” █

Summary: OpenDocument Format (ODF) keeps spreading while OOXML shows patent complications

Somebody called ruslinux (in Twitter) writes: “Berita baik untuk semua pengguna program perkantoran, pemerintah akui OpenDocument Format sbg standar nasioal dg No. SNI ISO/IEC 26300:2011″

“Which I take to mean that ODF now approved as a national standard in Indonesia,” says Rob Weir from IBM.

We wrote about this (or something similar) last year after we explained what Microsoft had been doing in Indonesia. This helped in providing some background.

The i4i case is back in the news, showing OOXML’s legal problems. For those who cannot recall, Microsoft and its friends (like Alex Brown) lied about the patent status of OOXML in order to push it past ISO. It’s a good thing that nations do not adopt OOXML. The case is still ongoing (many appeals) and OOXML suffers as a result. In another case, Microsoft is appealing a decision regarding its abusive behaviour which Pogson explains as follows:

Duh… It’s not “double recovery”. The conspirators conspired to set up their criminal organization that way. Make them pay for it. That’s a judgment to be made in penalty phase, what portion of the overcharging was due to M$. Pathetic… criminals protected by the legal system.

When consumers complain they are told the competition does not protect them but businesses in competition. When businesses sue, they are kicked out because they did not buy direct from M$.

That’s just Microsoft bending the law. █

Summary: Microsoft uses dirty old tactics of spin, characterising itself as pro-choice and software freedom as against choice

Luke Hopewell from ZDNet.com.au helps Microsoft spread lots more propaganda this week (pushed through ZDNet, as usual). Microsoft Australia’s CTO is just given the platform to spout out a whole lot of nonsense such as:

“We believe in choice, and things should stand or fall by their own merits. Locking something in through denying interoperability is something that doesn’t promote that and that’s something we don’t support,” Stone said.

To lie with a straight face takes great courage. Suddenly they try to paint software freedom as “denying” “choice”. The hypocrisy knows no bounds and the ‘choice’ lie is a subject we explained here before [1, 2]. Using gymnastics in logic, Microsoft tries to make it seem like policies that favour free/open source software are impeding ‘choice’, just like Microsoft tried to cast the proprietary (Microsoft-only) OOXML as ‘choice’, where basically it relied on the confusion between standards and applications (it is desirable to have one standard with many applications implementing it, otherwise people cannot collaborate).

Over at IDG, the pro-Microsoft Nancy Gohring helps Microsoft spread ODF FUD [1, 2] right now:

Microsoft is also complaining about what it calls a lack of full support for the OpenDocument Format in Google Docs, which is used at least informally by some government agencies. When Google Docs renders documents created in ODF, it alters them by, for example, changing page numbers, said Curt Kolcun, vice president of Microsoft’s U.S. Public Sector group. Microsoft was subjected to intense pressure around the globe by government agencies that insisted it support the open document standards.

Watch how history is softened over time. When Gohring says “subjected to intense pressure” she actually refers to Microsoft corrupting (e.g. bribing), deceiving, buying votes, and bullying critics. And what for? To call its proprietary, monopolistic application “a standard” and then force governments (at taxpayers’ expense) to keep buying it, which in turn forces citizens to buy it (network effect). How malicious.

As for Google Docs, it’s not an example of good ODF support; as Carlo Piana recently put it, it turned his spreadsheet into spread s***. It’s a proprietary application, so it does not matter much and articles that paint it as “Google vs Microsoft” (rather than FOSS versus Office) are no better than those who talk about Mac vs PC/Apple vs Microsoft. It is a bogus, diversionary dilemma which excludes real contenders. █

Summary: OOXML is shown to be broken just as the fifth ODF plugfest starts in Maidenhead town hall (UK)

SEVERAL years after Microsoft’s push for OOXML really began it still remains rather extinct. People make a mental note which says that .docx is a format people dislike and are often unable to open. Search engines too can provide some evidence of the scarcity of OOXML on the Web. Technical people know that OOXML such a bad, poorly-constructed specification, whereas computer users who are less technical usually view it as alien and unfamiliar (even if Microsoft assigns the same icons to OOXML). Rob Weir highlights the important findings about OOXML breaking apart and causing great trouble:

Microsoft’s controversial Office Open XML format, now officially called just Open XML*, has an embarrassing bug in its Office 2010 and/or Office 2007 implementation, as reported by Dennis O’Reilly on Cnet.

In a nutshell: if you save a document from Word 2010 using the default .docx format, and send it to a user with Word 2007 but who has a different default printer driver, then a few seemingly random spaces may get dropped from between words or sentences when it is opened on the other machine. When saved in Word 2007, the spaces remain missing if the document is re-opened in Word 2010.

Even CNET (CBS) has just covered it:

Some readers took exception when I stated in a post from last month on future-proofing your data archive that Microsoft’s proprietary Office file formats may not stand the test of time. Well, compatibility problems have already surfaced between the two most recent releases of MS Word.

Several people report spaces being dropped randomly from documents created in Word 2010 when the files are opened in Word 2007 on another machine. (A post on the Microsoft Answers forum explains the problem in more detail.)

So there we have another lesson regarding the failures of OOXML. Support for ODF, on the other hand, keeps expanding. Incidentally, the UK-based ODF plugfest starts today. It started 2 hours ago. █

Summary: Headsup about Microsoft’s latest attempts to hijack the voice of its opposition so as to ensure the competition does not get to speak and receive the priority it deserves

Reform of the patent systems is on everybody’s lips, but each party means something else when it says “reform”. Basically, many corporations want the patent systems to become more friendly towards them (Microsoft is lobbying on the matter right now [1, 2]) and mere people are hardly taking part in this debate, which includes the Patent Reform Act of 2011 [1, 2, 3] (put forth by senators who are being lobbied by corporations).

Even though Google starts moving in the right direction (more seriously challenging software patents while, just like Red Hat, adding some software patents to its own stash, allegedly for defensive purposes), the Larry Page-led company is trying to amass new patents in bulk, unlike Red Hat whose role is quite unique. Basically, Google is still too shy to say that it wants software patents nuked (the shareholders might not understand such a stance), whereas Red Hat sends a less ambiguous message.

Meanwhile, there is a coalition of companies which defend patent monopolies using the “fair” spin (like the “F” in FRAND). The new article “Patent Reform Act 2011: Winners and Losers” sheds some light on it, as well as on other things:

Two other supporters of the bill are Microsoft and IBM but a group representing fourteen technology companies that include some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley — such as Apple, Google, Cisco, Intel and Symantec issued a statement Thursday saying that the senate judiciary bill still needs a lot of work. These companies are all part of a group called the Coalition for Patent Fairness which is a diverse group of companies and industry associations dedicated to enhancing U.S. innovation, job creation, and competitiveness in the global market by modernizing and strengthening our nation’s patent system. Coalition for Patent Fairness members include Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Cisco, Dell, Google, Intel, Intuit, Micron, Oracle, RIM, SAP, Symantec, Verizon.

Having recently embedded itself inside the FOSS community (by paying FOSDEM organisers for example), Microsoft is now trying to subvert and water down public policies like its front group ACT does. Following this duo’s subversion of EIFv2 [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], they once again pretend to be FOSS or SMB representatives as amid OOXML outage in Australia [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] Gary Gray makes commitments to “open source”. See this new report titled “Microsoft seeks inclusion after open source mandate”:

Software giant welcomes AGIMO’s open source policy.

Microsoft has called for the Australian Government’s agencies to engage with “all forms” of software development communities – be they proprietary or open source – in response to official moves in Canberra to embrace open source alternatives.

In a letter to Special Minister of State Gary Gray released on Monday, the software giant welcomed the Federal Government’s newly revised open source policy, which required agencies to consider open source in IT procurements.

[...]

Microsoft also offered to contribute to the development of a Federal Guide to Open Source Software, noting that its experience as a vendor to Government could be of some value to AGIMO’s review.

Microsoft is just trying to intervene so that it does not get excluded based on the fact that it sells unacceptable lock-in. This is where the pretence comes into play. If Microsoft can pretend to be a FOSS embracer and also use front groups to speak ‘on behalf’ of small businesses, then no public policy will get rid of the real issue. For what it’s worth, Novell helped Microsoft a lot in this regard (pretending that Microsoft is friendly towards GNU/Linux). Due to Novell influence (at least in part), OOXML in LibreOffice remains problematic, and that’s despite the PR statement from LibreOffice. To quote a new article: “As of now, LibreOffice doesn’t look very different and other than incorporating patches from the Novell Go-OO project, it’s pretty much the same although it appears that the fork will diverge further in coming versions. Moreover, a lot of cleaning house has taken place under the hood. As of now, there’s no roadmap on where the project is headed.” This is the type of thing which helps Microsoft lobby for OOXML in Australia and the Novell-funded Go-OO team should be ashamed of itself. █

THIS Web site, Techrights, was one of the sites which broke the news about LibreOffice (to ensure no misunderstandings we were contacted weeks in advance). There has been criticism of this project, however, notably because of OOXML exporting [1, 2]. In order to clarify this situation, The Document Foundation has just released a LibreOffice FAQ relating only to OOXML doubts. Among the parts:

Ah! So Novell is bringing in odd software bits from Microsoft to betray Free Software!

That’s not really a question, but there are some things that are quite clear to the Document Foundation:

* Novell and the Document Foundation are not the same entities, nor does Novell own the Document Foundation. Novell is one contributor, among several others, to the Document Foundation.
* The patches related to the Microsoft Office formats support coming from Novell are the indirect result of the a specific agreement between Novell and Microsoft. We use the word “indirect” here, as the agreement covers the software known as “OpenOffice Novell Edition”, and that’s not the same as LibreOffice.
* To the best of the knowledge of the Document Foundation, there is no specific agreement between Novell and Microsoft about LibreOffice. (But then again, we are not Novell nor do we represent the company in any way).

“Excuse me,” wrote Groklaw in response to this, “but this is a little too smooth, because if LibreOffice includes those OpenOffice patches, and apparently it does, what in the world would require a specific contract regarding LibreOffice? If the patches are patent-encumbered, for example, would LibreOffice get a pass from the courts because the patch was designed for OpenOffice? Obviously not. If there is any chance of that, then why not make the patches optional by default, and the wiki says you can ship LibreOffice without those patches? That way those of us in countries with wacky patent laws can avoid difficulties.”

Techrights has covered this subject since 2007 and Groklaw woke up to it only a few weeks ago. Separately, Groklaw wrote: “If you do technical work for Microsoft to help it be more interoperable, then, are you helping or hurting FOSS in this context? Something to think about.” █

(ODF | PDF | English/original)

Resumen: El impuesto de patentes no aceptable en los territorios pública se refiere, pero las autoridades necesitan revisar las normas existentes.

Las cuestiones de Adquisiciones han sido cubiertos por Simon Phipps desde hace unos años, incluso antes, cuando trabajó para Sun Microsystems. En su más reciente artículo[http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/procurement-indemnity/index.htm] que escribe sobre el uso de patentes para discriminar al Libre/Software de Código Abierto, comenzando con: [via[http://webmink.com/2011/01/21/procurement-and-indemnity/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=laconica]]

En todo el mundo, me encuentro con los gobiernos y los países que afirman tener una política que permite o incluso favorecen al software de código abierto. Sin embargo, cuando en realidad veo lo que están haciendo, te encuentras con que todavía adquieran una gran cantidad de software propietario.

Una política por sí sola no es suficiente. Para poner en práctica, normas que el legado de contratación tiene que ser cambiado, especialmente en el gobierno. Las normas de adquisición evolucionan con el tiempo a la luz de la experiencia, y poco a poco acrecienta en un corpus considerable que es inflexible por diseño. Si bien estas normas pueden proporcionar la protección y el valor de adquisición de productos y servicios de la empresa que se ha visto antes, por lo general discriminan a nuevos enfoques, que son víctimas del “fuego amigo” de las consecuencias involuntarias e imprevistas. Las viejas normas de contratación sofocan la innovación.

Uno de los problemas más comunes que el legado de reglas de contratación causa está en el area de exigir indemnización por software. Normas de adquisición suele pedir sanciones severas a asociarse con la promesa de que el software no contiene ningúna apropiación indebida de derechos de autor, de abusos premeditados, y a sabiendas no infrinjir ninguna patente.

[...]

Este es uno de los principales problemas que hay que fijarse si tiene intención de mover su empresa hacia el software de código abierto. No es suficiente decir que lo haces, necesitará arreglar sus normas de contratación para que el software de código abierto pueda pasar a través de sus defensas.

El punto que se hace aquí es que las patentes (y derechos de autor) desempeñan un papel en la discriminación contra el libre/software de código abierto, ya sea deliberadamente o no. Se relaciona muy bien con la atroz noticia de Australia [1[http://techrights.org/2011/01/21/australia-ms-lock-in/], 2[http://techrights.org/2011/01/21/novell-influence-in-libreoffice/], 3[http://techrights.org/2011/01/20/mandating-proprietary-sw/], 4[http://techrights.org/2011/01/22/john-sheridan-owned/]], donde Microsoft propietaria y las patentes-gravadas fueron elegidos en lugar del formato ODF por un traje con la historia empresarial de Microsoft. Verlos tratando de negar lo innegable su “sesgo de Microsoft” cuando se les acercó un periodista australiano que es de investigación y coherente en favor de la libertad del software:

La política de AGIMO requiere que las agencias del gobierno apoyen la Oficina de archivo “Open” XML format/ECMA-376 norma PROMOVIDA por Microsoft, y que las mayoria de alternativa suites de oficina no puede escribir documentos. La ODF Alliance, que está apoyando a un formato rival, afirmó el año pasado el Office Open XML formato esta atiborrada con “dependencias de plataforma de Windows” (PDF) y esencialmente vinculada a los usuarios de Microsoft Office, y algunas organizaciones, tales como los Archivos Nacionales de Australia, han escogido el estándar ODF en lugar de en el largo plazo.

Sin embargo, AGIMO estableció que no hay sesgo en la elección de software.

[...]

Una de las quejas comunes de los trabajadores en las grandes organizaciones es que son incapaces de obtener acceso para instalar aplicaciones en sus ordenadores de sobremesa, lo que lleva a una frustración en el trabajo, ya que pueden ser incapaces de utilizar las aplicaciones que se utilizan, o prefieren hacer su trabajo más eficientemente. Un ejemplo sería la forma en que muchas personas utilizan los navegadores web, con extensiones muy personalizada.

Los compinches de Microsoft en el gobierno de Australia estan avergonzando a todo el país, el que está siendo observado por todo el mundo acerca de este escándalo. █

Many thanks to Eduardo Landaveri of the Spanish portal of Techrights.

Summary: With the Burton Group inside of it and with Microsoft contracts in the pipeline, the Gartner Group carries on with its belittlement of ODF (including the obligatory FOSS bashing) while it is promoting Microsoft lock-in like OOXML

Andrea Di Maio from the Gartner Group is at it again. We previously wrote about him in [1, 2, 3, 4], even in relation to the OOXML blunder in Australia last week [1, 2, 3, 4]. As a very quick refresher, Gartner threw FUD at ODF after an unrelated verdict against Microsoft. The Gartner FUDmeister was proven to be wrong shortly afterwards. His claims were utterly false and they injured ODF’s reputation nonetheless. Just before that, another FUDmeister from Gartner (one who works closely with Microsoft) promoted OOXML and insulted ODF [1, 2]. These people from Gartner (3 examples given in this case) are being paid for it, this is not a public service. In the latest FOSS-hostile piece from Andrea Di Maio (this guy has many) he includes this bit which says:

Gartner Research and Gartner Consulting are two separate organizations, although both part of Gartner

Yes, it figures. So the same firm and same people (Gartner) basically serve a company one day and pretend to just do “research” another day. No room for bias there, eh? We have shown many crude examples of bias and there are even lawsuits about the conflict of interest. All those attacks on ODF help show how Gartner works (favouring the clients who pay) and what a corruptible company it really is. Gartner bought the Burton Group, which was one of the leading smearers of ODF at the time [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] (Microsoft paid for it and later employed some staff from the Burton Group).

Needless to say, ODF proponents are extremely unhappy with what Gartner is doing these days. Rob Weir has just told Bob Sutor (both are IBM’s main ODF people):

Ironic that of all the things open source has done, DiMaio narrowly focuses on their rhetoric

Yes, Gartner also likes to smear Free/libre software because the paradigm offers no contract work to Gartner. █

Summary: Patent tax not acceptable where public territories are concerned, but officials need to revise existing rules

Procurement issues have been covered by Simon Phipps for quite a few years, even back when he worked for Sun Microsystems. In his newest article he writes about the use of patents to discriminate against Free/open source software, starting with: [via]

All over the world, I encounter both governments and countries claiming they have a policy permitting or even favouring open source software. yet when you actually look at what they are doing, you find that there’s still a huge amount of proprietary software being procured.

A policy alone is not enough. To implement it, legacy procurement rules have to be changed, especially in government. Procurement rules evolve over time in the light of experience, and gradually accrete into a sizeable corpus that is inflexible by design. While these rules may provide both protection and value for procurement of products and services the enterprise has seen before, they typically discriminate against new approaches, which are the “friendly fire” casualties of unintended and unforeseen consequences. Legacy procurement rules stifle innovation.

One of the most common problems that legacy procurement rules cause is in the area of requiring indemnity for software. Procurement rules usually ask for substantial penalties to be associated with promises that the software doesn’t contain any misappropriated copyright, abuses no trademarks, and does not knowingly infringe any patents.

[...]

This is one of the key problems that needs to be fixed if you intend to move your enterprise to favour open source software. It’s not enough just to say you do; you’ll need to fix your procurement rules so open source software can get through your defences.

The point to be made here is also that patents (and copyrights) play a role in discriminating against Free/open source software, whether deliberately or not. It relates quite nicely to the atrocious news from Australia [1, 2, 3, 4], where Microsoft proprietary and patents-encumbered formats were chosen over ODF by a suit with Microsoft business history. Watch them trying to deny “Microsoft bias” when approached by an Australian journalist who is investigative and consistently in favour of software freedom:

AGIMO’s policy requires government agencies to support the Office Open XML file format/ECMA-376 standard promoted by Microsoft, which most alternative office suites cannot write documents in. The ODF Alliance, which is supporting a rival format, claimed last year the Office Open XML format was riddled with “Windows-platform dependencies” (PDF) and essentially tied users to Microsoft Office, and some organisations, such as the National Archives of Australia, have picked the ODF standard instead in the long-term.

However, AGIMO stated there was no software bias in the choice.

[...]

One of the common complaints of workers in large organisations is that they are unable to gain access to install applications on their desktop PCs, leading to a frustration at work as they may be unable to use the applications which they are used to, or prefer to do their work more efficiently. An example would be the way that many people use web browsers with heavily customised extensions.

Microsoft cronies in the Australian government are embarrassing the entire country, which is being watched by the entire world over this scandal. █

Summary: Microsoft’s OOXML is proving to be more of a farce now that people in Australia respond to absurd suggestions; Novell influence in LibreOffice is poisonous (promotes OOXML); some businesses may choose hosted spreadsheets that can render the formats debate less relevant

SOME days ago we wrote about Australia making a fatal mistake (post available in Spanish too) by assuming that Microsoft’s proprietary formats will help ensure compatibility. The stupidity surrounding this assertion has been noted just about everywhere by now. Rob Weir from IBM wrote:

Australia has rejected the ISO version of OOXML and gone with the Ecma version that ISO rejected. Is everything upside down there?

Later he added:

@homembit It is a slap in the face for the OOXML efforts in SC34. With PDF they specified the ISO version, for example.

Microsoft’s 'fox' Alex Brown already spins it in Twitter and in his blog. How appalling. And other OOXML drones like Jesper Lund Stocholm are there as well, as expected. But anyway, the subject has been covered extensively by now (if not here then elsewhere) and we are a lot more concerned about Novell’s influence inside LibreOffice. It continues to cause problems, based on this LWN report which has just been made publicly available. It says:

Just before the end of the year, Larry Gusaas called on the LibreOffice community to refuse to support the writing of OOXML files. Standard OpenOffice.org is able to read such files, but will not write them; that is, according to Larry, how things should be. But LibreOffice is based on the Go-oo project, which is the version of OpenOffice.org which has actually been shipped by most Linux distributions. This version does have the ability to write OOXML files; thus, LibreOffice does as well.

Quite a few people supported Larry’s desire for read-only OOXML support in LibreOffice; one could easily peruse the thread and come to the conclusion that the LibreOffice community is overwhelming opposed to the idea of writing in that format. Even so, a number of LibreOffice developers have made it clear (repeatedly) that they have no intention of removing the ability to write OOXML files. There is, thus, no need to worry that we might have to go on using Go-oo after all.

We wrote about this before [1, 2]. Just a day or so ago it was a Novell employee who announced the latest release/build of LibreOffice, so there is room for concern. Novell was paid by Microsoft to support OOXML and LibreOffice should stay true to its promise of avoiding OOXML.

As one last bit of news, consider as food for thought the fact that more companies choose collaboration with SaaS, including wikis for example. Google Apps is one example of it, but there are more. The IDG article “Why some companies are ditching their spreadsheets” sheds some more light about what may become a trend, especially now that spreadsheets become ever more massive and sometimes require compute clusters to work with.

Cohen’s frustration with spreadsheets is not unique. As decision-making becomes more collaborative and workforces grow more distributed and global, the days of compiling a spreadsheet, mailing or e-mailing it to colleagues, then manually inputting updates and re-sending it seem antiquated.

A transition to the back end (server) for large operations on massive databases may lead to further distancing from Microsoft Office/OOXML. Maybe it is time to rethink the relevance of interchange formats that mostly apply to desktop computing. █

(ODF | PDF | English/original)

Resumen: Australia decreta el propietario Microsoft Office Open XML como formato de documentos officiales, los reportes informan.

El Gobierno de Australia ha reforzado el monopolio de Microsoft al decidir que los ciudadanos deben usar productos caros, propietarios, y con errores de Microsoft para comunicarse con los servidores públicos. Aquí el crítico informe de Australia [http://www.itnews.com.au/News/245276,australia-mandates-microsofts-open-office-xml.aspx](un ejemplo de buen periodismo):

La particular OOXML norma fue rechazada por la Organización Internacional de Normalización (ISO) por que estaba llena de dependencias de la plataforma Windows, de acuerdo a sus oponentes.

La Alianza del Formato de Documentos Abierto ODF, respaldado por IBM y Google, ha advertido sobre la adopción del estándar ECMA-376 por los gobiernos.

“El uso de ECMA-376, esencialmente ENCADENA al adoptante a Microsoft Office”, advirtió el grupo de presión en octubre del año pasado en un documento titulado “¿Qué necesitan los Gobiernos Saber?”

Esa norma, señaló, “contiene dependencias de la plataforma Windows” que Microsoft se vio obligado a “eliminar” en el marco del proceso de la ISO con el fin de conseguir su aprobación como norma ISO-29500 – una norma que hasta la fecha el Microsoft Office 2010 ha incumplido.

Para citar el resumen de Slashdot[http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=11/01/19/0059209]:

“El Gobierno de Australia ha lanzado un entorno común de operación política de escritorio – Entre los controles de “seguridad”, destinadas a “reducir” el potencial de fugas de datos del Gobierno – los mandatos de la ECMA-376 versión de Microsoft Office Open XML (OOXML) estándar y suites de productividad que pueden “leer y escribir” el formato docx., efectivamente esclavizando a los servidores públicos del país al uso de Microsoft Office. La política [PDF] Cung parece limitar los sistemas operativos de escritorio a las ofertas de grandes, comerciales disponibles en el mercado a expensas de las pequeñas distribuciones”.

Para repetir algunas historias acerca de Australia y OOXML (hay más):

* Si Usted Vive en Australia, la Justicia Necesita su Ayuda [http://techrights.org/2008/02/20/australia-geneva-brm-ooxml/]
* OOXML: Exclusión de Apilamiento, y Snubbing en los EE.UU., Australia y Nueva Zelanda [http://techrights.org/2008/03/10/moox-stacking-exclusion-snubbing/]
* Australia Potencialmente Dañada por Microsoft (OOXML “Sí” Voto) [http://techrights.org/2008/02/15/rick-jelliffe-for-aussie/]

Vamos a recordar a la gente en Australia que Microsoft pagó a ejercer presión para OOXML y a escondidas editar Wikipedia [1[http://techrights.org/2008/03/22/ooxml-spec-mess-custom/], 2[http://techrights.org/2008/02/26/standards-australia-rick-jelliffe/], 3[http://techrights.org/2010/04/06/ibm-on-withdrawing-microsofts-ooxml/]]. █
____
^* Lock-in – Tiene no directa traduccion al Español. -Consideremoslo un Anglicanismo del finales del siglo XX y principios del XXI- Sonaría muy tonto e incomprensible algo como “candado”, pero mucho mas claro como “PRISION”.
-Esta palabra viene a significar literalmente la forzosa sumisión a formatos electrónicos que hacen muy difícil escaparse de ellos.
-Por ejemplo una persona u organización que ha usado Microsoft Office durante mucho tiempo. Cuando sale una nueva versión es FORZADO a PAGA
R por ella por que Microsoft SIEMPRE ha creado y creará incompatibilidades artificiales, y echarle la culpa a la competencia. -Lease los Co
mes vs Microsoft para ver como esto ha sido, es, y será una de sus tácticas para crear dependencia en sus productos. Por ello viene a ser un instrumento de dominación. El Colonialismo Digital, del que debemos romper cadenas AHORA para bienestar de las nuestro y las fúturas generaciones.

Many thanks to Eduardo Landaveri of the Spanish portal of Techrights.

Summary: Exciting news from Latvia, confirming that the country is indeed committed to decisions which were made regarding free access

MANY congratulations go to the Latvian people, some of whom regularly send us mail with valuable input and an appeal for help in the form of coverage that sheds light on what goes on there. Techrights covered Latvia in posts such as:

• Latvia’s Digital Independence Under Attack by Microsoft
• ODF Alliance Newsletter: Latvia and UK Join the ODF Bandwagon
• Ballmer and Co Meet Officials in Kyrgyzstan, Latvia; Microsoft Ukraine Curses FOSS
• Chinese and Latvian Governments Promote Free(dom) Software and GNU/Linux
• Austria and Switzerland Complain About Microsoft Lock-in, Latvia and Assam Escape Lock-in

Now we have some more good news from Latvia:

• Apple and Google and ODF

  I’m in Latvia today speaking at the Latvian Open Technology Association annual conference – my slides are online. The speaker before me was from the government and made an important announcement; that from now on, all government departments in Latvia must accept documents in ODF.

• ODF Interoperability: Maidenhead ODF Plugfest

  The fifth ODF Plugfest will take place in Maidenhead (UK) in the Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, on February 24/25th 2011.

In addition to these important updates from Phipps and Galoppini, recently we mentioned that the Document Foundation had joined OpenDoc Society. The future looks bright for ODF. █