It Will be Important for Schleswig-Holstein to Adopt Open, Freely-Implemented Standards, Not Just GNU/Linux and LibreOffice
Stressing the importance of OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Software Freedom
THIS past week, despite the Microsoft signal/noise drowning, we found a share bit of good news about GNU/Linux growing [1, 2], not limited to Germany ("statCounter: GNU/Linux Adoption in Germany Skyrockets to 7%") where many PCs will be converted to GNU/Linux ("German state switches to LibreOffice, promises Windows move"; "Microsoft Used a Campaign of Bribes and Lies to Derail GNU/Linux in Munich, Will the Same Be Attempted in Schleswig-Holstein?") and LibreOffice be adopted. We recently said that "We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone" because we've seen how OOXML got weaponised against Munich and patent applicants. They basically call it "Open" when in fact all it does is attack openness.
One associate of ours weighed in regarding Schleswig-Holstein, insisting that is important because of the "more serious nature of the situation of Russia vs Europe."
"The digital independence, and freedom, are of course the top benefit. But also improved, control, confidentiality, integrity, and access. That is in stark contrast to Microsoft, which has been using Xz to make a smoke screen to hide its Active Directory and Exchange disasters."
About Schleswig-Holstein, the associate said: "how many times has Microsoft maneuvered to block moves like this?" So "open standards, e.g. ODF, are an essential pre-requisite in such a move..."
Here in this site we're shared many hundreds of ODF files over the past couple of years. Microsoft really dislikes it when anything other than OOXML gets passed around.
Speaking of Microsoft maneuvers, this article about what Red Hat is doing shows the urgent need for antitrust action. Microsoft is meddling with the competition, even bribing it for cooperation. They basically try to 'pull a Novell' again. My wife describes this as "losers and losers together" (like in swimming qualification rounds), saying that "they are losing, that's why they are merging" (Red Hat and Microsoft). Expect layoffs soon? This recent report said: "Some techies expressed concern to us because they interpret talk of improving productivity as potentially cutting jobs, as when Red Hat's parent company IBM hired world number three consultancy Bain in 2018, just under two years before it spun off its services division, a year later renamed to Kyndryl. [...] Red Hat already made job cuts this time last year, although it faced union push back in France. This time, staffers told us that they fear cuts in the US."
Red Hat is now a 'division' (not) of IBM, so technically it does not prioritise GNU/Linux, Free software, standards, etc.
And speaking of standards, watch what Google's Gmail has done to E-mail:
Gmail strips style blocks before forwarding—which it turns out isn’t protection against this, because you can put a style block in the original email to hide the attack text which will then be stripped for you when the email is forwarded.
HTML "mail" is not E-mail. It's just some Web page sent as a de facto attachment piggybacking the E-mail protocols.
There is a lot to be said about the security implication of such utter stupidity, which makes E-mail not only bloated but also potentially dangerous.
The bottom line is, standards must be embraced. Sure, GNU/Linux (or BSD) would be great, but if all it's used for is some Steam (DRM) games and WINE running proprietary software built for Windows, we're not making much progress going forward or movingg towards freedom.
Back in 2007 Richard Stallman explained that TiVo should say "thank you" to us, then we can say "you're welcome"; he said, don't thank TiVo for using Linux and "pioneering" lockdown (TiVoisation), they don't give us anything, they just take. Without using the term "openwashing" Richard Stallman has spoken about this issue for a very long time. He recognised new threats and that's why, on the same year (2007), GPLv3 was finalised. █
