Lodahl's blog: 07/01/2009 - 08/01/2009

18 July 2009

There is no shortage of reports

The so called experts presented a few months ago, its report and the Competition Authority is expected to make its supplementary report in the autumn. CIO Innovation Forum came a short time ago with a report on Denmarks (missing?) ambitions and Norway has just published a so-called royal decree, which describes the technical formats that henceforth be used in Norway.

Wow.

What are we going to do with all the reports?

We may, among other compere the level of ambitions in the two countries Norway and Denmark. The Danish reports are typically written on the basis of previous reports, regardless of the reports drawn quality and therefore rarely controversial or significant conclusions in the reports. In essence, it is as if, on the intention is to ensure the status quo.

The Norwegian report is in contrast, very ambitious. Eg. , it is clear from the recent report from Norway that it is an indisputable fact that proprietary formats hinder competition. The fact that the Norwegian report entirely fails to discuss, it is a fact. In Denmark, however, we are only now beginning to explore (in a report), the proprietary formats hinder competition.

What causes this difference?

Norway has a long professional tradition of open source software. Eg. the Internet browser Opera is Norwegian developed and the widely used database program MySQL, was originally developed in Norway. Norway has built up over many years a widely accepted business model for open source software. There is room for companies to do business with both proprietary software and open source software.

In Denmark we do not have this tradition and open source software continues to have a street to be cheerful and frivolous. Her winning the argument ”it is a universally recognized standard and widely used” always ”it makes sense.”

The report I wish we see

There is a report which I would like to read.

It has not yet written and will probably never be written in Denmark. The title is: Open source software's long-term impact on the economy.

What will happen if we are in a country like Denmark has an ambition to generally use and develop open source software?

What impact will it have on the country and what impact it will have on the world community?

In the latest report from Norway argues for example; Ogg video format that has not as widely disseminated as such as .MP4. But now that Norway is beginning to use the ogg format, as recommended, the Norwegian quickly achieve high competence with ogg and will be able to set requirements for the future development of this video format. There will also probably be developed software for processing and playing ogg video.

Has this development not an impact on the choice of open standards and open source software? Unfortunately, I have not found the report.

08 July 2009

Lorem Ipsum 1.6.0

I have handed over the Lorem Ipsum extension to Magenta ApS. I am still the one working with it, so no change there.

I have just uploaded a new version now with 22 languages: Turkish, Indonesian, Arab, Dutch (Netherlands), Dutch (Belgium), Portuguese, Russian, Hungarian, Japanese, Spanish, Czech, German, Serbian (Cyrillic), Serbian (Latin), Romanian, Norwegian bokmål, Italian, Polish, Swedish, French, English and Danish.

Also th problem that the extension writes to (and overwrites) the status bar is fixed. You can download it here: http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/Magenta_Lorem_ipsum_generator

03 July 2009

Norway: ODF is in - OOXML is out

The Norwegian government has made a clear statement in a new catalog covering data standards of various purposes.

Public enterprises should not use other file formats than ODF (version 1.1) and PDF as attachment at the exchange of documents by email. This rule will apply from 1. January 2011.
The Danish government is still working on a similar decision. A report from the Danish competition authority has been delayed. Unfortunately I fear that the Danish government will make a non-decision as usually like: "Each authority may decide for them selves". This will end up in a chaos with at least four different document formats (OOXML, ODF, legacy .doc files and PDF).

Source: Digi.no http://www.digi.no/817635/her-er-statens-nye-it-standarder