OpenOffice.org 2.2 released

Yesterday was the day.

OpenOffice.org was to be released earlier this month, but no less than twice delays appeared before the release could be announced.

See more details about this release here.

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Dual standards

The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has decided to implement dual standards. Both ODF and OOXML is considered open standards and can be used in the implementation of Resolution B 103 (http://itst.dk/static/nyhed/English%20summary.pdf).

Warning: if you ever come to Denmark; Dont drive!
Because we are driving EITHER in the left side OR in the right side of the road.

The format war in Denmark

Here is a short summary from your local 'war correspondent'. The war about document formats in Denmark is heavy fire.

Last summer the parliament (Folketinget) agreed on a resolution (B 103) proposing that Denmark should use open standard formats in public governement. This resolution was proposed by the opposition.

In february the The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation revealed the implementation plan for B 103. This plan consist of several implementations including standard formats for documents. The plan defines open standards quite close to what we normaly do:

...that a standard is open implies that:

- the standard must be fully documented and publicly available,

- the standard must be freely implementable without economic, political or legal constraints on its implementation and use, now or in the future, and

- the standard should be managed and maintained in an open forum via an open process (standardization organization).

But in the implementation plan is given a choice: ODF or Office OpenXML. It is very important to remember that the resolution was proposed by the opposition and that the governement actually don't like it.

The democratical process in Denmark has given everybody the chance to answer to this implementation plan.

Several answers has been given so far:

From

• a group of NGOs (including OpenOffice.org)
• OSL (The Danish Open Source Business Association) known from the famous Ramboell report
• Danish IT-Political Organisation.

The answers given so far is basicly to two things:

1. Why do we need two standards ? One is enough
2. How can Office OpenXML be classified as 'open' when we know that there are several dependencies indicating that the format is NOT an open standard.

The war continues...

References:

Folketinget Resolution B 103 (unofficial english translation) http://itpol.dk/sager/offpol/b103_eng/

Implementation plan (english summary) http://itst.dk/static/nyhed/English%20summary.pdf

Answer from several NGOs (danish) http://www.oooforum.dk/viewtopic.php?t=2622

Answer from OSL (danish) http://www.osl.dk/hoeringssvar_aabne_standarder/

Answer from Danish IT-Political Organisation (danish) http://itpol.dk/sager/nyheder/horingssvar-om-abne-standarder

I'm trying to get English translations of the above answers as well as a complete overview of all given answers. There has been more than fifty answers to the plan.

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I'll put a mark in my diary today

Today I can put a mark in my calendar. It has been a good day.

Why today in particular ?

Because: now I can sync that mark with Google Calendar. Thats why !

Thanks to Dmitri Popov and his article on Linux.com, Syncing magic with GCALDaemon

This has for a long time been a problem to lots of people around the world. And I have tried to find a solution to this problem for more than a year now. And who else than Dmitri could do this ? I have seen a lot of good and inspiring articles from Dmitri over the years. Always very accurate but at the same time not too technical. Keep it up, Dmitri.

Today it took about 30 minutes from I first found the article untill I was able to sync my Lightning calendar with Google Calendar. Tomorrow I will use another 30 minutes or so and sync my local address book too.



I'm looking forward to the next article from Dmitri Popov.