News from the Danish government (on standards)

Last year the Danish parliament adopted the resolution B 103 about implementation of open standards for software in the public sector.

Today the Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation released a report that describes the implementation of the resolution. Here is a summary in english: http://itst.dk/static/nyhed/English%20summary.pdf .

In this report, public authorities mean local and regional administrations, government departments, agencies and directorates.

The report has been received positive today, because it seems that it will actually end up with more implementations soon. The report includes both some very vague parts as well as some very concrete areas with a very fast implementation.

The report includes 7 mandatory areas to implemented or planned implemented on January 1th. 2008. Among the seven mandatory areas is "Standards for exchanging documents between public authorities (Open Document Format and Office OpenXML)"

An open standard is defined as:

"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)."

Unfortunately there is no money with the resolution. An overall note is
"...if an economic impact assessment shows that this will not involve
additional costs to the public sector.".

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Compare price of open source versus closed software

Yet another report is telling us that open source software is a good investment:

http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/doc/2006-11-20-flossimpact.pdf

This time from the European comission

Over the last years we have seen a few of these reports both in Europe and in other parts of the World. The calculations are different from one report tp the other, but bottom line is the same´:

License fee versus consultancy expenses. measured over 3, 5 or perhaps 10 years.



Most companies, organizations and public offices is running one-year-budgets and we assume that the calculations must give some kind of truth. This is the micro economic truth.



From my point of view we need to see things more from a macro economic perspective. A perspective where we try to take into consideration if the society has a positive advantage of the choice.



If we take a close look at the comparison calculation for a short while, we will see that most expenses in the conventional solutions (closed systems) we will see that most of the expenses are license fees. The open source projects on the other side has almost no license fees but a lot of consulting, education and implementation expenses. Consulting work is often done by local IT-consultants.



My point is that from a society point of view the expenses in open source projects has a much higher value. License fees are not local.



The open source projects will create jobs and revenue in the local society and has a much higher value to the society. Projects with closed software will on the other hand send the money away and increase import. Unless ofcouse if you live en Reedmond, California.

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Start OpenOffice.org faster

Have you ever considered wondered why OpenOffice.org is so slow at starting up ?
You actually have several options to reduce the start-up time.

1) Preload OpenOffice.org
You can preload parts of OpenOffice.org together with your computer. This options is only available for some operating systems.

Select Tools Options OpenOffice.org Memory. Check the last field Load OpenOffice.org During System Start-Up. Next time you start your computer you can see a small icon in the system tray.

Be ware that this option takes some memory from your computer before you even start OpenOffice.org. If you have enough memory or if you are using OpenOffice.org most of the time, this option will be a good idea.


2) Load OpenOffice.org with parameter
You can create an icon to load OpenOffice.org without the splash screen. "C:\Programmer\OpenOffice.org 2.1\program\swriter.exe" -nologo . The parameter -nologo will improve startup time.


3) Edit soffice.ini
Find the file C:\Programmer\OpenOffice.org 2.1\program\soffice.ini and open it with a text editor e.g. notepad. Find the line Logo=1 and change it to Logo=0. Then save the file.

It's a good idea to create a backup copy of the file before you make changes to the ini file.

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Important personal experience

Most people has some kind of relation to religion. No matter if you are christian or atheist, Muslim or Hindu. Most people has some considerations about religion.

I'm not religious in particular. I consider my self as christian because I follow the basic conducts that was given to my by my parents. So the Christianity is somehow inside me.

About one year ago I has an experience that was very close to a religious experience. I couldn't help thinking: Lord.

It was in the late summer and I had spend a week with my wife and two sons in a cottage on the west coast of Denmark. Very close to the ocean. Close enough to actually hear the waves on the beach in the evening.

Around midnight we saw a spectacular light outside and we looked up in the sky and we saw that the sky was covered with light. Northern Light.

When I was a boy I have seen something similar, but only a few waves floating over the sky. This night it was completely dark and at the same time ...light. The sky was completely covered with this carpet of waves. The waves came from a center point. All waves came from this point and moved out towards the horizon. The whole way around. Spooky, but also very calming and peaceful.

I was standing outside the cottage for about 10 minutes before it disappeared. I didn't have time to get a camera. Today, I would like to have had a picture from that night now, but I just didn't have time. (This picture is just a picture from the Internet. )

As I wrote: I'm not religious. But I am very happy that I have had this beautiful experiance.

Conference - boring

I'm participating in a conference (Lotus Notes). Early morning - tired.



Hwo cares about LDAP sync and simular subjects ?

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