If you try to keep up with average, you will never get ahead

Bob Sutor spoke on LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco yesterday.You can find the presentation on Bobs blog here: http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=2446 .

One of the issues Bob spoke about, was the problem that open source development has been trying to 'keep up' with Microsoft for about a decade. 'The open source community cannot continue to copy a ten year old operating system' he said.

Of cause this is true and many people has joined the discussion and most agree with Bob on this issue (See discussion below this article: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.version2.dk%2Fartikel%2F8082&hl=da&ie=UTF8&sl=da&tl=en ). As long as we try to keep up with someone else, we will never get ahead.

But I also must add that this is not the whole truth. If it was that easy it would be a matter of months before we could beat Microsoft and kick Windows out.

Why ?

People in open source communities are not average people. Most people in these communities are working in IT related positions and so we have technical skills and we are willing to do experiments. How dangerous can it be ? We are able to fix any problems our selves.

Because Mr. and Mrs. Average don't like changes.

One of the most difficult issues when a company changes to OpenOffice.org is the people and feelings. When average people see a new computersystem they will feel unsecure and threatened.

Therefore we need to get ahead without scaring the users.

How can we do that ?

We must admit that Micrososft did something well. They must have done. Microsoft created a computersystem that Mr. and Mrs Average actually learned how to use. We must identify what is good about Windows and MS Office.

Linux also has many advantages. On specific details Microsoft is actually years behind. Just think about perfomance, security and so on and so forth.

My issue is: Nothing is black and white. Nor is this discussion. We must find a balance between the known and the future. And we must do better than Microsoft. We have one very big advantage: The communities are the customers. Microsoft obviously has some problems knowing what their customers are asking for. Just think about the fact that Microsoft for several years claimed that customers didn't ask for ODF-support and how Microsoft has to push and push to get Vista over the counter.

On open source communities

A small piece on open source communities in general and OpenOffice.org specific

Each time you enter a shop to buy something, this can be grosseries or a computer program, you have an expectation that it is ok and that everything works as described. You have the right to demand certain quality because you payed for what you have bought. If the new DVD player doesn't work, you can have it repaired, exchanged with another one or in the end, get your money back.

This is not the case when you use open source software from the simple reason that you didn't pay anything. Of cause you can uninstall the software. If you need a piece of software in conjunction with a guaranty, you can buy a commercial application like StarOffice from SUN Microsystems. StarOffice is a commercial version of OpenOffice.org and you can buy StarOffice with both garanties and support.

• How does the open source environment actually work ?
• How can anyone make a business when the software is free ?

From time to time I get a question from people that would like me to confirm that it actually *is* free of charge to use OpenOffice.org. "Can we use it in the company too ?" is the question.

Yes. OpenOffice.org is free of charge. Also in a company - without any limitations.

This can be true because several IT companies has found a possibility to make money on selling consulting and education. These companies doesn't make any money if the application doesn't exist, so the company is indirectly making money on supporting and helping the application development. Furthermore, several companies, organizations and governments that supports the development because they are using OpenOffice.org. By supporting the development, they make sure that the application is developed in a way that ensures OpenOffice.org to be developed in the right direction. You could call it a kind of self decided license fee. In most cases two or several companies or organization stick together and solves a specific problem in common. That way they can achieve something without each of them is getting involved directly.

In Denmark there is a lot of companies, organizations and authorities that is using OpenOffice.org, but as far as I know, only very few of them is actually giving a contribution back to the community. All members of the community are private contributers.

In the last two years of discussion on open standards and use of open source software like OpenOffice.org I have often heard that OpenOffice.org is not good enough and other programs are much better. But I have never heard from anyone that Denmark could participate and contribute to solve some of these problems. In Denmark we raise demands and criticisme, but we don't contribute.

I think this is caused by the lack of understanding for the way open source software works. And how development works.

In Denmark there is a lot of schools that is using OpenOffice.org in education. There must be some of the schools that has made some kind of education material like a syllabus or maybe even a teaching book. It would be much more effective if the schools could get together and develop this material in high quality once and release it under one of the free licenses.

The community behind OpenOffice.org in Denmark would very much like to contribute to get people together. Public schools can even get supported with fundings from the National IT- and Tele Agency.

In 2007 we started a new project in the international level of OpenOffice.org with the purpose to develop some kind of certification of users. A common goal of knowledge. The project is unfortunately partly closed for the moment, because we cant find participants.

Conclusion

Next time you wonder why something hasn't been developed yet or why you can't find a course to join or why you can't open .docx-files in OpenOffice.org or why you can't play multimedia files in presentations properly, change the question to: "How can I help to make it work ?".

You don't have to be a programmer to contribute to development. We can use anybody who can spend a few hours among friends in a wonderful community. Can you write a short how-to description or help us with graphical work or perhaps help us writing press releases. Do you know a lot of politicians or just a lot of people, you can help us promote the cause. There is always a job for everyone. And remember, its always YOU that sets the limits, so you can always say no thanks and back out for a while.

If your company uses OpenOffice.org, please remember to join the reference list on http://da.openoffice.org or http://www.openoffice.org. This is also considered a contribution.

Annual report from the Danish NLC community

This is my first year as lead and therefore also my first annual status report. Trough out the past year I have tried to keep you all up to date on my blog: http://lodahl.blogspot.com. In periods I wrote blog posts every day. I'll try to continue this in the future, though in a lower frequency.

What happened in the passed year ?

First of all, my English is getting much better. I hope you can all agree with me on that.

I started as coordinator for the Danish localization project on March 1th., but in fact I have been the project leader from about January 1th. I had no idea of how tough it would be and no body could know how things should develop in Denmark and in the rest of the World.

I started out trying to get the project organized by handing out some of the most important daily tasks. I knew that I couldn't do it all by my self. We organized our selves with a webmaster, a QA-master and I also tried to get a new person to take up the documentation. This was what I used to do before.

Unfortunately it didn't work out the way I had hoped. Very few people from the Danish community was ready to take direct responsibilities. But at the same time we have seen a few new names on the mailing lists this year and I'm very happy about that. We are twenty people on the list of active volounteers.

The Danish community deliberately has no funds at all. That way we avoid discussions about how to spend the money. But on the other hand, it would be nice if we had a million.

One of our goals for 2007 was to use Bouncer for handling the downloads. We need that for two purposes:
1) activation of automatic update
2) download statistics. Unfortunately we didn't succeed on this issue because no one has been able to tell us how it works.

We are translating new versions (almost) on time.

One of the most important sub projects was the new Danish spell checker (we call it 'Stavekontrolden'). We didn't have control of the words in the old one and we didn't believe that we could develop the old list fast and firm as we would like to. So we established a brand new list and new affix definitions from scratch based on hunspell. After only twelve months, it was possible for us to announce the first release. We made a comparison of our new spell checker against the old list and it showed that we had reached a break-even on quality. Since then the quality has increased day by day. The resulting spell checker will be integrated in OpenOffice.org 2.4.

Another achievment is that we have managed to organize a monthly newsletter from the community. The list of recievers has increased from 600 to nearly 1.000 people over the year and I find that a success. We are continously trying to improve the content of the newsletter. The newsletter is in Danish, but you can see an example here http://doc.oooforum.dk/Nyhed/2008Januar.pdf

Another thing in year 2007 was the political situation in Denmark. The Danish Parliament was about to agree on implementing open standards in most public authorities but unfortunately the Parliament was accepting both ODF and EOOXML file formats. I and several other people from FOSS communities was fighting and it ended up with a compromise: Microsoft is accepted for now, but must prove their openness in the development process. The Danish Competition Authority has been by the Parliament to monitor the process. My major domestic contribution to the process in the Parliament, was when I was granted a meeting (in the parliament in a sub committee).

During the year, I have tried to get a good relationship with the press. This is one thing I'm still working on. I have good contact with a marketing bureau that helps us when we need to get in touch with the press. The press coverage is usualy positive but I find it very difficult to catch the journalists interest.

Some of the Danish participants made CDs with OpenOffice.org and gave them away to all Members of Parliament and all municipal IT-managers. The CDs to the MP's raised some debate in the media, because the the MP's was not allowed to install OpenOffice.org on their computers in the Parliament. We hope to solve this problem in the coming year. In 2008 we expect to produce CD for all public libraries in Denmark.

In the late summer we worked together with several other FOSS communities in the process in 'Danish Standards' to make sure that Denmark would disapprove EOOXML at ISO. Denmark voted No.

During the year I have tried to keep the international community up-to-date with information by writing on my blog. 173 posts in 2007. I will continue that work in the future, but not that many posts I think. I find blogging a very useful communication channel.

One of the Danish IT newsletters are making an annual questionaire among their readers. This year about 60% of the answering readers says that they have a positive impression of OpenOffice.org. Just a few years ago only 20% knew what OpenOffice.org was. Today OpenOffice.org is considered a serious alternative to Microsoft Office and we meet new references all the time. One of the most important new references on the list is the University of Southern Denmark. The battle for open document standards was on 4th. place of most important issues in IT in 2007.

What can we expect in 2008 ?
I expect that a few Danish authorities will use OpenOffice.org and that several municipals will use OpenOffice.org. Right now I'm working on a case where public schools are saving lots of money by avoiding expensive software. I expect that lots of schools will switch to OpenOffice.org in this year.

A wish for 2008 ?
I wish that one or two of the public authorities will contribute to the project. I think thats what we need the most in Denmark right now: Public acknowledgment.
It's my hope that 2008 will bring us a little closer to an explanation on hos Bouncer works and how we (the Danish community) can take advantage of it.

Best regards, and happy new year to you all


Leif Lodahl
Native-Language coordinator DA.OpenOffice.org
Mail: lodahl-at-openoffice.org
Blog: http://lodahl.blogspot.com/

Answer to Jesper Lund Stocholm

Thank you to Jesper Lund Stocholm for his comment on this post http://lodahl.blogspot.com/2007/12/inquirer-has-coment-on-this.html

And thank you Jesper for correcting me when I misunderstand the information from the National IT- and Tele Agency. The thing is that I didn't participate in either of the two conferences. As a unpaid volunteer, I can't join all the meetings and conferences that takes place during daytime. I have a job to take care of. This is also the reason for not being so active on the blog over the last few months. I'm sorry if this is disappointing you Jesper, but that is how it is. Unfortunately this now ends up in you criticizing me for who I am and what I don't do.

These are some of the basic rules in open source communities:

• Don't put criticism to what people don't do, only to what they do
• Only put criticism to the actual work, not to th persons who did it
• respect other people even if you don't share your own opinion

I kindly ask you use another tone in the debate in the future, thanks.

The reason for the two posts on my blog http://lodahl.blogspot.com/2007/12/groklaw-denmark-pretends-msooxml-is.html and http://lodahl.blogspot.com/2007/12/inquirer-has-coment-on-this.html is that I have seen these international reflections to the situation in Denmark. The international press probably don't read Danish, so I try to keep them up to date with the situation. And yes, this is the situation as it looks from my point of view. I'm sure that someone else will talk about the same issue from other points of views.

That might be the reason for our struggles ...!

A research performed by one of the Danish IT newspapers Computerworld reveals one of the main problems:

• 56% of the answering persons has never heard of open source software.
• 38% of them answered that they have open source programs installed on their computer.

Some of the comments to the result says that there is probably people that is using open souce software without knowing that it's actually open source.

• 25% are using open source software
• 84% of those who are using it, knows that open source is free of charge
  

The research is representing 1.200 people that uses the Internet.

I think that one of the problems is, that teachers in public schools don't know about license rights and copyright law. From my point of view, all students that leaves public school should know about whats right and whats wrong and how free software can be free of charge. That's the only way to change this.

Whats up duck ?

I haven't been blogging that much lately. Sorry, but I feel rather busy at the moment.

• Busy trying to catch up with all the information floating around, both in the community but also regarding ODF and in the NOOOXML world.
• I have spent the last couple of days on a small travel to Aarhus ( http://www.findvej.dk/,8000 ). You know, I also need bread on the table ;-)
  
• Translation of 2.4 is going slowly forward. But we are still missing several hundred strings.
  
• Also preparing the next (December) edition of the Danish newsletter (expected to be out one of the first days in December). Sign up for it here: http://da.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=nyhedsbrev (if you understand Danish)
  
• I am also trying to contribute to the new certification project and today I have submitted my comments to the Spanish syllabus (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OOo_Certification_Syllabus). Please join the project here if you think you can contribute in any way. Sign up here: http://documentation.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=certification
• And then I have been trying to plan how to approach the new Parliament after the election this month. Hmmm. I think we have to act on this very soon. I better get on with it, eh ?

And then of cause

• I promised my family to be present once in a while. On Saturday I think we will all go to the movie theater together. Perhaps I should ask my wife out for dinner too. Yes, this is a high priority task on the list :-)
  

Summary from OOoCon2007 in Barcelona (I)

The conference in general
I participated in the conference on behalf of the Danish OpenOffice.org community http://da.openffice.org and my journey was sponsored by
Sun
Symfoni Software Denmark
DOSS

I was invited to the conference to speak about the political process in Denmark regarding the Parliament resolution B103 and the implementation of the resolution.

The conference was held at the Barcelona University right in the middle of Barcelona. It couldn't be more central and the University gave us a perfect frame for both formal and unformal meetings. The conference was arranged by the Catalonian language project and SoftCatala http://www.softcatala.org .

The conference program was very tight and it was impossible to find the time for everything. Four tracks of presentations all day long. The most important thing for me was actually to meet all the people that I only knew from emails and blogposts. To meet these people face to face was very important and I got an impression of how huge and complex the organization behind an open source project like OpenOffice.org is.

Overview of available information
All presentations are available under each day: http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme.html

I will emphasize the Keynote speak of Louis Suárez-Potts, the community manager for OpenOffice.org: http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme/wednesday_186.pdf

Here is film recording of some of the sessions: http://ooocon.kiberpipa.org/ with photos.

Here is a subset of the pictures taken:: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/ooocon2007/show/

Here is my own presentation from the conference: http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme/wednesday_79.pdf

I also participated in a debate on the subject ODF Impact on Industry and Governments: http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme/friday_179.pdf arranged by Donald Harbison (Program Director, ODF Initiative / IBM ).

Todos for this week

Tomorrow i'll start working after my vacation. This is my todo list for the first week or so:

Work:

• Research on Lotus Notes/Domino 8 Beta 3 - Make a review for my colleges
• Create a new VMWare environment with Domino/Lotus 8 and Symfoni product e-Office (for demonstration and test)
• Create new OpenOffice.org templates for Symfoni Software
• Implement OpenOffice.org templates (with field-to-field data exchange) in Symfoni e-office
• Prepare a demo (new movie) with Symfoni e-Office and OpenOffice.org integration (make a draft story board)
• Try to get an overview of my calendar appointments. Here is probably at least 20 new invitations waiting for me to consider.
  

Private

• Get a new rain water tank (The old one couldn't take the pressure yesterday). We got 80 mm rain in one hour and a new official record: 10.9 mm in one minute.
• Do physiotherapy exercises with my son every day. He needs to exercise for about half an hour every day
  

Community

• Translation of 2.3. We still need to translate about 200 strings
• Try to get more Danish signatures on the petition on www.noooxml.org
  
• Register and analyze 98 answers from the Danish municipals. We asked them about 15 questions about OpenOffice.org and open standards
  

How can we make sure that the spirit in B 103 is being fulfilled ?

How can we make sure that the spirit in B 103 is being fulfilled ?

The situation is that the public Denmark must use either the open ODF or EOOXML from Microsoft. On thing is for sure: Microsoft will do what they can to keep their marked share around the 98% for Office suites. We can expect to a continuous stream of misleading information and threads about what will happen, if ODF gets popular.

The two reports from Ramboell Management, that unfortunately is still used for decisions, gives the impression, that EOOXML is cheaper to implement than ODF. This might be right on the short lane. But if we open our minds for a little large perspective, ODF will be much cheaper. Furthermore we will see the positive side effect in society like more competition in the marked place. When the IT-manager in a local city is sitting looking at his one-year budget, he will probably not find money for long-term thinking. The budgets is simply too small for that. And it is not a job for that local IT-managers to deal with society matters. His job is to keep the majors office running. The situation is that long-term investments is to be funded by one-year budgets. This dilemma will of cause meen that the investment is not done or at least only done in a very small scale. There isn't money for more.

One solution to that could be, to offer some kind of financial support, where each authority can fetch funds to cover the initial cost by implementing ODF. Unfortunately this is actually against the words in B 103 because the resolution itself must be cost neutral. But we have seen some attention on this problem from the politicians lately, so something indicates that the politicians continues to support the spirit in the resolution.

This is not enough form my point of view ...

Open source doesn't work in the same way as conventional customer-vendor software. Vi are dealing with a slightly different business model. IT-managers and the vendor usualy sign a contract with the description of what the vendor should deliver, and how much money the customer should pay. When we move in to the area with open source, we must consider a few other parameters. It's very important that buying software is done on the right basis, and from my opinion it's also important that those who buy software is aware of this. Otherwise, we will surely see more damaged projects in the future. The different manuals from the National IT- and Tele Agency on IT purchase, e.g. the publication "Modenhed i IT-baserede forretningsprojekter" doesn't take other purchase models in to consideration. Only the traditional customer-vendor model is covered. The public authorities has none, or only very limited knowledge about the special culture in the open source communities. The National IT- and Tele Agency has only limited material on the subject under the project softwareboersen (The software bourse).

These aspects has only been covered superficial by the National IT- and Tele Agency, that in fact can end up be a hinder to successful implementation of pilot projects in the coming years. The overall used business model (customer-vendor) is not to be used in such projects because it actually hinders fully outcome of whats special in open source: The community.

An example from Norway...
In Norway, three Fylkeskommuner (like regions) has hires two people to develope a norwegian linux distribution for educational purpose (www.skolelinux.no). This project has reached results like a complete translation of OpenOffic.org into two Norwegian dialects as well as both spell checking and thesaurus of high quality. In the Norwegian project, the vendors (Fylkeskommuner) has especially weighted language very high.

I don't think we should use exactly the same model in Denmark, but this is a good example of the fact, that by taking responsibility for a project, the public authorities can get influence on the results. And this without higher costs than with traditional purchase. In the Norwegian project, the choice of project was deliberate.

Rain, work and reading a book

After a week with 28 degrees celcius we had quite a shock this weekend. 40 mm. of rain in 12 hours. The drain from my roof was stuck, so I had to go outside to clean it, at the most dreadful time. It took me about 5 minutes to solve the problem, but when I came inside, I was wet all the way in to my underpants.

Well, then I could just as well do something useful. I got the objection on Ecma 376 to the Danish ISO standard committee in Denmark done. I have send it to a few others for review and comments. Nice to get things done in good time for once. Deadline is July 2th.

Finished a book I started long ago:"The 7 habits of highly effective people" by Stephen R. Covey. I think it's 3 months since I started reading it. I'm not much of a reader.

Never mind, it was a good alternative to my wifes book "Advanced biochemistry" and similar subjects on the shelf.

Alternative Freedom

I just watched the film Alternative Freedom http://alternativefreedom.org by TWILA and SHAUN on DR2. Quite an interesting film right now, in the middle of the discussion on open standards.

Maybe the film actually won't help us. I think that the film is a little bit too much 'America'. A similar film produced by Europeans, would probably show things a little different. The good thing is that most Europeans are used to see this kind of American crap. Not that I disagree with the ideas behind GNU General Public License and Creative Commons, but I don't think that the arguments in the film reached the European audience.

Anyway, I hope that as many people as possible has seen this film tonight.

Things escalated today

Suddenly my problems escalated today. Well, not the problem, but more the support from back office. I think I'we received about 25 mails today, with useful information. I will read all these mails tomorrow and then I will write a letter to the Members of the Parliament.

Thanks to Mathias Bauer, Charles-H Schultz and Louis for the support so far.
Thanks to Sophie Gautier for the information on the French Parliament and Marko Grönross for information about Finnish Ministry of Justice.

I hope to meet you all some day and tell you that we won the battle. But I can't promise anything.

Tonight I found out why I'm doing this: It feels fantastic to get so many mails from people I'we never met. People that cares.

I also have to find out how to use the press more actively. I guess that's one of my weak areas.