[Update]Tønder Municipality behind Free IT Software for all Schoolchildren

12 December 2008

PRESS RELEASE

Tønder Municipality behind Free IT Software for all Schoolchildren

In cooperation with the National Software Knowledge Centre under the National IT and Telecom Agency, USB sticks with free Open Source programs will be distributed to all schoolchildren on Wednesday.

...

Tønder Taking the Lead

Morten Kristoffer Hansen, Head of Section in the Knowledge Centre, is very pleased with the initiative taken by Tønder Municipality, and he hopes that this may be an eye-opener for other municipalities in Denmark in relation to the use of Open Source.

- We were contacted by the people in Tønder, and did not doubt for a moment that this project was a good one. We entered into it as a pilot project - not least because Tønder Municipality cherishes the principle that Open Source is to be used - "if it is good enough", and it is definitely "good enough" in this case. So the strategy in this southern part of Jutland is clear: Tønder will be a municipality that takes the lead and shows the way to others. The strategy of Tønder is also quite in line with "Open Source Software in the Public Sector", a recent publication from the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, which calls for Open Source to be used "where value is generated".

In addition, the project of distributing USB sticks can only be realised in view of one of the basic rights of Open Source, namely that programs are allowed to be redistributed to others. In this way, we do our share in focusing on the potential of Open Source software, emphasising that it works and is free.

It is quite exciting - and the fact that we can also help in giving all schoolchildren in Tønder Municipality a Christmas present is even more satisfactory, says Morten Kristoffer Hansen.

http://www.softwareborsen.dk/blog/nyhedsblog/archive/2008/12/16/tonder-municipality-behind-free-it-software-for-all-schoolchildren
Danish article on Business.dk (translated into English): http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.business.dk%2Farticle%2F20081218%2Ftechmobil%2F81218092%2F&sl=da&tl=en
(Please note that 'Barrel' is the English word for the city name 'Tønder'.)

Busy upcomming weeks ...

This weekend I'l be speaking at Software Freedom Day in Copenhagen. It takes place on Saturday at Copenhagen Business School. I think I'll talk about my own pesonal view of the expression Software Freedom first.

I'm sure I'll be able to find a few minutes talking about OpenOffice.org 3.0 from a users point of view.

If you have the time and if you live in Copenhagen or sourounding areas, I'll recommend this event.

http://softwarefreedomday.org/teams/europe/denmark/copenhagen

Then of cause we are waiting for OpenOffice.org 3.0 to be released. I hope that September 30th. 2008 is the final release date.

October 3th. and 4th. the annual conference OpenSource Days will take place at IT-University in Copenhagen. Friday I'll be there representing the company and on Saturday I'll be there on behalf of the OpenOffice.org Community. Well that was the plan from the beginning. ...But I have promissed the conference to work as Chairman for one of the tracks. I hope to find some time to talk with people between the tracks

Finally I got the guts: Linux

I have been thinking about this for a long time. As an open source evangalist I should try to use something else than MS XP. Today I decided to try.

I'm what you could call an advanced PC user today. I fele happy about Windows XP and I feel comfortable with it. My son has a laptop running Vista and I have made a decission: I will never allow Vista to install on my computer. It's just to much.... to much.

I got a new (old) laptop and I decided to find out if I can make it work with Linux.

I downloaded the ISO from www.ubuntu.org and it's installing right now. I'm very exited to learn how everything will do in the next few hours.

Will I get access to the Internet ?
Will I get all the drivers right ?
What about all the applications I need ?
Will I be able to exchange files with my friends ?

Stay tuned. I'll tell you all about my experiences.

Open Source Days conference

ODF works

From www.odfworks.com

OpenOffice.org Newsletter in Danish

The monthly newsletter is again on the street. This time with a breaking story about the Municipal of Tønder.

All elementary schools have changed to the use of free and open source software and the municipal has actually made a financial benefit analysis showing cost reduction DKK 410.000. If we project this amount of money into national level, we are talking about DKK 55 mio. that could be spend on more valuable project, teach books etc.

Newsletter: http://doc.oooforum.dk/Nyhed/2008Marts.pdf
Municipal of Tønder: http://www.toender.dk
Comments on Version2.dk: http://www.version2.dk/artikel/6450

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.

Top five open source applications

The Danish on-line newspaper Verison2 has an artivle today about the best open source applications. I guess it's from an end users perspective.
The article http://www.version2.dk/artikel/6015 is not based on a survey or anything, but it's seen from the journalists perspective. The list is:

1. Mozilla Firefox
2. OpenOffice.org
3. InfraRecorder
4. PDFCreator
5. Scribus

The article claims that 1.692 articles on Version2 is the prove, that OpenOffice.org is very capable. All articles is written with OpenOffice.org Writer.

The only problems is the messy user interface and the poor spell checker. According to the article.

I have asked Version2 if we can get our hands on these 1.692 documents. That would absolutely be a great contribution to a better spell checker.

OpenProj 1.0 is now available

In August last year the company Projity (http://www.projity.com/) announced the second beta version of the desktop application OpenProj (http://www.openproj.org). Today Projity released the first 'real' version of the same application.

It is very nice to see a serious competitor to Microsoft Projects and I am looking forward to look closer to the details in the application functionality one of the comming days. According to the website I can expect to find Gantt Charts, Network Diagrams (PERT Charts), WBS and RBS charts, Earned Value costing and even more.

For now I will just note a few details:
The application is open source, and this is of cause positive, because it gives us users the safty we need, because we can download the source code and find how the file format is designed. But the application uses a binary fileformat (.pod) for storing the project information. It is possible to export the project information in Microsoft Project 2003 (XML) file format. It would be nice if the native file format was xml based and perhaps based on some kind of standard file format.

The application is based on Java code and is not depending on a single software platform or operating system. It has been released for Linux, Unix, Mac and Windows.

The open source license is a so called Common Public Attribution License Version 1.0 (CPAL) witch is approved by OSI https://www.eu.socialtext.net/open/index.cgi?cpal.

All together I find this initiative very nice, but I don't think this is the great revolution for now. If the company can establish a solid user community that can take some of the mising details, I think this could grow over time. I would like some more user documentation and mayby a few example projects to download.

Office in schools

British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) has released a report http://publications.becta.org.uk/download.cfm?resID=35275 that recommends schools in Great Britain not to consider upgrading to Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 unless they can upgrade all computers at once and has a direct benefit of such upgrade.

The report from Becta has been referred to in the Danish media over the last few days. (http://www.version2.dk/artikel/5884 and http://www.computerworld.dk/art/43644)

A journalist from the Danish computer magazine Computerworld.dk has asked about such report in Denmark. Vice President Per Thorbøll of UNI-C http://www.uni-c.dk/generelt/english/index.html explains that they don't have money nor authority to do a similar report in Denmark, but as he says:

The conclusion is of cause from Becta, but the computers are the same and the Windows versions are the same. So I think that the situation in Denmark is quite close to the British.

This is as close as he can get to a confirmation without confirming.

UNI-C is the Danish IT Centre for Education and Research and hosts and supports IT for almost all the Danish schools and universities.

Another financial report from Ramböll Management

The Norwegian newspaper TU (http://www.tu.no) claims that the Norwegian adoption of open standards and open source software will be very expensive. The article (Norwegian): http://www.tu.no/it/article129909.ece. The conclusion comes from a report done by Ramböll Management based on calculations of the amount of documents that has to be converted.

Ramboll Management - Don't we recognize that company name ?

Yes we do. This is the exact same company that made two similar reports in Denmark last year. Here they also claimed, that the costs will be huge and the benefits will be small. Also then (last year in Denmark), Ramböll Management could only come to a negative conclusion because they think that the authorities will continue to use (and buy) Microsoft software. Basically Ramböll takes only the costs and claims that the benefits will never come.

How about asking someone else next time. To me, this sounds like a fotocopy of the Danish report of last year.

OpenSourceDays

For the last ten years, the LinuxForum has been the annual event for all Danish (and other Scandinavian) people with interest in open source. The conference has been growing over the years and the team behind it has decided to change the name and scope. This is what they explain:

The highly successful open source conference "Linuxforum", which has already celebrated it's 10th anniversary is now changing name to Open Source Days in order to better reflect that Linux by no means is the only topic of the conference.
The name Open Source Days indicates that during the confererence a vast selection of technical and business open source topics will be covered by the best selection of speakers in a mix between Danish and English.
Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris and other open operating systems - and all of the applications running of these operating systems will be in focus during Open Source Days 2008.

Read more here: http://www.opensourcedays.org/2008/

The conference will be held October 3th. and 4th. http://www.opensourcedays.org/2008/about/

To better support the continuously growing event, the coordinators has decided to establish a foundation. The formal establishment meeting will take place on January 8th. at Niels Bohr Institutet in Copenhagen. Read more about the meeting here: http://friends.opensourcedays.org/

Show up and join.

Amusements for Christmas

Christmas time is time for relax and having a good time. Amusement together with your family and friends.

Earlier in December, I found a blog post on http://jacob-sparre.dk/ about a popular toy from Denmark: Lego. Jacob Sparre has made some fine Danish manuals and he has revealed some of his own models.

Normally you buy a box of Lego and hen follow the instructions, page by page. My own kids are getting a little too old (13 and 15 years) for Lego, but when I introduced them to this concept, they actually returned to what they were about five years ago: Amused by Lego again.

I think most people has experienced the feeling of opening a box of Lego and taking the challenge of building something beautiful or very complicated.

Imagine that you have all the Lego that has ever existed and in all colors in the World. You will never 'mis' that last piece or end up with the wrong color. You have everything, right by your right finger.

OK, this computer program doesn't replace the feeling of building your own model out of those red and blue bricks from Lego, but it can give you the feeling of creating something new.

The program is called LDRAW http://www.ldraw.org and it's open source. You can build all the models that you can imagine - and for no charge at all.

About LDraw:

LDraw™ is an open standard for LEGO CAD programs that allow the user to create virtual LEGO models and scenes. You can use it to document models you have physically built, create building instructions just like LEGO, render 3D photo realistic images of your virtual models and even make animations. The possibilities are endless. Unlike real LEGO bricks where you are limited by the number of parts and colors, in LDraw nothing is impossible.

How about this model of The Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb by Matija Puzar


See more here: http://www.ldraw.org/module-LdrawMOTM-entry-modelid-261.html

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.

Gartner: Long term trends

In my previous post It's not enough that the IT solutions works
http://lodahl.blogspot.com/2007/11/its-not-enough-that-it-solutions-works.html I discussed the fact that open source software is challenging the traditional software marked.

In my blog post, I recommend that the declining cost is used as investments in new and valuable software like collaboration software or other software that adds value and supports the business processes.

Gartner Group has just revealed a report about Long-Term Trends That Will Radically Alter Licensing in the Software Market
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=533714.

This report is discussed in the computer magazine C|net

We would advise IT organizations to use BPO (business process outsourcing) and open-source alternatives to improve their negotiating power with software suppliers, as well as employing the emergence of third-party vendors as a means to reduce higher maintenance fees on older versions of software,

http://www.news.com/Software-licensing-costs-predicted-to-fall/2100-1011_3-6219263.html

According to Gartner, the software prices will decrease in the upcoming decade. The reduction is caused by several things in the marked:

1. Increased Use of BPO (business process outsourcing)
   
2. Increased Use of SaaS (software as a service)
3. Low-Cost Development Locations Combined With Modular Architectures
4. The Emergence of Third-Party Support Offerings
5. Growing Interest in Open-Source Software
6. Emerging Chinese Software Companies
7. Rapid Expansion of Chinese, Indian and Brazilian Markets Drives Demand for Lower Costs

It's not enough that the IT solutions works

-Solutions needs to add value !

Traditionally we think of laptops, servers, network, Windows operating system and pc programs when the talk comes to IT in business matters. But if you want to get the best of your IT investments, it's important that you don't make your discissions based on the amount of features and functions. Much more important things must be taken into consideration.

It's no big deal to buy a new server or to install an update to the database system. The challenge comes when we want to exchange the new technology into actual valuable working processes in the organization. One of the conditions for creating value is that the staff, customers, subcontractors and so on can and will learn how to use what comes from the investments. This can only happen if the investments has been

1. based on business needs
   not from what others do or what you think would be a nice geek. The organizational needs must be covered up front, so that the solution can help improve the collaborative processes in the right direction.
2. introduced during a successful implementation
   not only from a technical perspective, but also from an organizational perspective. Users must be involved, so the solution is set up to match the individual needs.
3. adopted in a way that suits the business needs
   This is unfortunately not always the case in real life. Education and full introduction is necessary to get a successful implementation.

Today, words like Web2.0, mobile access and on demand as well as the technology behind it, is setting the agenda. Everything must be accessible from the web and from mobile devices. For instance, users can read mail and see customer information from CRM systems. Mobile access has limited functionality, but covers most of the needs.

We are going away from the traditional computer installed program. The trend is going towards focusing less on individual features and we accept that the applications work a little bit different from what we are used to.

This is a healthy development, because it's more important that a function is adding value to the people using it, for instance by enhancing collaboration, than adding a bunch of new buttons. Many has already discovered this by changing from Microsoft Office to the free and open OpenOffice.org. With a simular investment you can both install the software (free) and develop templates and macros as well as train the users in how it works. This is because the expenses moved from licenses to organizational implementation.

By doing this, you spend money on adding value, not only on making it work

Election for Parliament

Sorry about my absence on the blog recently.

On Tuesday there is election for the Danish Parliament and I have been working on some political issues lately. I'm preparing a letter to the new Parliament regarding the implementation of open standards in the public administration in Denmark. Further more I've had the opportunity to meet some of the MP's (and some new candidates) and talked about OpenOffice.org and open source software.

This election can be important. The opposition parties are primarily positive to open source and open standards and the parties in the existing government is mostly against interception of 'free enterprise' (Microsoft). If we get a new government, we can expect to see a change in opinion in the Ministries. But, don't expect to see things change over night.

You know politicians.

Open source is not about cutting down expenses

The general discussion about the use of open source software like OpenOffice.org very often comes around talking about money. And most people expect that cheap (in this case very cheap) software is poor software. In some cases this is actually true, but not in all cases. There are lots of software projects that serves high quality applications for you.

Open source is not about cutting down expenses but about spending money where you get value.

Lets take a look at one of the most popular open source projects, OpenOffice.org. Compared to Microsoft Office, this project is a little bit less feature rich. But what's the difference, when your employees haven't learned how to use the application that you bought so expensive ? Nothing. A much more valuable choice could be to implement OpenOffice.org and I say implement. Not just install it, but actually make sure that everybody who needs to know, will know. Teach them how to use it. And you will find that the actual result will be, that OpenOffice.org will increase productivity, because the number of usable features is higher. You have gained more value.

Another thing to consider is, to begin thinking about collaborative software. Take the Office thought a little bit further. How about spending money on collaboration instead of fancy features in desktop applications. Features that we use because they are there - not because we need them. If you implement OpenOffice.org and spend the license fee to buy good and solid software like Software from IBM Lotus, you will see your employees work together and find them think as a team instead of individual pieces. The jigsaw will soon show a very pretty picture: Pieces will come together.

Open source software is not about cutting down, but about spending differently.

Lunch break

As far as I'm concerned, the breaks are actually more important than the actual presentations.

Yesterday I made my presentation regarding the democratic process in Denmark and I have talked to many people yesterday and today about this and other issues. Having a smalltalk with people from Mexico, Hungary, Norway etc. gives much more deep insight of what is going on in the countries around the world than any presentation can give.

I have found out, that the Danish community is in many ways privileged by the rich society and all, but in other ways we are way behind and underprivileged. In most countries (not all) there is a much better understanding and adoption of the whole idea behind open source software and of the benefits for society. Many open source projects (open source in general and OpenOffice.org in particular) are actually sponsored or partly sponsored by governments and local governments.

Why is it, that the Danish government can't see, that open source is a strong accelerator for innovation and development ?

Image is from http://ooocon.kiberpipa.org where you can find more pictures and movies.