City of Munich and German Federal Foreign Office start collaboration
,----[ Quote
| According to this German article, the City of Munich and the German Federal
| Foreign Office have started to collaborate on the implementation of their
| open source and open standards strategies. I would not be surprised if other
| organizations decided to join the "alliance" as well. Anyway, very cool to
| see government organizations collaborate regarding the usage of open source
| and open standards.
`----
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/city_of_munich_and_german
Recent:
German ERP software vendor adds OpenOffice.org support
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/german_erp_software_vendor_adds
German portfolio analysis software supports OpenOffice.org
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/german_portfolio_analysis_software_supports
The German Plan for Open Standards
,----[ Quote ]
| The SAGA 4.0 document itself (PDF, 2.4 MB) states on page 114 that the Open
| Document Format (ODF) version 1.0 is a "Recommended" standard...
|
| [...]
|
| And it continues with stating PDF 1.4 as a mandatory standard (PDF 1.5 is a
| recommended standard, PDF 1.6 is a standard under observation).
|
| What are "Recommended" standards, "Mandatory" standards and standards "Under
| Observation"? Page 20 and page 21 explain the designations in full...
`----
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/the-german-plan.html
DE: One fifth of Freiburg city council migrated to OpenOffice
,----[ Quote ]
| In the German city of Freiburg, four hundred of the two thousand PCs used by
| the city council are now running OpenOffice.
|
| The migration to the Open Source suite of office applications is a
| intermediate goal, saving the city up to half a million euro in licence
| costs. The city's final aim is to switch to an Open Source desktop.
|
| The council began its office application migration last July, when it decided
| to use the ISO-approved Open Document Format (ODF) as a document standard.
`----
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7538
Germany upgrades ODF to "recommended"
,----[ Quote ]
| The new version 4.0 of the document "Standards and Architectures for
| eGovernment Applications" (SAGA) by the German Ministry of the Interior now
| recommends ODF for text documents.
`----
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/germany_upgrades_odf_to_recommended
German county adopts OpenOffice.org
,----[ Quote ]
| According to this German article, the German county "Friesland" is adoption
| open source including OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org will be installed on the
| majority of the client systems.
`----
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/german_county_adopts_openoffice_org
German penal institutions looking into OpenOffice.org
,----[ Quote ]
| It looks like that OpenOffice.org is also being used in areas where many of
| us don't expect it, or wouldn't research for. I have reports that some German
| penal institutions are looking into OpenOffice.org for their daily office
| work.
`----
http://ooomarketing.blogspot.com/2008/02/german-penal-institutions-looking-into.html
[German] Federal Employment Office switches to Linux
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/102218
Mayor of Munich opposes OOXML being made a Standard (German)
,----[ Quote ]
| Munich's mayor Christian Ude says in a letter to the Federal Minister for
| Economics and Technology, Michael Glos, he thinks there should be a
| clear "no" to the standardization of OOXML. The German Institute for
| Standardization (DIN) is currently evaluating how to vote in the ISO
| standardisation procedure. All the city needs, Ude indicates, is OpenDocument
| Format (ODF), already an ISO standard, and he believes competition is
| weakened by a competiting standards....
`----
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Muenchner-Oberbuergermeister-lehnt-ISO-Standardisierung-von-OOXML-ab--/meldung/105074
http://www.groklaw.net/newsitems.php
EU: Europarlement testing Ubuntu, OpenOffice and Firefox
,----[ Quote ]
| The European Parliament's IT department is testing the use of GNU/Linux
| distribution Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Firefox and other Open Source applications,
| the British MEP James Nicholson explained last week in a letter to Italian
| MEP Marco Cappato.
`----
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7565
Further to a post from yesterday about an embargo on Microsoft:
Is Microsoft Now Banned from EU Contracts?
http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=697&blogid=14
Euro MP thinks Microsoft should be banned from government contracts
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/10/member-eu-parliament-asks
Green MEP says Microsoft should be excluded from EU contract awarding procedure
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/106338/from/rss09
DE: German Foreign Ministry will not use ISO OOXML
,----[ Quote ]
| In the weeks prior to the second round of votes last September,
| irregularities were reported in the standard committees in many participating
| countries. These claims continued until after the final discussion, in
| February and March this year.
|
| The European Commission has started an investigation into the allegations.
| The Commission sent a letter to all EU national standards committees in
| Europe, requesting information about the process. Sources at the Commission
| declined to comment, as the investigation is on-going and no official
| position has yet been adopted.
`----
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7561
Software wars
,----[ Quote ]
| Allegations of committee-stuffing, the outcome of votes overridden by
| political appointees, a final decision that many involved consider tainted:
| this may sound like a discredited election in some third world country. But
| it is actually a description of an ugly fight over international technical
| standards that wrapped up this week. Microsoft came out on top, but at the
| cost of tarnishing its reputation and the credibility of an important
| back-room process that oils the wheels of many global industries.
`----
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c9743360-01a8-11dd-a323-000077b07658,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fc9743360-01a8-11dd-a323-000077b07658.html%3Fnclick_check%3D1&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.computerworlduk.com%2Ftool
Microsoft Plummets, Retail Falls While Beauty Gains in CoreBrand 2007 Brand
Power Rankings
,----[ Quote ]
| The annual "CoreBrand Brand Power 100" Branding Index(R) of 1,200 US
| corporations ranks Coca-Cola Company and Johnson & Johnson at #1 and #2
| respectively, unchanged since 2004. Meanwhile, Microsoft's corporate brand
| declined in stunning fashion over the past four years, falling from 11 in
| 2004 to 59 in 2007 Microsoft, a decline of 48 places!
`----
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=834308
Related:
Martin Bryan: we are getting “standardization by corporation”
,----[ Quote ]
| A November informative report of Martin Bryan, Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34
| WG1 highlights the fallout of the ECMA-376 fast-track process for ISO. He
| says he is 'glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible'
|
| [...]
|
| In what is an astonishingly outspoken report, Martin Bryan, Convenor, ISO/IEC
| JTC1/SC34 WG1 has given us insight into the total mess that Microsoft/ECMA
| have caused during their scandalous, underhand and unremitting attempts to
| get - what is a very poorly written specification {i.e. DIS 29500 aka OOXML,
| AR} - approved as an ISO standard. …
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-30107/martin-bryan:we-are-getting-standardization-by-corporation
Dysfunctional ISO - Courtesy of Microsoft
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2007/12/dysfunctional-iso-courtesy-of-microsoft.html
Microsoft accused of stacking ISO committee
,----[ Quote
| In a memo sent following his last meeting as head of the working group on
| WG1, which is handling Microsoft’s application to make the Word format an ISO
| standard as ECMA 376, outgoing Governor Martin Bryan (above), an expert on
| SGML and XML, accused the company of stacking his group.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1777
EU Commission Investigating Microsoft's MSOOXML Push
,----[ Quote ]
| I hope they think to investigate the smear campaigns that seem to always
| happen to anyone on the other side from Microsoft. What happened to Peter
| Quinn was by no means unique.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080208151410252
|
|