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The U.K. Cabinet Office accomplished today what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts set out (unsuccessfully) to achieve ten years ago: it formally required compliance with the Open Document Format (ODF) by software to be purchased in the future across all government bodies. Compliance with any of the existing versions of OOXML, the competing document format championed by Microsoft, is neither required nor relevant. The announcement was made today by The Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude. Henceforth, ODF compliance will be required for documents intended to be shared or subject to collaboration. PDF/A or HTML compliance will be required for...

OpenOffice 3.2 is available for download. Improvements in the latest release of the open source office suite include faster start-ups, improved compatibility with other office programs, and several new features (with special attention to the Calc spreadsheet program.) At the same time, the OpenOffice.org team is celebrating its tenth anniversary and a claimed total 300 million downloads of the office software since its initial launch. They say that just over a year since its launch, OpenOffice 3 has logged over one third of those downloads from the central server alone. (Thanks in a large part to Germans, Czechs, and Poles,...

For some time I've been considering writing a book about what has become a standards war of truly epic proportions. I refer, of course, to the ongoing, ever expanding, still escalating conflict between ODF and OOXML, a battle that is playing out across five continents and in both the halls of government and the marketplace alike. And, needless to say, at countless blogs and news sites all the Web over as well. Arrayed on one side or the other, either in the forefront of battle or behind the scenes, are most of the major IT vendors of our time.  And...

The chief information officer of Massachusetts' Information Technology Division (ITD) resigned earlier this week, citing a lack of funding for the state's IT programs. Louis Gutierrez had been a champion of open standards and was a strong supporter of the state's plan to implement the OpenDocument format (ODF) and his resignation could slow the ODF rollout, which is scheduled to go live in January. Gutierrez had been sounding the alarm over the lack of funding since August when the state's legislature failed to approve a bond issue that would provide financing for various IT programs including the move to ODF.

If you were thinking that Microsoft's newly announced ODF plugin means you could just stay with Microsoft and still easily save documents as ODF, which is I'm sure what they hope you are thinking, you need to see this. I started to put it in News Picks, but it's too important. Andy Updegrove sent me a link to a blog called An Antic Disposition, by somebody named Rob Weir. I've been trying to contact him, but what he's doing requires no introduction or imprimatur to have value. Just look for yourself at the screenshots he's putting up on his blog....

IBM chose the Deutsche Notes User Group conference in Germany this week to make a significant announcement about its adoption of the ODF (OpenDocument Format) in the next version of Lotus Notes. The first beta, due out this fall, will include an ODF-compatible version of OpenOffice embedded in the Notes e-mail application. It will include word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications (or editors, as they are called), giving users the ability to create, edit, and save documents natively in ODF. Amy Wohl, president of Wohl Associates, called the news significant on a number of levels. "This is the way of...

A trade association has blasted the Massachusetts Information and Technology Division (IDT) for requesting a plug-in for Microsoft's Office Suite, seizing on the issue as evidence that the state's policy of mandating the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is "a biased, open source-only preference policy." The request for proposal (RFP) was posted last Wednesday but the OpenDocument Foundation Inc. said two days later that it has such a plug-in and it will be submitted soon to the IDT. Late Monday, Melanie Wyne, executive director of the Initiative for Software Choice (ISC), said in a statement: "The RFP reveals that the choice presented...

I have just heard from the OpenDocument Foundation's Gary Edwards, with news about a plugin the Foundation is offering the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in response to the Commonwealth's request for information on any plugin that could "allow Microsoft Office to easily open, render, and save to ODF files, and also allow translation of documents between Microsoft's binary (.doc, .xls, .ppt) or XML formats and ODF." The Foundation says it has such a plugin, it has finished testing it, and it is good to go. Edwards tells me the following: The OpenDocument Foundation has notified the Massachusetts ITD that we have...

The EU Commission would like to create a digital library. Microsoft has already pitched them on their XML, telling the Commission that they have sent their XML to ECMA with hopes of it becoming an ISO standard someday and they'd like to work with the Commission going forward. I stumbled across the information when I found that the EU Commission has completed an online survey on issues related to its proposed digital library: The European Commissions’ plan to promote digital access to Europe’s heritage is rapidly taking shape. At least six million books, documents and other cultural works will be...

Only a few blog entries ago it was my sad lot to report that Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn had resigned, leaving the fate of his effort to mandate use of the OpenDocument format (ODF) hanging in the air. Tonight, I'm pleased to report, definitively (and exclusively), that the Massachusetts administration has confirmed that it will stand not only by open format standards in general (as earlier reported in the press), but behind ODF specifically as well. Administration support for ODF could not be confirmed until now. Only two brief statements by administration spokespersons had been publicly reported, and both were...

BOSTON (AP) -- Police officers stepping into hostage standoffs and other dicey situations now have something new to throw into the mix - a baseball-sized camera that can be hurled from afar, survive the landing and wirelessly relay video and audio back to base for two hours. The EyeBall camera weighs less than a pound and is protected by a rugged rubber and polyurethane housing. That allows it to be thrown through windows or bounced off walls. When it comes to a rest, the ball stabilizes itself, then begins transmitting footage and sound up to 200 yards away. The EyeBall...

Last week, just before the Thanksgiving holiday got underway in the US, Larry Rosen, the attorney that wrote the book on open source licensing If the Microsoft news wins Google over to the company's file formats, it could be game over for ODF.and the man who was the Open Source Initiative's first general counsel and secretary, issued a statement that endorsed the new terms under which Microsoft is making its Office XML Reference Schema to developers of all types, including open source developers.  Rosen is one of two lawyers whose endorsement is critical to the open source world's acceptance of...

Mass. bill endangers OpenDocument decision By Martin LaMonica Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: November 3, 2005, 7:54 AM PST The Massachusetts Senate has introduced a provision to an economic stimulus bill that endangers a state decision to standardize on the OpenDocument format. An amendment to Senate bill 2256, published on Wednesday, proposes the creation of a four-person information technology task force to approve technical standards in the state. The Senate is scheduled on Thursday to discuss the bill, known as the Commonwealth Investment Act. The introduction of the amendment follows a hearing on Monday during which the chair of a...

Warning. If you read any further, you will find yourself at ground 0.0 of the biggest battle the computer industry has ever seen. It is where the biggest warriors from the proprietary software world, the open standards world, and the open source world are engaged in hand-to-hand combat. At least for the moment, the open source and open standards worlds (the Rebel Alliance) appear to have joined sides against the proprietary warlords, led by Microsoft. Both on and off the field (where negotiators have failed to broker a truce), the engagement has not been pretty. But this is war. For the first time in the...

The Open Document Fellowship has been created to give the OASIS Open Document Format added momentum, as the war of words between Sun and Microsoft gets bitter The Open Document Fellowship was launched on Monday to add momentum to what appears to be a growing movement to support the open standard for the production, storage and dissemination of documents. The Open Document Format for Office Applications, or OpenDocument, was developed by standards body OASIS. Last month, it received its first major seal of approval when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts became the first public body to insist on the use of...

Opinion: It's not coincidence that after Massachusetts made it clear that it would support open formats, Microsoft is now going to include PDF in the next version of Office. What is Microsoft up to, anyway, with its sudden plan to finally support PDF? It wasn't announced by Bill Gates loudly to the world at the Professional Developer Conference a few weeks ago. It also wasn't proclaimed to the Microsoft faithful at its recent Most Valuable Professional Global Summit. No, instead, Microsoft quietly squeaked out the news on a Saturday afternoon in Microsoft Office Program Manager Brian Jones' Weblog. Could it...

As noted in Groklaw, FT.com, ZDNet, and other places, the State of Massachusetts is backing the OpenDocument standard as the standard format for office applications, text documents, spreadsheets, charts and graphical documents like drawings and presentations. All Massachusetts agencies are expected to migrate by January 1, 2007. This is instead of Microsoft’s new Office XML format (aka Microsoft Office Open XML File format). This is big news. Currently most people exchange office documents using Microsoft’s binary formats (known as .doc, .ppt, and .xls), but now that the XML technologies are available and more mature, many people want to switch to...