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Ford (and other automakers) envision future cars with high tech infotainment systems galore where car dashboards could have downloadable app's just like todays smart phones and tablets. With the OpenXC platform Ford is creating a channel for open collaboration with 3rd party application developers, allowing them to use cars like the Ford Focus to prototype their gizmos. Ford, like most other automakers, is heading towards a vision of the car as a platform for high tech wizardry and gizmos. Consumer electronics need not be limited to our living rooms or mobile computing devices, but can also be on-board the car....

Press release excerpt - Microsoft Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability New interoperability principles and actions will increase openness of key products. REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 21, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors. Specifically, Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and corresponding actions across its high-volume business products: (1) ensuring open connections; (2) promoting data portability; (3) enhancing support for industry standards; and...

The 'promise' has received a positive reaction from the open source community, amid ongoing scrutiny of Microsoft's competitive practices Microsoft has published a "promise not to sue" for 35 Web services standards, a move that should make it easier for the standards to be implemented in open source projects. The Open Specification Promise (OSP), published on Tuesday on Microsoft's interoperability page, appears as Microsoft faces ongoing legal troubles over its competitive practices, particularly where it comes to open source software. "Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing...

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." Victor Hugo. So states a report from the Department of Defense's Advanced Systems and Concepts Office, which recommends that the DoD move to a roadmap to adopt open source and open standards, maintaining that such a move is not only in the US national interest, but in the interests of US national security. The 79-page report proposes that the DoD adopt what it calls "open technology development," which incorporates open source methodologies and open standards, but also takes into...

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." Victor Hugo. So states a report from the Department of Defense's Advanced Systems and Concepts Office, which recommends that the DoD move to a roadmap to adopt open source and open standards, maintaining that such a move is not only in the US national interest, but in the interests of US national security. The 79-page report proposes that the DoD adopt what it calls "open technology development," which incorporates open source methodologies and open standards, but also takes into...

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...

Biting the hand that feeds IT Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/29/microsoft_opens_standards_massachusetts/Massachusetts reverses Microsoft ban By John Oates Published Tuesday 29th November 2005 10:44 GMT Massachusetts has reversed its decision to stop government departments using Microsoft file formats.The state set a deadline of 2007 for all departments to move away from proprietary technology and embrace open formats. But Microsoft's announcement last week that it would submit its file formats to a European standards body has satisfied the state that Microsoft has embraced open standards. Sun Microsystems was a little more cynical. Sun's vice president of blogs and government affairs Piper Cole noted: "There...

The commonwealth of Massachusetts has finalized its decision to standardize desktop applications on OpenDocument, a format not supported by Microsoft Office. The state on Wednesday posted the final version of its Enterprise Technical Reference Model, which mandates new document formats for office productivity applications. As it proposed late last month before a comment period, Massachusetts has decided to use only products that conform to the Open Document Format for Office Applications, or OpenDocument, which is developed by the standards body OASIS. State agencies in the executive branch are now supposed to migrate to OpenDocument-compliant applications by Jan. 1, 2007, a...

commentary Franklin Fisher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor, once said Microsoft's customers believed there were no serious commercial contenders to the Windows operating system. During the Microsoft-US Justice Department anti-trust trial in 1999, Fisher testified that this view was also shared by the software giant's hardware partners. While alternatives to the Windows operating system and Microsoft's cash cow -- its Office productivity suite -- have long existed, these products, including OS/2 and WordPerfect, failed to make a lasting impression on the IT community. Fast forward to 2004. Today, competitors to Microsoft, such as Sun Microsystems, are slowly but surely...