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Gary Edwards

EU-IDABC ODEF Workshop 2007 in Berlin - Documentation - presentations - 0 views

  • IDABC ODEF Workshop 2007 in Berlin
  • As information exchange in and with public administrations is very often bound to documents, editing, archiving and exchange possibilities for documents are crucial for the optimum function of administrations, both in terms of practicality and cost. Initiatives such as the PEGSCO Recommendations on Open Document Formats published by the IDABC Management Committee, demonstrate public administrations preference for "open" document exchange and storage formats that are subject to formal standardisation via international standardisation procedures.   The primary objectives of the Berlin event, held at the German Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), were to: compile further input from Member State public administrations on their experiences and strategies on ODEF gather industry viewpoints on the initiatives relating to ODEF standardization and information on future standardisation developments provide a platform for exchange between stakeholders in public administrations and main industry players The program of the workshop included, among other: ODEF Strategies: Examples from European Administration Practical Experiences with the implementation of ODEF Report on ODEF-Standardisation activities  4 parallel sessions with participants   A panel discussion with stakeholders 
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    ODF officially died on February 28, 2007, at the Advanced eGovernment Conference in Berlin.  Hellow ODEF
Gary Edwards

Slamming the door shut on MS OOXML - 0 views

  • So your goal is a networked world where metadata is routinely trashed by apps developed by those who are too dumb or otherwise disabled to preserve metadata and only the big boys get to do interoperability, right? So if I send you a document for your editing, I can't count on getting it back with xml:id attributes intact. No thanks, Patrick. That sounds way too much like how things have worked ever since office productivity software first came on the market. In your world, interoperability belongs only to those who can map features 1:1 with the most featureful apps. And that is precisely why OpenDocument never should have been approved as a standard. Your kind of interoperability makes ODF a de facto Sun Microsystems standard wearing the clothing of a de jure standard. Why not just standardize the whole world on Microsoft apps and be done with it? Are two monopolies maintained by an interoperability barrier between them better than one? Fortunately, we don't have to debate the issue because the Directives resolve the issue. You lose under the rules of the game.
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    Marbux on metadata and the language of universal interoperability: Few people are aware of the raging debate that has pushed ODF to the edge. The OASIS ODF TC is split between those who support Universal Interoperability, and those who insist on continuing with limited ODF interoperability.

    ODF (OpenDocument), formally known as Open Office XML, began it's standards life in the fall of 2002 when Sun submitted the OpenOffice file format to OASIS for consideration as a office suite XML fiel format standard. The work on ODF did not start off as a clean slate in that there were near 600 pages of application specific specification from day one of the standards work. The forces of universal interop have sought for years to separate ODF from the application specific features and implementation model of OpenOffice that began with those early specification volumes, and continues through the undue influence Sun continues to have over the ODF specification work.

    Many mistakenly believed that submission of ODF to ISO and subsequent approval as an international standard would provide an effective separation, putting ODF on the track of a truly universal file format.

    Marbux is one of those Universal Interop soldiers who has dug in his heels, cried to the heavens that enough is enough, and demanded the necessary changes to ODF interoperability language.

    This post he recently submitted to the OASIS ODF Metadata SC is a devastating rebuttal to the arguments of those who support the status quo of limited interoperability.

    In prior posts, marbux argues that ISO directives demand without compromise universal interoperability. This demand is also shared by the World Trade Organization directives regarding international trade laws and agreements. Here he brings those arguments together with the technical issues for achieving universal interop.

    It's a devastating argument.

Gary Edwards

Microsoft playing three card monte with XML conversion, with Sun as the "outside man" w... - 0 views

  • In a highly informative post to his Open Stack blog Wednesday, Edwards explains how three key features are necessary for organizations to convert to open formats. These are: Conversion Fidelity - the billions of binaries problem Round Trip Fidelity - the MSOffice bound business processes, line of business integrated apps, and assistive technology type add-ons Application Interop - the cross platform, inter application, cross information domain problem
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    Dana Blankenhorn posted this article back in March of 2007.  It was right at the time when the OASIS ODF TC and Metadata XML/RDF SC (Sub Committee) were going at it hammer and tong concerning three very important file format characteristics needed to fulfill a real world interoperability expectation:

    .... Compatibility - file format level interop -
    :::  backwards compatibility / compatibility with existing file formats, including the legacy of billions of binary Microsoft documents

    ....... Interoperability - application level interop-
    ::::::  application interoperability including interop with all Microsoft applications

Gary Edwards

Sun Supports OOXML as an ISO Standard? - 0 views

  • Sun Microsystems Inc., largely considered an avowed opponent of Open XML because of its own development and support for the competing, ODF-based StarOffice suite, found itself in the unexpected position of stating its support for ratifying Open XML -- albeit after some changes in the proposal are made.
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    Quote: Sun Microsystems Inc., largely considered an avowed opponent of Open XML because of its own development and support for the competing, ODF-based StarOffice suite, found itself in the unexpected position of stating its support for ratifying Open XML -- albeit after some changes in the proposal are made. "We wish to make it completely clear that we support DIS 29500 becoming an ISO Standard and are in complete agreement with its stated purposes of enabling interoperability among different implementations and providing interoperable access to the legacy of Microsoft Office documents," Jon Bosak, a Sun representative to V1, wrote in an e-mail to other committee members over the weekend. "Sun voted No on Approval because it is our expert finding, based on the analysis so far accomplished in V1, that DIS 29500 as presently written is technically incapable of achieving those goals, not because we disagree with the goals or are opposed to an ISO Standard that would enable them." Sun "found itself in the unexpected position of stating its support for ratifying OOXML"?  What???? This is the official position of Sun?

    For the near five years that i have been a member of the OASIS ODF TC, Sun has opposed
Gary Edwards

Indecision in Redmond as Web apps charge : Office 2.0 and Google Apps - 0 views

  • the fact is that Redmond could own this new space if it wanted to. All it would need to do is push interoperability and integration between lightweight Web versions of Office applications and its desktop fatware. Advanced features would be absent from the lightweight versions, but the company could ensure any Office doc would load on the Web -- whatever new desktop service packs and upgrades might appear -- and online document management could be integrated with Windows for offline access.
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    Great quote from Eric Knorr.  He hits the nail on the head here, pointing out the problem Office 2.0  Web Apps and SaaS apps face:  If these Web wonders have interoperability and high fidelity document exchange with MSOffice, their collaborative features are value added wonders for existing business processes and workgroup-workflow scenarios.  If, on the other hand they lack this level of interop - integration with MSOffice documents and processes, the value add becomes a problematic split in a business process.  The only way to overcome that kind of a split is to take the entire process.  Which is difficult for lightweight mashup happy web wonders to do.

    Which leaves each and every one of these Office 2.0 - Web 2.0 - Saas Apps vulnerable to Microsoft.  As long as Micrsoft owns the interop-integration keys to MSOffice, the web wonders live a precarious life.  At any time Microsoft can swoop in and take it all.

    Today, the MSOffice OOXML file format displays perfectly in a browser.  It's 100% web ready, but only the MS Stack of applications gets to play.  Web wonders are not likely to recieve a Redmond invite now or ever.

    Which brings us to the issue of the da Vinci plug-in for MSOffice.  da Vinci is a clone of the OOXML plug-in for MSOffice, and fully leverages the same internal conversion process that OOXML enjoys.  It can achieve the same high fidelity "round trip" conversion that OOXML is capable of.  Maybe even better. 

    The problem for da Vinci isn't conversion fidlelity.  Nor is it capturing  business process important VBa scripts, macros, OLE, and security settings.  da Vinci can do that just fine.  The problem is that da Vinci cannot pipe MSOffice developer platform documents into ODF!!  For the love of five generic eXtensions, called the iX "interoperability enhancements", which the OASIS ODF TC blew off, ODF
Gary Edwards

It's All Over But For The Shouting :: Xandros to Provide Enhanced Interoperability Betw... - 0 views

  • Xandros, the leading provider of intuitive Linux solutions and cross platform interoperability tools, today announced it will join Microsoft and other companies to build and ship open source translators between documents stored in Ecma Office Open XML and Open Document Formats. The translators, being developed through the Open XML/ODF Translator project, will be made available to Xandros users via the Xandros Networks update facility. Every Xandros product that includes OpenOffice.org will be equipped with the translators. This announcement underscores the shared view of Xandros and Microsoft that competing office productivity applications should make it easy for customers to exchange files with one another and allow them to use their operating system and office productivity applications of choice. "This is good news for customers. Xandros and Microsoft share the view that competing office productivity applications should make it easy for customers to exchange files with one another," said Tom Robertson, general manager for Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft. "Mixed system environments are becoming more common, and we believe in delivering interoperability by design for the benefit of our customers. Our ongoing collaborative relationships with commercial open source companies like Xandros help us achieve that goal." "We are delighted to join forces with Microsoft and others to provide interoperability between standardized XML document formats," said Andreas Typaldos, Xandros CEO. "The work of the world is done using various document formats as well as operating systems, so it is vital to provide our customers with the means interoperate with ease in this diverse environment."
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    You have to read this!  Xandros is taking this interoperability garbage seriously!
Gary Edwards

Is Open Source Dying? - 0 views

  • But behind the scenes, things are not quite as rosy. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which lived up to its left-leaning credentials (didn't Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously upbraid open-source proponents for being Communists?) broke important ground by mandating that state agencies switch to open-source platforms. There's just one problem: They can't seem to manage the transition. Sources close to the situation tell me that former state CIO Peter Quinn's resignation happened at least in part because of delaying tactics by vendors who publicly support open source but do their best to scuttle it behind the scenes.
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    Interesting topic which i've covered more fully with the OpenStack Blog : Connecting the Dots
Gary Edwards

Between a rock and a hard place: ODF & CIO's - Where's the Love? - 0 views

  • So I'm disappointed. And not just on behalf of open documents, but on behalf of the CIOs of this country, who are now caught between a rock and a hard place, without a paddle to defend themselves with if they won't to do anything new, innovative and necessary, if a major vendor's ox might be gored in consequence. After the impressive lobbying assault mounted over the past six months against open document format legislation, I expect you won't be hearing of many state IT departments taking the baton back from their legislators.    And who can blame them? If they tried, it wouldn't be likely to be anything as harmless as an open document format that would bite them in the butt.
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    Andy Updegrove weighs in on the wave of ODF legislative failures first decribed by Eric Lai and Gregg Keizer compiled the grim data in a story they posted at ComputerWorld last week titled  Microsoft trounces pro-ODF forces in state battles over open document formats.


    Andy believes that it is the failure of state legislators to do their job that accounts for these failures.  He provides three reasons for this being a a failure of legislative duty.  The most interesting of which is claim that legislators should be protecting CIO's from the ravages of aggressve vendors. 


    The sad truth is that state CIO's are not going to put their careers on the line for a file format after what happened in Massachusetts.


    Andy puts it this way, "
      

    And second, in a situation like this, it is a cop out for legislatures to claim that they should defer to their IT departments to make decisions on open formats.  You don't have to have that good a memory to recall why these bills were introduced in the first place: not because state IT departments aren't a good place to make such decisions, but because successive State CIOs in Massachusetts had been so roughly handled in trying to make these very decisions that no state CIO in his or her right mind was likely to volunteer to be the next sacrificial victim.
    As both Peter Quinn and Louis Gutierrez both found out, trying to make responsible standards-related decisions whe
Gary Edwards

Linux News: Software: OpenDocument Foundation Abandons Namesake Format - Katherine Noyes - 0 views

  • Soured Relationships "What's happened is that there's just not a lot of interest in their approach, and that has resulted in a lot of souring of relationships on the part of the OpenDocument Foundation folks," Douglas Johnson, standards manager at Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA) , told LinuxInsider. The about-face in support should not have a significant effect on the move toward open standards, Johnson added. The OpenDocument Foundation's decision to support CDF, however, is puzzling, Johnson said. 'I'm Perplexed' "It doesn't seem like a good fit," he explained. "It's not designed for this, so I'm perplexed at their desire to go in that direction."
Gary Edwards

Yahoo Adds Flash, HTML to Widgets Platform - Flock - 0 views

  • Yahoo Widgets Version 4.5, which delivers an updated widget platform for developers and a new Widget Gallery for consumers, said Scott Derringer, director of product management at Yahoo. Widgets are mini-applications that live on a desktop and deliver personalized, up-to-date information to help users.
Gary Edwards

XForms with Google Widgets (GTW) - IBM developerWorks : XML : - 0 views

  • Integrate XForms with the Google Web Toolkit, Part 3: Using GWT to create XFormsThis four-part series demonstrates how to use the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and XForms together to create a dynamic Web application. Part 1 looked at the two technologies and how both had JavaScript underpinnings. Part 2 shows how to create a small application with two pages. One page uses GWT to show a list of artists managed by a record company. The second page uses XForms to display the albums recorded by a particular artist. Part 3 uses GWT and XForms on the same page. See how to take advantage of each technology's bindings to JavaScript by using JavaScript to achieve interactivity between GWT and XForms.
Gary Edwards

How Does Compound Document Framework Benefit Us? - Axistive.com - Assistive Technology ... - 0 views

  • How does Compound Document Framework Work? The Compound Document framework introduces concepts that are implemented by a number of new classes. The Compound Document framework implements a new, and more versatile, type of document and defines several new classes to support and manage this compound document, therefore its design is in this format document, command and selection, data, storage. The class structure of the Compound Document framework builds on the structure laid down by the Basic Document framework. Therefore, this section introduces only the classes new to the Compound Document framework.
Gary Edwards

Ripped Off by Rob Weir - Again - 0 views

  • An intriguing idea is whether we can have it both ways. Suppose you are in an ODF editor and you have a "Save for archiving..." option that would save your ODF document as normal, but also generate a PDF version of it and store it in the zip archive along with ODF's XML streams. Then digitally sign the archive along with a time stamp to make it tamper-proof. You would need to define some additional access conventions, but you could end up with a single document that could be loaded in an ODF editor (in read-only mode) to allow examination of the details of spreadsheet formulas, etc., as well as loaded in a PDF reader to show exactly how it was formated.
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    Intriguing?  Rob Weir knows full well that the Foundation proposed this exact same feature set as part of the da Vinci Plug-in design for Massachusetts, July of 2006!!!!!!!!!

    The Complete Feature list of the da Vinci plug-in for MSOffice that was proposed and signed off on by CIO Louis Gutierrez in early August of 2006 was well known by IBM's representatives who were working hand in hand with us at the time: Rob Weir, Don Harbison and Doug Heintzman. 

    Louis Gutierrez had asked IBM and Oracle to create a "benefactors Group" to overcome the challenge that Massachusetts ITD did not have a budget.  IBM and Oracle selected Google, Sun, Novell, Intel, and Nokia as key benefactors.  The group was provided with the complete feature set and roadmap for da Vinci development. 

    The da Vinci roadmap was the schedule announced by Louis Gutierrez in his mid year report, August 17th, 2006.

    The da Vinci plug-in feature set, in order of priority, consisted of:
    ODF iX Approval at OASISPlug-in for MS WORDAccessibility Interface for all ODF documents in MS WordPDF - ODF iX Digital Signature containerPlug-in for MS ExcelInteroperability Wizard for OpenOfficePlug-in for PowerPointXForms InterfaceThe roadmap we provided Louis and the "benefactors" was sceduled out with deliverables, test periods, and cost per deliverable.  The buy-in per "benefactor" was set at $350,000, and i
Gary Edwards

Linux Foundation Legal : Behind Putting the OpenDocument Foundation to Bed (without its... - 0 views

  • CDF is one of the very many useful projects that W3C has been laboring on, but not one that you would have been likely to have heard much about. Until recently, that is, when Gary Edwards, Sam Hiser and Marbux, the management (and perhaps sole remaining members) of the OpenDocument Foundation decided that CDF was the answer to all of the problems that ODF was designed to address. This announcement gave rise to a flurry of press attention that Sam Hiser has collected here. As others (such as Rob Weir) have already documented, these articles gave the OpenDocument Foundation’s position far more attention than it deserved. The most astonishing piece was written by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley. Early on in her article she stated that, “the ODF camp might unravel before Microsoft’s rival Office Open XML (OOXML) comes up for final international standardization vote early next year.” All because Gary, Sam and Marbux have decided that ODF does not meet their needs. Astonishing indeed, given that there is no available evidence to support such a prediction.
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    Uh?  The ODF failure in Massachusetts doesn't count as evidence that ODF was not designed to be compatible with existing MS documents or interoperable with existing MSOffice applications?

    And it's not just the da Vinci plug-in that failed to implement ODF in Massachusetts!  Nine months later Sun delivered their ODF plug-in for MSOffice to Massachusetts.  The next day, Massachusetts threw in the towel, officially recognizing MS-OOXML (and the MS-OOXML Compatibility Pack plug-in) as a standard format for the future.

    Worse, the Massachusetts recognition of MS-OOXML came just weeks before the September 2nd ISO vote on MS-OOXML.  Why not wait a few more weeks?  After all, Massachusetts had conducted a year long pilot study to implement ODF using ODF desktop office sutie alternatives to MSOffice.  Not only did the rip out and replace approach fail, but they were also unable to integrate OpenOffice ODF desktops into existing MSOffice bound workgroups.

    The year long pilot study was followed by another year long effort trying to implement ODF using the plug-in approach.  That too failed with Sun's ODF plug-in the final candidate to prove the difficulty of implementing ODF in situations where MSOffice workgroups dominate.

    California and the EU-IDABC were closely watching the events in Massachusetts, as was most every CIO in government and private enterprise.  Reasoning that if Massachusetts was unable to implement ODF, California CIO's totally refused IBM and Sun's effort to get a pilot study underway.

    Across the pond, in the aftermath of Massachusetts CIO Louis Guiterrez resignation on October 4th, 2006, the EU-IDABC set about developing their own file format, ODEF.  The Open Document Exchange Format splashed into the public discussion on February 28th, 2007 at the "Open Document Exchange Workshop" held in Berlin, Germany.

    Meanwhile, the Sun ODF plug-in is fl
Gary Edwards

Open Document Format: The sad truth | Scott Mace Information Manager Journal - 0 views

  • Open Document Format: The sad truth David Berlind has posted a massive chronicle of who said what to whom about the supposed emergence of CDF as an alternative to Open Document Format (ODF) and OOXML. I played a minor role in this saga when I spoke with Gary Edwards for Opening Move, back in April. This was before Edwards proposed CDF in place of ODF. If you haven't listened to our conversation, please do so, because the concerns Edwards raised about ODF (and OOXML) remain just as valid today. While I'm sad to see Edwards' more recent direction and assertions debunked in the press and the blogosphere, the greater tragedy is of two competing document standards -- ODF and OOXML -- now on seemingly irreversible paths to immortality, meaning we'll have translation issues between them around for several lifetimes to come.
Gary Edwards

Denmark: OOXML vote won't affect public sector. ODF is too costly! | InfoWorld - 0 views

  • Lebech said Denmark considers OOXML an open standard, regardless whether it is approved by the ISO. "It would be impossible for us to use only ISO standards if we want to fulfill the goal of creating interoperability in the government sector," he said. The Danish Parliament also mandated that public agencies consider the cost of using open formats. One of the main reasons OOXML was included is because Denmark is heavily dependent on document management systems that are integrated with Microsoft's Office products, Lebech said. Denmark also found that requiring agencies to only use ODF would have been too expensive, mostly because of the cost of converting documents into ODF, Lebech said. "We wouldn't have been able to only support ODF," Lebech said. "It wouldn't have been cost neutral."
Gary Edwards

Can IBM save OpenOffice.org from itself? - 0 views

  • OpenOffice.org's biggest foe may be Microsoft Office, but critics say the open-source organization has, from its inception, also been one of its application suite's own worst enemies -- a victim of a development culture that differs radically from the open-source norm. Observers now wonder if IBM's entry into OpenOffice.org can make the necessary changes.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      good article from Eric Lai of ComputerWorld. Written on the eve of the infamous Barcelona OpenOffice.org developers conference, Eric argues that OOo isn't a real open source community. Instead, OOo is a owned and operated by Sun.
      One of the more important control points Sun insists on is that of commit rights and project managers. Only Sun employees have these rights and can hold these important positions..
      The more important point is made by Marbux (below: ODF is an application specific format designed exactly for OpenOffice. While other applications might partially implement ODF, interoperability and successful ODF document exchange require the OOo code base!
      From Marbux: This is the only article I've found to date where IBM (Heintzman) flat out says IBM wants changes in OOo licensing, more in line with the Eclipse and Apache licenses. See pg. 2. Significant because it feeds the meme that IBM's own ODF-based development goal is proprietary closed source built on the OOo code base, e.g., Symphony, et cet.
      And that has huge signficance once you realize that ODF is not the real standard; the OOo code base is the real ODF standard. Look around the world and you see that ODF adoption decisions by governments are all in reality decisions to go with StarOffice, OOo, or OOo clones. I haven't, for example, seen a single instance where a government decided to ride with KOffice. Why would they, with the interop issues between KOffice and OOo? The fact that OOo's code base is the real ODF standard will figure strongly in the comments. Couple it with Sun's iron-fisted control of the OOo code base, and you have vendor lock-in with a Microsoft partner.
      But with 70 developers committed in China, where developers salaries are inexpensive, IBM will soon be in a position to threaten to fork the OOo code base using proprietary extensions. Is that their real tactic to force changes in licensing and gov
Gary Edwards

The future of XML - 0 views

  • Of course, the most important conversion isn't from OpenDoc to OOXML or vice versa: it's a down conversion from either OpenDoc or OOXML to XHTML. The HTML exporters in OpenOffice and Microsoft Office are uniformly atrocious. Look for third-party developers to pick up the slack. Most important, look for individual corporate developers and webmasters to begin publishing custom templates for their sites. This will enable regular folks to write in Microsoft Word as they're accustomed to doing and then upload their musings straight into the local content-management system. Editing and reviewing tools can be built right in. Because machines generate all the markup (the humans see the GUI interface they're used to), well-formedness will be a freebie. The majority of the Web won't be well-formed by the end of 2008, but a larger percentage will be than today.
Gary Edwards

IT set to 'take their heads out of the sand' and embrace Web 2.0 - 0 views

  • IT managers and CIOs in large companies who have actively resisted embracing Web 2.0 technologies like wikis, RSS, blogs and social networks will likely begin adding them to their priority lists in 2008, according to a report released Friday by Forrester Research Inc.
Gary Edwards

» Government turns to SaaS to salvage IT failures | IT Project Failures | ZDN... - 0 views

  • As Administrator of E-Government and Information Technology, for the Office of Management and Budget, Evans oversees the government’s CIO Council, comprised of Chief Information Officers from various agencies. In September, 2007, she testified before the Senate, about high-risk IT projects:
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