[Noooxml] [odf-discuss] URGENT: Support threatened open standards in Europe before Sept 15, 2007

[Nicolas Pettiaux]

2007/9/19, Lars Noodén <lars at umich.edu>:

thank you for your question Lars, and for your answer Andre. It is
probably better than the one I would have written myself.

> When I wrote it I became aware that there is virtually no "open standards"
> pressure group.

indeed. I plan to work on this. And this will be my main action, next
to the Belgian case around ooxml position that I want to be flipped
from abstention to no.

In Brussels, at Belgian federal level, there is one. Active. WIth some
people who try to be active at the IDABC level, aka formal national
representation at some European level.

With the new government that we will have (and that we have been
expecting for 101 days now), this will change. Some of the people
supporting open standards officially will move and leave the small
higher decision levels, but many will remain in the administration. We
will have to rebuild something for the next 5 years (at best)

Yet, Belgian government has decided in June 2006 to make the use of
ODF compulsory for the federal administration in 2 phases: reading by
october 2007, reading and writing by october 2008 if feasible. I want
to insist on this too and make enough noise in the press about this.

One of the possibility or opportunity is the "contagion" (some say
viral) effect this may have: what if sometime in the near future
Belgian administration can and do only send and receive document in
odf formats to their colleagues at the European and other national
levels, and this by the virtue of some legal obligation ? These other
ones will have to have a way to read and send such documents too, aka
install OOo on their platforms, maybe next to Microsoft Office (what
has been done by the way here on the 60000+ computers of the Belgian
ministery of finance). And the worm will be in the fruit. Odf
documents will be sent or at least sendable.

> Shall we found one now?  If so, what approach should it used to ensure
> there is a reasonable pays off in comparison to effort?
>
> What should the scope be, open formats, protocols, specifications and
> standards?

good question. I plan to meet with national representatives in the
European parliament, starting with the Belgian ones. As I am located
in Brussels, very close to this parliament and the representatives'
offices, this will be doable. As I have the chance of owning a house,
I can even, as I did for the software patent case, consider (and
persuade my family) to put up the friends who would like to spend some
time in BRussels TO meet their own representatives.

> How should it interact with established groups for specific domains,
> such as productivity documents?

which ones ?

> > EU open standards needs more backing.
>
> +1

+10

Regards,

Nicolas
-- 
Nicolas Pettiaux - email: nicolas.pettiaux at ael.be
Utiliser des formats ouverts et des logiciels libres -
http://www.passeralinux.org.
Pour la bureautique, les seuls formats ISO sont ceux de http://fr.openoffice.org