Open Standards and Corporations national style

I don't want to talk about the corporations which just "claim support open standards" like Microsoft because is fancy, needed and good masquerade. I want to talk about the corporations which are participating in the creation and maintenance of open standards.

I seen some of their action in policy making in Brussels over the years, some of it even had impact. Not so big thou, but the money spending for which they call their own policy is enormous. So the question is, why they do so much on big level and then in the end get beaten by their own national branches spread around EU. For sure is it lack of several things. National branches actually don't really know what is the corporate policy, except budgets, spending and salaries, which they care most about, ah yes and the limit of sold merchandise or services over the fiscal year. But they do engage in the policy making via various association for IT, egovernment, information society. But if you look closer on their members you find really bunch of Microsoft goldpartners and service providers, few hardware resellers and these guys.

I'm a committee member for standards here in Slovakia, under Ministry of Finance, durring our meetings I saw a lot of people from exactly these IT associations defending Microsoft propietary standards, with the money of IBM, Sun and Adobe. White papers clearly discrediting ODF and proposing OOXML or at least DOC. You can tell what is next. Yes, it's the consultations from them to government who just bought licenses from Microsoft for like 300.000 eur in december last year.

I just came to the begining, the beating from the bottom, national branches are in the end acting as their own enemy to HQ office. Enemy within, because of lack of managment, interest and lot of selfishness in private business.

I seen and heard of similar actions happening around EU member states, espiecially the ones
not from the western EU.

It's funny, so are you guys going to get it?

Malaysia formally embraces Open Document Format

The Malaysian government today announced plans to adopt open standards and the Open Document Format (ODF) within the country's public sector.

The Malaysian Administration Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) last week issued a tender for a nine-month study to evaluate the usage of open standards in its information communications technology (ICT) deployment. The study will also look into how the Malaysian public sector should migrate to open standards and the ODF, according to the Malaysia Open Source Software Alliance (MOSSA).

more at zdnetasia.com

Lotus Notes 8 with OpenOffice?

Obviously IBM push harder in supporting ODF and Open Source technology.

More at vnunet.com

IBM is preparing to ship a new version of its Lotus Notes and Domino applications on 17 August, according to a company website that was published on Tuesday.

Notes will also incorporate additional productivity applications such as OpenOffice.

Government of Japan Embraces Open Software Standards

The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance), the leading organization advocating for openness and accessibility to government documents and information, today congratulated Japan for adopting a policy under which government ministries and agencies will solicit bids from software vendors whose products support internationally recognized open standards.

Previously, government agencies could ask bidders to submit bids based on whether their products offered functions comparable to particular software suites. With the new interoperability framework, which takes effect immediately, the government will give preference to procuring products that adhere to open standards, and which interoperate easily with other software.

The new guidelines, available from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, were designed to be implemented by government ministries and agencies. The interoperability framework also suggests that the guidelines would also be useful for private industry.

govtech.com