We don’t often talk directly about our business activities on this blog. But once in a while something happens that rightly deserves a mention.

Our Open Source consulting business, The Open Learning Centre, has been very busy of late. We’ve been working with a household name hardware manufacturer and a very well known high-street retailer to deliver a really exciting and innovative product to the consumer market.

Say hello to the webbook (click for a very big image).

The webbook is manufactured by the UK electronics company Elonex and is being sold exclusively by The Carphone Warehouse.

The webbook is a high specification UMPC that has a 1.6Ghz Via C7 processor (x86), 512Mb of RAM and [currently] an 80G HDD. The screen has a very usable 1024×600 resolution and it has the usual assortment of USB, LAN and an SD socket, plus built in WiFi too. We have setup a blog specifically for the webbook here so users can get access to all the latest news, tips and advice. Be sure to add it to your feed reader.

The really cool thing about the webbook is the software. The webbok comes pre-loaded with Ubuntu 8.04.1, Hardy Heron, and some new software written especially for this application that delivers broadband connectivity over 3G Mobile networks.

With Ubuntu you get pretty much everything you will ever need included right out-of-the-box. You don’t need to go out and pay several hundred pounds to get legal copies of a word-processor, spreadsheet and email client. The webbook comes pre-installed with the fantastic OpenOffice.org applications suite and the Evolution mail and calendaring client. Web browsing is provided by the most excellent Firefox 3 and there are many more high quality and fully functional applications provided on the hard disk. A couple of examples are The Gimp for photo editing and Pidgin for Instant Messaging. Of course you also have access to Ubuntu’s on-line software repository where there are literally thousands of other programs and applications to choose from. And they are all free and are not “demo” or limited functionality versions either. Open Source gives you freedom, not restrictions.

The 3G communications software called Wader (GPL licensed, and funded by Elonex) was written by Warp Networks of Zaragoza, Spain. Their knowledge of this specialised area of communications technology and Python programming is superb and the chaps did a fantastic job to get the software ready for production in what were ultimately very tight time-scales. We have plenty of plans for new features and enhancements, and as the software is open source, community involvement is welcomed and encouraged. We will be communicating more on how to get involved shortly.

For anyone interested in Mobile Broadband, or just getting their mits on a webbook for that matter, the proposition from Carphone Warehouse is very attractive indeed: simply take out a contract (with Carphone Warehouse) for 3G Mobile Broadband with either Orange, T-Mobile or 3 and you get the webbook for free! Or, you can just buy the webbook outright. If you are in the UK, there’s probably a webbook near you now. They are available on-line or from their many high street shops.

Our role in this was to work with Elonex to get the right software packaged and delivered on time to Carphone Warehouse. We introduced Elonex to Canonical in London (now can you guess where I am?) who are the commercial enterprise behind the world’s most popular Open Source Operating System, Ubuntu. We orchestrated the 3G development track with Warp Networks and carried out testing as the code was being produced. And we coordinated and managed the packaging and development of the software bundle as a whole.

Here’s the other side of the webbook:

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Here is a most excellent article in which Steven explains, in simple terms, why it makes really good business sense to dump Microsoft and use Linux and OpenOffice.org. It is so obvious, even the M$ Fanboy should be able understand it…

It’s time to give up our Microsoft habit. We used to be able to afford to pay the Microsoft tax. Those days are done.

The hard days ahead are the days when we need to make the most of what we have and that means Linux. If we, and our businesses, are to make it through the great depression of the 21st century, we must start moving to Linux today.

I recommend you read it through, there’s some really simple and compelling arguments in there. And then read the comments.

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I came across this pearl on the OpenOffice.org marketing mailing list and it certainly gave me a little chuckle…

It was from Alexandro (CoLo of OO.o Spain) who is looking for a job in the USA working with OpenOffice.org. Here is one I don’t think he’ll be applying for…

US-WA-Redmond-SMB Marketing Manager - Breadth.

The Breadth Team is seeking a talented Marketing Manager to help drive our competitive efforts within the SMS&P-SMB and with other field teams, segment teams and product groups across Microsoft. Our passion is helping our field and partners win against our biggest competitors in this space, particularly OpenOffice and MySQL.

[Emphasis mine]

Or perhaps he should? Why not infiltrate the competition? I’d hazard a guess that M$ do, or have done it.

O.K. I’ll admit that he might not last so long But I’m sure he could cause a decent amount of “Collateral Repair”. [This is the opposite of Collateral Damage; in this scenario he would help many SMEs to discover the advantages of using OpenOffice.org and Open Source in general, thereby preventing the damage caused by using proprietary software].

Have a nice day.

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Bob Sutor, encourages all Europeans

… who are interested in open standards and interoperability [to] look at, comment, and, if appropriate, express their support for this draft or portions thereof.

What draft is he talking about? This one. It the draft of a report by the EU’s IDABC called the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) v2.0.

They request that

Everyone who sees interoperability as an effective means to provide better pan-European eGovernment services is invited to read the draft document and to provide feedback on its content by sending comments to eifv2@ec.europa.eu by the 22nd of September 2008 at the latest.

IDABC is interested in your reactions and contributions. A summary of reactions will be published on this website and will constitute another input into the EIF elaboration.

The EIF v2.0 will take the form of an official Commission position with the publication of a Communication from the Commission to the Council and to the Parliament by the end of 2008.

Although the draft is quite long (a 3.5Mb PDF) I am going to read it over the next few weeks and will certainly be making comments. I encourage anyone who is interested in Open Standards and the ability to communicate electronically with “the state” using the tools of your choice [e.g. An ODF document, created in OpenOffice.org, running on an Open Source operating system], to do so too.

Thanks for pointing this out Bob. I briefly saw Basil from the OFE yesterday and he mentioned it was due out imminently.

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Do you remember that total Jerk Dennis Byron? The chap who thought that Digistan was some sort of terrorist organisation? Well here’s a rather nicely ironic way to shove his ignorant and frankly stupid views in that familiar place where “the sun doesn’t shine”.

A fellow colleague on the blogosphere, Russell Ossendryver, sent me an email linking to a recent on-line petition instigated by John McCreesh (of OpenOffice.org) on 10 Downing Street’s petition engine.

Basically it calls for the UK Government to:

(1) Procure only information technology that implements free and open standards;

(2) Deliver e-government services based exclusively on free and open standards;

(3) Use only free and open digital standards in their own activities.

as adopted and proclaimed by the founders of the Digital Standards Organization in The Hague on 21 May 2008.

That sounds like a fine idea to me! It would save the country literally hundreds of millions of pounds just for starters.

There are some particularly interesting names already on the list of signatories:

Mark Taylor (Open Source Consortium), Chris Puttick (CIO for Oxford Archaeology), Glyn Moody (Journalist and Open Source Commentator: http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com), and Ian Lynch (of INGOTS fame).

I’ve signed it. If you think that Open Standards are important (and you SHOULD if you are reading this!) then what are you waiting for? Click here and register your opinion.

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If true, this is a quite startling turn of events in the OOXML/Office 2007 saga (emphasis mine).

Today, Microsoft announced that it was making new commitments to document interoperability within its Office product line for Windows. Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will add native support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.1, PDF 1.5, PDF/A and XML Paper Specification, an XML-based fixed-document format created by Microsoft.

Just read that again… Office 2007 will add native support for ODF (IS26300) the format used by OpenOffice.org, IBM’s Lotus Symphony, Koffice and others…

And more importantly Doug (the ssssnake) goes on to say:

Mahugh stated that Microsoft would not implement the final ISO version of OOXML until Office 14 ships at an unstated date in the future.

So what the **** has gone on here? Anyone got any suggestions?

[Update: 23:00] Having just read Microsoft’s press release, it appears to be true. Blow me down with a small and lightweight feather. One quote that immediately caught my attention is this (again emphasis mine):

“We are committed to providing Office users with greater choice among document formats and enhanced interoperability between those formats and the applications that implement them,” said Chris Capossela, senior vice president for the Microsoft Business Division. “By increasing the openness of our products and participating actively in the development and maintenance of document format standards, we believe we can help create opportunities for developers and competitors, including members of the open source communities, to innovate and deliver new value for customers.”

Blimey. This language is unusually opaque for M$. Since when have they ever wanted to “help create opportunities for competitors”??? I can only guess at what has been going on here but I bet it has something to do with the EU

WOW. We do really live in interesting times.

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I went to a party this Saturday evening for a friend’s 40th birthday.

Nothing remotely interesting about that in itself, but I was rather struck yesterday whilst remembering some of the conversations I’d had the previous night…

There were many people who I did not know at all or as only a “face” from the school run and such like. And it was a typical party with a wide mixture of individuals and couples from all sorts of backgrounds [i.e, NOT all in IT], and quite a few were from Australia. When the conversation turned to “what do you then?” and I told them, almost everyone of the replies included a comment along the lines of “Oh, you mean like Open Office?”.

I was questioned in-depth about Open Source in general, the business model(s) that surround and support it and on how one should go about getting or using it.

Another common thread to our chats was the: “There’s no reason to go out and spend hundreds of pounds of Microsoft’s Office. OpenOffice does more than enough and is free”.

The general interest level in Open Source and specific familiarity OpenOffice.org was very encouraging indeed.

On the downside, the evening was less like a party and more like a sales pitch… But hey - that’s fine by me

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Thanks to Russell Ossendryver for pointing this out.

Recently it was announced that National Archives are converting their stock of electronic documents into Microsoft Open XML format. This format is not supported outside of Microsoft’s own products and ties the public to purchasing Microsoft Office should they wish to view the products, which is a cost of around £80-£120 depending on version. It also ties a user to purchasing Microsoft Windows which is a cost of roughly £150 for the Basic edition or purchasing a new PC with Windows which is a cost of at around £200 for a new machine. Instead Open Document Format which is an accepted ISO standard unlike Open XML should be used. Open Document Format is supported on many major platforms and is freely available at no charge. It includes all the necessary features for documents otherwise it would not be the ISO standard. There should not be a £250 charge to use Microsoft for accessing the National Archives electronically especially in light of the companies ongoing litigation with the EU regarding its anti-competitive actions.

Since the recent vote by the ISO, the bit about OOXML not being a standard is now obsolete unless there is a formal complaint made within 2 months. Also, M$ Office can cost a great deal more than £120 if you want any of the (more useful) enterprise features. Of course, Open Source offers them for free.

Nevertheless, although I doubt it will make much difference to the choice of document format used by the UK’s publicly owned National Archive, as it seems to have been infiltrated by Microsoft’s puppets at senior levels, it may well help to raise the profile of ODF and OpenOffice.org to the UK government.

And of course, it’s just fun to be able to make your point somewhere.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ODFinNA/

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I know there has been a great deal of written commentary about why OOXML should or should not become an ISO standard. Just look back though this blog for many of them

Recently however, Rob Weir has documented an incredibly simple, telling and fascinatingly descriptive demonstration of exactly why OOXML is such utter crap and should never become a standard in its current format. He shows how a simple formatting rule looks when saved using OOXML or ODF* based applications. See Rob’s table and comments below:

* ODF is the ISO approved standard for document formats and is used by many platform independent applications such as OpenOffice.org and KOffice.

… let’s take a look at how OOXML and ODF represent a staple of document formats: text color and alignment. I created six documents: word processor, spreadsheet and presentation graphics, in OOXML and ODF formats. In each case I entered one simple string “This is red text”. In each case I made the word “red” red, and right aligned the entire string. The following table shows the representation of this formatting instruction in OOXML and ODF, for each of the three application types:

Format	Text Color	Text Alignment
OOXML Text	<w:color w:val=”FF0000″/>	<w:jc w:val=”right”/>
OOXML Sheet	<color rgb=”FFFF0000″/>	<alignment horizontal=”right”/>
OOXML Presentation	<a:srgbClr val=”FF0000″/>	<a:pPr algn=”r”/>
ODF Text	<style:text-properties fo:color=”#FF0000″/>	<style:paragraph-properties fo:text-align=”end” />
ODF Sheet	<style:text-properties fo:color=”#FF0000″/>	<style:paragraph-properties fo:text-align=”end”/>
ODF Presentation	<style:text-properties fo:color=”#FF0000″/>	<style:paragraph-properties fo:text-align=”end”/>

The results speak for themselves.

What is the engineering justification for this horror? I have no doubt that this accurately reflects the internals of Microsoft Office, and shows how these three applications have been developed by three different, isolated teams. But is this a suitable foundation for an International Standard? Does this represent a reasonable engineering judgment? ODF uses the W3C’s XSL-FO vocabulary for text styling, and uses this vocabulary consistently. OOXML’s representation, on the other hand, appear incompatible with any deliberate design methodology.

I fear that before we can tackle harmonization of ODF and OOXML, we will first need to harmonize OOXML with itself!

I love how convoluted and completely indecipherable the OOXML representations are; and they are all different depending on which application you use! It’s laughable really.

Honestly, how on earth can the US NB, for example, have just announced their decision to vote yes to OOXML unless they have been thoroughly corrupted - as have so many other of the ISO National bodies and sub-committees involved in this whole sorry saga.

To my mind there will be two losers if OOXML becomes IS-29500:

• Us - That’s all of us as consumers and users of electronic documents
• ISO - They have already lost a great deal of respect and credibility. If OOXML passes they will have none left. They will become an irrelevance in technology standards at least.

I can see the IETF (The body responsible for much of what has made the Internet work) becoming a far more important standards setter going forward…

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After this article I picked up on recently about the 30,000+ desktops having moved to Linux in India, we now have the news this morning that the French Paramilitary Police Force will be dumping ALL it’s Microshaft software in favour of Open Source Linux. And they are, somewhat surprisingly in my book, choosing Ubuntu rather than their own - home grown - Mandriva distribution.

Anyway, this is a pretty big story as the lead paragraph states:

PARIS (AFP) - The French paramilitary police force said Wednesday it is ditching Microsoft for the free Linux operating system, becoming one of the biggest administrations in the world to make the break.

See… I told you so

The gendarmerie’s 70,000 desktops currently use Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system. But these will progressively change over to the Linux system distributed by Ubuntu, explained Colonel Nicolas Geraud, deputy director of the gendarmerie’s IT department.

“We will introduce Linux every time we have to replace a desktop computer,” he said, “so this year we expect to change 5,000-8,000 to Ubuntu and then 12,000-15,000 over the next four years so that every desktop uses the Linux operating system by 2013-2014.”

There are three reasons behind the move, Geraud said at the Solution Linux 2008 conference here. The first is to diversify suppliers and reduce the force’s reliance on one company, the second is to give the gendarmerie mastery of the operating system and the third is cost, he said.

He also added that “the Linux interface is ahead of other operating systems currently on the market for professional use.”

And even more impressively is this comment about the savings they make by using OpenOffice.org compared to buying MS Office.

The move away from licensed products is saving the gendarmerie about seven million euros (10.3 million dollars) a year for all its PCs.

“In 2004 we had to buy 13,000 licences for office suites for our PCs,” he said, “but in the three years since then we’ve only had to buy a total of 27 licences.”

I thought of making the title of this piece:

French Police Buy 27 MS Office Licenses!

But I wasn’t sure it was catchy enough. lol.

[Update: How about this then?

Hasta La Vista Bebé

Sorry. Couldn't resist it...]

Vive la France!

(Until the Six Nations Rugby gets underway at least!)

Many thanks to Sophie on the OpenOffice.org Marketing Mailing List for pointing this out.

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