Japan To Adopt Open Software Standards 75
em8chel writes "Japan has adopted a policy under which government ministries and agencies will solicit bids from software vendors whose products support internationally recognized open standards. Japan thus becomes the first country in Asia to embrace open software standards (PDF), the OpenDocument Format Alliance says in a press release. ODF managing director Marino Marcich is quoted: 'By giving preference to open software formats such as ODF, it is saying that information should be competitively priced, innovative, and easily available to the widest range of people, now and in the future. We hail Japan for its diligence and vision.' The new guidelines are available (in Japanese) from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry."
Interoperability say it all (Score:5, Interesting)
of all countries... japan? (Score:1)
-jl
Re:of all countries... japan? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I could go into almost any computer store and buy a pre-built computer running FreeBSD.
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For how long? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Standards do not include statements like "Render the text like an arcane program you do not have the source code to does." Many OOXML standards are impossible to create.
The fact that it was certified as ISO says more about corruption of the process than quality of the standard.
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Re:For how long? (Score:5, Funny)
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But... when there are so many good reasons to oppose OOXML (eg it isn't open when part of the spec says "do it like Word 97" [I paraphrase], ignores other existing standards such as SVG and invents whole new languages) there is no reason to make up new criticisms. Apart from the specification not being open, I can understand that this XML-based format, originally designed for use in Micr
Re:Define "open" (Score:4, Insightful)
It always hits Japan first (Score:2, Funny)
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Regulated vs 'Open Market' capitalism (Score:2)
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Crap. I'm confused.
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When it comes to software, don't even talk about "Open Market Capitalism". Once taxpayer dollars are being spent to buy monopoly products, you don't have a free market anymore.
How exactly is that connected to the gnu project? (Score:2)
I blogged about this three months ago (Score:2)
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They'll probably keep using MS Office on MS Windows, they'll just save their documents as OpenDocument instead of a Microsoft format.
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- Selection of solutions that provide greatest value for least cost
If the formats are open, it's only a matter of time before microsoft is given the boot and replaced with something cheaper.
Does anyone else find this sentence ironic? (Score:1)
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Re:Does anyone else find this sentence ironic? (Score:4, Funny)
There are 11 types of people in the world, those who know binaries and those who don't.
Apparently, you're one of those who don't.
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There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
With the mathematician joke:
There are three kinds of mathematicians: those who can count and those who can't.
Also:
There are two groups of people in the world;
those who believe that the world can be
divided into two groups of people,
and those who don't.
There are two groups of people in the world:
Those who can be categorize
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Do you think I care if you are interested?
I have no clue who you are. I only remember two userids on this site besides mine.
PDF is not a closed document format (Score:3, Informative)
PDF Reference
third edition
Adobe Portable Document Format
Version 1.4
"Adobe gives anyone copyright permission, subject to the conditions stated below, to:
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Software that accepts input in the form of the Portable Document Format must respect the access permissions specified in that document. Accessing the document in ways not permitted by the document's access permissions is a violation of the document author's copyright.
Close, and not really closed, but not an entirely open format either.
If they'd made that item a recommendation, rather than a legal requirement, then I for one would've regarded the PDF standard as truly open.
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DRM'ed content breaks
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The statement says nothing about the document format requiring DRM. Anyone is free to create software that produces PDF documents with no DRM. In fact, it protects the specification
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I see your point however that's not what the condition as posted says. Just because the PDF creator has slapped a "do not copy" bit on some PDF is irrelevant to whether part or all of the material the PDF represents is copyright the PDF creator or not. Only the law in the relevant jurisdiction can decide that, not some specification.
That's why I was happy with a recommendation, not a contractual requirement. The recent slashdot story on false copyright claims [slashdot.org] is relevant. The blocking of excerpting for re
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Open Source and Growing Up Mormon (Score:2, Interesting)
Everytime I see a /. article "X Chooses Open Source", "Country Y Goes Linux", "Province B Going MS Free", I'm reminded of some of my Mormon friends.
Everytime some celebrity converted, they crowed about how their church was gaining ground and would encompass the world.
Everytime some new temple complex was found in Central or South America, they'd claim it was evidence of Nephite civilization.
Everytime there was a "gentile" event that paid homage to the Mormons, they go into theological orgasms.
The facts
Re:Open Source and Growing Up Mormon (Score:4, Insightful)
Or you just wanted to start another flame war about how open source/open standards guys are zealots, etc. etc.
Guess what - even if you are neither, one of most advanced countries in the world using really open standards IS news, even for you.
Yes, maybe posting about every time when such things happens in local level - county, city, region - is a little bit silly (but even then I would like to know details), but this is different case.
p.s. Munich still goes "to the church", by the way (3thd year, and still going. Yes, they have mixed success, but they don't look back). So does lot of other organizations, cities, regions and countries.
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I think the excitement of a religious victory drives this story more than the mundane details about what open standards will really mean in this instance.
The simple test to determine whether something is based on ideology or reason is whether different facts could change your opinion.
Hypothetically, if the open standards were a mess, and the implementations were much worse than
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I don't think that's a bad ideology, in fact I share the ideology of open standards. But I recognize that there is some ideology there
By that reasoning making a commercial software choice is also ideology.
All decisions can be looked at as ideology and reasoning attempting to label open source usage only as ideology, simply because characteristics of software not traditionally associated with closed source software are considered important, shows a closed source ideologue. Most characterization of open
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Incredible that a post can engender such feelings. Are you sure you are stable? Are you under a physician's care?
Really now, if my post caused you that much grief, perhaps you feel that it was too much of a threat to your beliefs and that perhaps you are not that sure of validity of your beliefs?
The point of the post is to draw that exact point.
The Mormon kids I grew up with sought validation by all those points. Only those who are comfortable in their faith and beliefs stop seeking validation.
The /. co
You're off topic (Score:3, Informative)
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Benefits? (Score:2)
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Irrespective of what they look like to you, Mitt Romney is tangible contender for the presidency of the United States and Harry Reid is the majority leader in the Senate which suggests that Mormons have considerable political power.
If OSS had similar presence in the IT industry, even if it continued to look 'questionable' to some people, that would be a cause for celebration, no?
]{
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For those /.'ers who still don't know... (Score:2)
PDF is an ISO Standard.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/standards.h t ml/ [adobe.com]
And here where thay are woring with ISO on PDF V1.7 and ISO 32000 http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/adobepdf.htm l/ [adobe.com]
PDF used as a native output format by Open Office. So far Abobe have not sued over this. Just the opposite, they are promoting PDF as an implementable standard.
If you go to here http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/top ic.html/ [adobe.com] you will see that the specification is fre
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Not really about ODF, though (Score:2)
I don't know, as was asked by others around here, whether OOXML would qualify for the same treatment by Japan -- I suspect it would, though (as would other formats), therefore making this press release little more than a bunch of spin.
EU too. (Score:2)
Image? (Score:2)
Japan supporting International Standards?! Wow! (Score:2)
This is not really news. Japan is an active member of just about every international standards body there is. The Japanese government has always favored standards-based products and actively supported Japanese companies in establishing standards where there were none. It's all good for business and, in Japan, what's good for business is good for the country.
I'd say the ODF is easily pleased.
BTW, what would a "closed international standard" be?
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M$ is also good at spin .. (Score:2)
To be honest, I find the spin that the ODF Alliance is putting on this just as pathetic and self-serving as Microsoft. Their main enemy, the Office Open XML format, is open too: documented, royalty-free, implemented in XML, maintained by an international body. S
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Did you have a point?
Incidentally, where is that definition quoted from? I didn't see it in the summary, or the linked article, any of the posts, and while I'm afraid I don't read Japanese, it doesn't sound like the translation of an offical document to me. It is also contradictory to all of definitions I can think of, including all of the ones quoted on Wikipedia.
On the surface (Score:1)
Partial translation of the Japanese document (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, Japan has some very strict new laws on how corporations must handle personal information of individuals to protect their privacy. Along with the changes in the Corporation Law recently, these laws mean that virtually all major corporations in Japan have been rewriting their articles of incorporation, employee manuals, IT department guidelines, and so on. It doesn't mean things are more secure, but it does mean they are supposed to be more secure. IIRC if your company handles the personal information on more than 500 people then you have to implement certain procedures. (Anyway I am not attempting to provide authoritative information here.)
There also have been a number of scandals (mainly at big banks) on customer information being leaked. So now all corporations' fundamental articles include words like "leakage" and "falsification" of information as things that must be prevented. Japanese companies usually have their fiscal year begin April 1 which means that just a couple weeks ago, most corporations had their general shareholders meetings (many on the same day, to avoid organized crime from interfering) where things like this got voted on (if they weren't the previous year). ODF and standards haven't been on the plate but maybe they will be next year with this announcement.
Okay, on to the PDF. The PDF includes definitions of many terms including "vendor lockin", "open standards", etc. ODF and XML are mentioned by name. It seems to be well written (though I have not read the whole thing). It would seem to exclude allowing Microsoft's horrible new format as an open format because it mentions in the vendor lockin definition the nonavailability of an API, or the limitation on ability to implement it due to licensing requirements. IANAL but it would seem that the government has the leeway to make sane judgements, even in the case of for example Microsoft taking over the standards process and making OOXML an international standard. That said, Japan is probably Microsoft's best or second best market.
The document also states clearly that open formats are to be preferred, and must be used to promote exchange of information between ministries. The word "saiyou" (adopt, use) is used in the statements that say software that adopts open standards is desirable. It is not clear that this forbids the software to also support closed formats, but the spirit of the document would seem to prefer fully open software/solutions so that data may not be saved in closed formats, as this would hamper free exchange of information and the ability to store/view the documents into perpetuity.
Here is a translation of section 4.2.3 on page 19. I, Matthew Rosin, hereby release this translated text to the world in the public domain but deny responsibility for any mistakes.
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4.2.3. Policy related to giving priority to open standards
It is desirable for the government and public organizations to secure the mutual interoperability of information systems between administrative organizations and with related private sector and international organizations, in order to pursue efficient administration and to provide highly convenient service. To this end, it is necessary to procure software for which protocols, APIs, etc. that use interfaces that are compatible with open standards, to the extent to which implementation is possible.
The government and public organizations, in order to secure transparency related to policy, fulfill their responsibility for providing explanations, and realize expanded participation by the citizenry, software must be procured, to the extent to which implementation is possible, for which the formats of data and files are compatible with open standards, in order to guarantee for public documents the ease of access and ability to save and browse over the long term.
Mutual interconnection between related organizations, including governmental organs, and the free exchange of data among
WHAT?? (Score:1)