Dutch Government demands Open Sauce
Vole sent packing
THE DUTCH government has decided that it wants Open Sauce software running on all its systems by April 2008.
The Netherlands Economic Affairs Ministry said that Government organisations will have to come up with a damn fine excuse as to why any computer is running proprietary software and formats after that date.
Ministry spokesman Edwin van Scherrenburg said the government will save $US8.8 million a year on city housing registers after switching to open source.
The move caught Vole on the hop. It has been trying to achieve "open source" certification for its Office Open XML standard, before the Dutch crack down. Unfortunately that did not happen in time.
Word documents will still be allowed by the Dutch government for now and Vole hopes to receive approval soon for its Office Open XML to qualify as open source.
A spokesVole told AP that the company was worried about other aspects of the policy, especially the provision that agencies should prefer open source.
Ironically, he said that it was not in the best interests of the software market for the government to rely on one type of software. µ
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Comments
Open Source != Open Standards
Open source and open standards are two completely different things!@Ian
The author may or may not be aware of that. In addition to applying to the ISO standards body MS is also applying to the OSDL for certification of at least one of it's licenses as Open Source. I would guess that would be the license covering Office Open XML.The vole is cunning indeed and they are not going to hell quietly. If they can snivel their way into the OSDL and start calling themselves Open Source, they will.
MS's open license not connected with MSOOXML
The licenses from Microsoft that OSDL certified as Open Source licenses have nothing to do with MSOOXML. By that I mean that Microsoft is not proposing to license any implementation of MSOOXML under those licenses.It may well be that Microsoft is attempting to confuse nontechnical people by getting a Microsoft license blessed by OSDL, hoping they'll think that Microsoft Office must be open source, given the name Open Office XML and the existence of the OSDL-approved licenses, but Microsoft is not using those licenses for the Microsoft Office product.
@john
john,I think we can take it as read that the fundamental difference in the two ..Open Source != Open Standards ... is well known by the Dutch.
MS must be being held over a pork barrel to be maintaining their intransigent position..... although presumably the thrill must do something for them or they wouldn't be so obtuse/obfuscatory/economical with the truth........ or at least be prey/party to the perception of it being so.
QuITe obviously an Executive Decision Failing.