Danes set an "open standards" trial
DENMARK will trial open standards software throughout 2008, according to an announcement from Denmark's Ministry of Science and Technology.
But the Danish ministry's view of what it regards as a so-called "open standard" appears corrupted by a stealthy and unwarranted bias in favour of Microsoft. One has only to read what it says. Minister Helge Sandor's announcement says:
"With regard to standards for document interchange, the timetable states that two standards will be mandatory for an initial test period of one year from 1 January 2008.
"During the test period, public authorities must be able to receive both standards, known as ODF and OOXML, and new procurements must be able to handle at least one of the two standards. The test period will be evaluated during the first half of 2009 by a third party in preparation for a new assessment by the Folketing [Danish Parliament]." (Emphasis added.)
There are only two problems with the inclusion of the Vole's OOXML document format in this trial: OOXML is neither open nor a standard.
The European Union (EU) Commission has stated that, in order to qualify as an open standard, a specification must meet the following criteria:
"* the standard must be fully documented and publicly available;
"* the standard must be freely implementable without economic, political or legal constraints on its implementation and use, now or in the future; and
"* the standard should be managed and maintained in an open forum via an open process (standardisation organisation)."
OOXML cannot be considered open, according to the EU Commission's criteria, because it's not fully documented, it's subject to legal constraints, and it will not be openly maintained. Specifically, OOXML,
- is not fully documented because it specifies use of binary-only objects, implying opaque (programmable by Microsoft only) transformations of binary objects;
- is subject to legal constraints in the form of unspecified Microsoft patents that the Vole has not released for open implementation by anyone; and
- will not be openly maintained by the International Standards Organisation (ISO), as Microsoft has recently backed away from that promise.
OOXML is not a standard, because it has not been approved by ISO. OOXML failed to obtain an adequate number of votes for fast-track approval as an ISO standard. There is an ISO Ballot Resolution Meeting scheduled for February, but it is not sure that OOXML will be approved as a standard at that meeting.
This is a comedy, a mere pretension of trialling open standards software, where in fact all Danish government agencies can, and probably will, take the path of least resistance by continuing to use whatever applications Microsoft tells them are implementations of OOXML, even if the software is what they already have.
Pamela Jones' comment at Groklaw about sums it up. She writes: "See how the game is played? Standards are now a farce. Politicians anoint whatever they please, and technical experts are simply ignored. The technical experts at the various ISO National Bodies told us that MSOOXML should not be approved. But Denmark's politicians have deemed otherwise."
One has to wonder how the Vole has managed to arrange this quite convenient "trial" programme. What's up, Helge Sandor? Inquiring minds want to know. µ
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It's bad enough that a government would confuse MS's offering with an open standard but if it's the "Ministry of Science and Technology" it becomes really silly and untenable to claim it is a confusion.
I'm pretty sure he's called Helge Sander, not Sandor.

I am Danish, and not entirely apathetic in regard to politics. I think there's been a mistake. Editor, take note.

http://www.helgesander.dk/
I'm a dane
..Stig, what do you mean by mistake . That he has been re-elected, and - as previous - presiding over a ministry ?
By the by, odf is a close-circuit to me, by way of being a binary format . (AND) How can you decide on a standard that is not a standard, i.e. common practice . OK, exchanging electronic documents is becoming a standard, a common practice . So de facto MS products are standards of that trade . But then theirs are not 'open standard', which most people already know, but to be reasonable their use is a common practice .
Everything is a mistake .
This whole process stinks to high heaven - along with the governments handling of protocol and format standards and strategy.

This is clearly an attempt of the minority government to press through, the adaption of OOXML as a standard - against a 2/3 majority of the parliament.

Just as the government is in the process of privatising the health sector, the educational sector and so on.