First part of my programm was the new event “Berlin Open“, organised by a team of students lead by Prof. Lutterbeck of TU Berlin. Topic was “Open Innovation” and during the two conference days many talks by quite different people showed an impression of the very interesting aspects around “openess” - in mind, music, software, (geographical) data and research.

Germany’s secretary of state Schallbruch clearly commented that the Federal Government is not amused about what’s going on with document interoperability; a hint to Microsoft and their behaviour with OOXML in general (which was declined by his Ministry) and ODF interop as shown in Office 2007 SP2. And he announced that the user software for Germany’s new electronic ID (ePA) will be free software. Great, thank you fed gov!

Also a very interesting talk by Simon Hampton, Google’s lead of public policy in Brussels, about Google’s Openess with 4Cs. And many others… Just one more to mention. PhD Leonhard Dobusch talked about his studies of four different (non) migration projects in four Municipalities, Vienna, Frankfurt, Berlin and Munich. His conclusion: “Speaking as economist, I could tell you, what Munich is doing is real innovation”. Thank you, Leonhard!

To sum up this event: interesting speakers, quite good location, only few participants. Changes in concept neccessary, but only if repeated. Thanks to Prof Lutterbeck and his team. Good luck in retirement!

Let’s go on with the next event, Europe’s leading event on free software and business, the Linuxtag. From Wed to Sat our LiMux project was ready for sharing experiences in four different talks during the conference and at the booth together with our partners from Foreign Office, Federal Office for IT-Security and the Federal Open Source Competence Center, which also organised the booth; thanks for that. Besides general information about our project it was the WollMux people asked about, wanted to know more. Great. A clear todo for our office team to get some needed public improvements on presentation and documentation done, finally.

(This photo shows our booth staff on the left, Matthias, Michael and Jens, thank you! - and our LiMux project manager Peter Hofmann togehter with Munich’s CIO Karl-Heinz Schneider, both visiting Linuxtag on thursday for some meetings with the fed gov and others)

Linuxtag again was an opportunity for strenghtening the network of governments using free software and talking about future plans. Thinking strategic, I’m sure it is the time for a real change now for public administrations - if we have the courage to think about what we will need not only tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow. Let’s do it, now!

I attended Jan Wildeboer’s (RedHat Open Source Evangelist) keynote at FUDCon, which was held together with Linuxtag for the first time. He is responsible for the world wide conspiracy against Microsoft, as he was told by a MS lobbyist in Brussels. He talked about the important role of open standards and explained the idea of twitter/facebook/… folks beeing the next open source programmers; so we shouldn’t ignore them. You can find him at identi.ca, for sure.

The DebConf 2011 could be in Germany and at the moment three german regions think about a nomination, Berlin, Rhein/Rhur and… Munich. So I (as non Debian developer) attended the first common meeting as the onliest one speaking for Munich. Where were the many Debian people from Munich?

Today I shortly visited the last day of Linuxtag and was quite disappointed about some exhibitors have already gone. E.g. the french people left behind a nearly empty booth and also some other business booths were “open space for free people”. Hm, strange.

To sum up Linuxtag: a lot of conference talks, great opportunities for networking, imho fewer visitors than last year at our booth and the Berlin Fairground trying to get too much money for every step they moved. Changes for future urgently needed, maybe change the location?

My final statement: Dear Berlin Open organizers, you’re doing a great job, but it is an absolute “must” to join Linuxtag next year. Not two independent events, one in common. And Linuxtag, thank you for all, but please decide if Messe Berlin is really the right partner for you… and not only for you, but also for the free software and open standards movement. Berlin is such a great location, maybe there are other places?

Thanks

Two events to be aware of:

• Linuxtag 2010: June 9th until 12th, link
• OpenOffice.org public administrations congress Germany: October 6th and 7th, link

It happened in The Hague the last two days, probably you wouldn’t imagine before

Over 40 people working together, defining test scenarios, creating test documents, running many tests on different platforms and using plenty different ODF implementations - people from community driven projects like Abiword, KOffice, OpenOffice.org as well as software vendors like Google, IBM, Oracle, RedHat, SUN and - of course - Microsoft. And many other people interested in improving the level of OpenDocument Format interoperability.

Some initial talks pointed out the dutch strategy to achieve more openess. Secretary of state Frank Heemskerk explained that he will push the 3 Os, meaning Open Standards, Open Source and Open Content for the Netherlands. Ineke Schop and Fabrice Mous from the dutch governmental programm Netherlands in Open Connection (NOIV) showed how NOIV supports implementing this policy. Robert Weir (OASIS ODF TC chair) and Oliver-Rainer Wittmann explained the way to ODF 1.2 and the next versions on day II. And finally, Doug Mahugh from Microsoft’s interoperability team stated why documentation on every implemetation is important.

But the main topic was to do tests and to improve interoperability. This pic show the pleasant atmosphere offered by NOIV to the participants for a maximum of creativity.

What exactly are the results?

Well, one of the most important things for me was the spirit to work together across all prejudices. Remember, free software developers and fulltime workers for big companies like Google, IBM, Oracle, RedHat, SUN and Microsoft sitting together to achieve better interoperability for ODF. Great.

We discussed the need for a function status overview for different ODF implementations in addition to a simple validator. What will be the best valid ODF file, if there are non interoperable functions? Won’t be real exchangeable. One to do for the future.

Many test scenarios were created and runned, so the people from implementors got ideas were to put hands on for improvement. There’s a lot to do, we wrapped-up in the end. It’s not only a matter of OpenOffice.org compared to Microsoft Office. To get real interoperability for e.g. citizens we should go ahead. ODF is an enabler of interoperability - now it’sup to implementors to do their homework until next meeting. We all agree that there should be perpetual plugfests. Maybe we could host one of the next in Germany?

My opinion:
A good start, a lot to do fixing concrete issues and also defining general principles, validators with functional analysis, all contributors are willing to do so, great.

Thanks a lot to NOiV.

For more information here we go:

• official web site: http://www.odfworkshop.nl
• plugtest Wiki: http://plugtest.opendocsociety.org
• #ODFplugfest tweeds: http://twitter.com/#search?q=odfplugfest
• #ODFplugfest dents: http://identi.ca/tag/odfplugfest

In Geneva I gave a presentation about LiMux at the linuxdays.ch, the biggest event in the french speaking part of Switzerland. Attendees were from private companies and public administrations as well.

One question I have been asked both times was: what was Microsoft’s reaction after loosing Munich? Did they try to step up the political pressure? Did they try to convince decision-makers to do the other way?

Well, I answered them like I always do, of course. The best is to be prepared that their lobbyist will come and visit everyone who can decide anything. Realising this helps, to see that’s just their way to sell products. Not to improve the failing points, but to convince anyone, that he needs useless new things.

But the intensity the questions were asked shows me, that there may be real problems. Also my last dispute with Wouter van Vugt (a non self-confessed Microsoft lobbyist) points this way. Maybe it’s time for a next penalty by the European Commission for them?

Jan Wildeboer wrotes an interesting blog post about this. The title says everything: Asking Switzerland for more neutrality…

I fear that this argumentation (OOXML is the better standard) is very persuasive for all the public authorities who don’t know facts behind. They see that there’s a really open standard, everyone is talking about (ODF). And that everyone wants Microsoft to implement this standard, although they had an own “open” standard OOXML. Now they implement this unliked “alien” standard and nothing wents fine. So the conclusion seems to be consecutive, that the standard is the problem. If saved as OOXML (from Microsoft Office) everything is OK. They are the market leader worldwide and almost everyone uses their product (despite some dissidents). And then, Microsoft is again the leader on everything, Office products, exchange standards and so on.

It is the right time to rise up against this behavior. Again and again. They had not learnt the lesson. We need real interoperability, not controlled by one vendor, but discussed and implemented by many competitive products. Let’s discuss what action can be taken to get closer to real interoperability.

http://www.osor.eu/communities/openoffice-in-public-authorities/blog/odf-is-not-the-same-as-odf

just a small collection for me, please feel free to add interesting links or ressources about this topic.

Rob Weir: Update on ODF spreadsheets

Rob Weir: Follow up on excel 2007 sp2s ODF

Rob Weir: Battle for ODF interoperability

Jeremy Allsion: In Office SP2, Microsoft manages to reduce interoperability

Jomar Silva: Microsoft now attempt to fragment ODF

ODF Alliance: Microsoft’s ODF support falls short, additional fact sheet

Microsoft (OOXML based): Document Interoperability Initiative Drives Development of New Tools

… to be continued!

Most of the exhibitors offer proprietary solutions. Many of them not even platform open, e.g. web or Java based. But of course there are positive exceptions, building apps completely with free software components and licencing them with free software licences like GPL or EUPL. But they are the minority.

During a workshop we discussed possibilities to change this situation. In my opinion this is a real cicken and egg dilemma. If there are the needs of public authorites at first, then there will be a public procurement. And then everybody would be able to offer solutions. And there are ready proprietary solutions with no development costs. So they could offer much cheaper than everyone wanting to develope a solution as free software. So there has to be a ready to use product at first.

On the other hand this is not the way how free software is developed. Why should anyone develope software no one - not even himself - knows if there’s a need?

For us public bodies this means we have to be more courageous. If we really want the change happen, we should join forces and take the first step, of course using free software and strictly combining open standards. There are similar requirements throughout every public administration, in Germany and in Europe. We shouldn’t invent the wheel by our own again and again, but if we really want to change the market behaviour, WE have to take action.

Big municipalities like Munich are somehow special. But there’s a high number of small and medium cities with small IT budgets. They can’t effort doing it alone.

Bringing them together may be a challenge for initiatives like LiSoG or linux-kommunale in Germany.

It’s a long way to get rid of closed proprietary software for business applications, but someone has to do the first step and - like in many other areas, real innovation is done by public authorities

I got my microblogging account:

Twitter: twitter.com/floschie

Identi.ca: identi.ca/floschi

I sync them and try to use identi.ca as my main account, because it’s more free than twitter. Feel free to listen…