[dundee] Digital freedom debate

[gordon dunlop]

On 11 August 2010 17:41, James Carter <jamescarter_uk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Regarding proprietrary document formats for archiving purposes or
> otherwise,
> I've spend some time in the past thinking about this as an open source
> argument
> and generally think it leads to nowhere or a pointless fight, but things
> could
> change if there are better alternatives from the open source world:
>
>
> 1. It's easy to get a copy of M$ Office for practically free or very
> cheaply and
> the value of these proprietary "office" doucuments is actually very low
> although
> you'd be hard pushed to get them to delete them as they'd rather buy a new
> shiny
> storage array just in case.  Finished reports and public documents are
> generally
> put on the web in read-only pdf format if they are able to (not that they
> know
> the difference, it's mainly because they're worried about edits having been
> stored in the document and it feels more like a tablet of stone).  PDF is
> still
> a semi-proprietary format but essentially read-only and slightly easier to
> read/archive.  There's also an increasing amount of web based readers and
> other
> libraries for office documents even if still proprietary.
>
>
This new UK Government has published their programme where under the section
"Government Transparency" the last paragraph states :
"We will ensure that all data is published in an open and standardised
format, so that it can be used easily and with minimal cost by third
parties."

http://programmeforgovernment.hmg.gov.uk/government-transparency/index.html

Referring to a previous post on this list, this is not the case at the
moment with some on-line public data..

http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/1918.html



> 2. The Public sector loves spending money on Microsoft products as  it
> gives them something relatively cheap compared with staff costs to spend
>  their
> money on rather than wasting it on "IT" and gives all staff  (including
> "IT")
> something to be 'productive' with.  This is the main  market for microsoft
> and
> most accountants rightly know it's better to  buy something off the shelf
> made
> somewhere else even if mediocre than employ any more IT  staff.  Many an
> excel
> loving accountant has asked me if software is  "microsoft compatible".  One
> has
> to remember excel and it's precursors  such as visicalc (free 27k download
> available here  http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm it runs
> on
> dosbox under linux no  problem) have possibly put some of these accountants
> in
> these positions in  the first place.
>
>  This a report on a survey of 300 large organisations in the U.S., UK &
Ireland regarding deployment of open source in 2010, I think the results
would surprise some people. Whilst the discussion is about the Office
varieties, I think there would be the least disruption and re-training in
Open Office deployment in comparison to changing other open source
applications/systems from proprietary systems.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/investment-in-open-source-software-set-to-rise-accenture-survey-finds-2010-08-05?reflink=MW_news_stmp



> 3. Because of paranoia about these formats, the newer office document
> formats
> from 2007 onwards use an easy to read and create  xml storage either in
> Open
> document format or microsoft xml format  (docx,xlsx), unzip them and have a
> look.  Infact, it's often one of those politically correct excuses they
> actually
> upgrade to Office 2007/2010 in the first place!
>
>  There is a lot of criticism that they really do not meet open document
standards, irrespective whether approved or not.



>
> James
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Andrew Clayton <andrew at digital-domain.net>
> To: dundee at lists.lug.org.uk
> Sent: Fri, 6 August, 2010 0:31:37
> Subject: Re: [dundee] Digital freedom debate
>
> On Thu, 5 Aug 2010 23:12:19 +0100, gordon dunlop wrote:
>
> > On 5 August 2010 22:52, Andrew Clayton <andrew at digital-domain.net>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Also a few years ago at linux.conf.au there was a talk about digital
> > > preservation at the National Archives of Australia.
> > >
> > >  How many official government departmental documents are being made
> > > in .pub
> > or .docx format now. Nobody outside proprietary software can open
> > them, unless anyone can tell me how to do it in open source software
> > without using wine or the internet.
>
> According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Writer OOo
> writer can open .docx files.
>
> Andrew
>
> _______________________________________________
> dundee GNU/Linux Users Group mailing list
> dundee at lists.lug.org.uk  http://dundeelug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dundee
> Chat on IRC, #tlug on irc.lug.org.uk
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> dundee GNU/Linux Users Group mailing list
> dundee at lists.lug.org.uk  http://dundeelug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dundee
> Chat on IRC, #tlug on irc.lug.org.uk
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/dundee/attachments/20100811/4e7ecd67/attachment-0001.htm>