Denmark ditches Microsoft
Posted on | January 29, 2010 | 6 Comments
This Friday morning it has been announced by the Danish government, that the Danish state administrative body will adopt the open format ODF as its sole document standard from April next year. This means that the Danish state will now ditch Microsoft’s proprietary document formats.
Below is a translation of the article just published by Danish national paper Politiken:
Politiken.dk, Friday January 29, 2010 – 11.45am
DENMARK DITCHES MICROSOFT
The science minister is happy, that the state turns its back on Microsoft.
“Hello, open free standards – and goodbye Microsoft monopoly.”
This is one way to describe the breaking news of the state administration’s use of the so-called open standards, which the Danish parliament has just agreed upon.
After four years of work the political parties have agreed that the state administration body from April next year will convert into using the open format ODF, when the state exchanges documents such as text files and spreadsheets.
This means, that the state to begin with chooses not to work with IT-behemoth Microsoft.
And that is something that science minister Helge Sander [of moderate right wing party Venstre] is proud of.
Enhedslisten [outer left wing party] agrees with the government parties
“My ambition is that we in the future will communicate solely via open standards,” said Helge Sander when addressing the parliament in a speech, according to IT-web magazine version2.dk.
For once the Enhedslisten-party agrees with the party in office. Per Clausen from Enhedslisten expresses get satisfaction over the decision that open standards have been chosen.
“It is our impression that the way forward is through open source, which should replace the patent mind-set that is dominant today,” said Clausen.
ODF is an abbreviation for Open Document Format, which is an ISO-standard for office documents (textfiles, spreadsheets, presentations). ODF was originally developed as document format for the open source-software suite OpenOffice.org, and is still to this day it’s standard format.
Documents saved in ODF can for instance be opened using the OpenOffice suite, which can be downloaded for free on the Internet, and also in Microsoft Word 2007.
The decision will initially apply for state administration body only. Municipalities and country region administrations will join later.
Read the Politiken article (in Danish) – and read also the original publication from web magazine version2.dk
Tags: Danish parliament > Enhedslisten > Folketinget > Helge Sander > Microsoft > open standards > Per Clausen > proprietary formats > state administration > Venstre
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6 Responses to “Denmark ditches Microsoft”
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January 30th, 2010 @ 8:35 am
Your headline is misleading. Microsoft Office supports ODF – thus it meets the government standard. Perhaps there is more to it than ODF?
January 30th, 2010 @ 9:14 am
Well, I am only presenting the news as it has been presented by national papers and the Danish science minister. However, I believe that what Microsoft supports is OOXML, another open format, not ODF.
January 31st, 2010 @ 12:31 am
[…] Оригинал (в англ.) January 30th, 2010 | Category: Linux, OS, Новости, Система | Comments are closed […]
February 1st, 2010 @ 11:14 am
it does support ODF since Office 2007 SP2. The support is awful, but it is officially present.
February 1st, 2010 @ 11:55 am
Yes, I have actually learned that too in the wake of this thread. There are a lot more interesting/confusing statements that have been added to the debate here in Denmark since the first announcement. For one, Jasper Hedegaard Bojsen, who is Microsoft’s Director of Technology in Denmark, issued a statement in which he expressed joy that the state would be moving into open formats, but wonders why ODF should be favored of OOXML, which – in his words is stronger and more flexible – and is the open format that he suggests the state should adobt instead (presumably because this is what Microsoft supports). This statement from Microsoft reads nowhere that Microsoft supports ODF – which is strange, because that suggest that the state administrative body can just keep their current Microsofts office suite installations. The article can be read here (although it is in Danish).
Secondly, science minister Helge Sander has since refuted a lot of the points emphasized in the original article (in newspaper Politiken, based on the story issued by highly acclaimed news agency Ritzau), saying that he was misquoted and that Denmark does not turn its back on Microsoft. What he meant, he says, was that the state will only impel the open formats on their administration, not what software is used to work with them. Read that article here (also in Danish).
The inconsistency of Danish politicians (across the political spectrum) never fails to impress me.
February 1st, 2010 @ 11:08 pm
Good bye, Microsoft.
;==)
;+)