I was a little bit surprised when I looked at the Best Buy web site: Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 Windows and Norton AntiVirus 2008 Windows are both listed as accessories for the Asus EEE PC, which runs a dedicated version of Xandros Linux. Apart from the platform compatibility (just a minor issue) both software exceed the hardware specifications of the small PC (a very good product, by the way).
I have a question: would you buy any IT product from such an incompetent retailer?
Yesterday’s post was definitely a mistake, and therefore the text has been replaced with a fake one (lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, et caetera) to avoid the cache trap.
Today I’ve had a long conversation with Pierpaolo Boccadamo, Microsoft Italy Platform Strategy Director. He is a real gentleman and has been very kind to me, although he was involved in a very important server announcement and my words have been quite a problem for him, Sam Ramji and Andrea Valboni (the people I’m in touch with at Microsoft). I apologize, guys, seriously.
I’ve been told that this blog is now seen by Microsoft as an authoritative voice of the open source community. I’m happy and surprised at the same time: I’ve never been a corporate person, and I’m not the best one for the role but I will try to stick to it at least until we will get to know each other in a better way.
Please do understand, though, that the open source community isn’t and can’t be similar to a large enterprise. Therefore, the language will always be different in tone from what you could expect if we were a “regular” company.
But there are advantages, too. You have my mobile phone number, and you are not just asked by warmly invited to call me whenever you feel that I’ve made something wrong. I don’t have any problem today and I won’t have any problem in the future to acknowledge my mistakes (if any, of course).
I’m a volunteer, and I use my free time for the the community. I don’t have a status to defend, and if I lose my “job” I will have more time for myself, my family and my hobbies. It’s a different perspective from yours, as you are in a corporate position.
Of course, this doesn’t translate into a lousy attitude. I try to do my best, as I have been doing for all my professional life: you know the results, and therefore you may understand how seriously I handle the task.
Let’s start working at the interoperability project and forget - for the time being - the other issues (although I know that we will be carefully watching each other on a daily basis). You have my commitment, and the commitment of Associazione PLIO.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
Fusce iaculis libero sit amet lacus. Sed sed neque. Duis aliquet. Aliquam quis est. Aenean pulvinar, nibh sed dapibus congue, arcu enim eleifend tellus, in blandit augue magna eu tortor. Curabitur auctor eleifend orci.
Cras justo. Vivamus pulvinar convallis nisl. Cras sagittis orci sed mi. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Mauris nec massa. Integer metus. Nunc euismod pede vel lectus. Ut eget urna congue arcu vehicula placerat. Cras pulvinar. Quisque ut augue. Duis ullamcorper sollicitudin arcu.
Donec tincidunt semper ligula. Mauris ac pede vel neque vulputate euismod. Mauris scelerisque ipsum a massa. Morbi mollis, nulla non aliquet consectetuer, tellus nunc facilisis nulla, non faucibus metus erat vel magna. Phasellus pellentesque eros sit amet erat.
Phasellus aliquam orci. Duis varius neque condimentum sem. Quisque condimentum nibh vitae tellus. Proin ac enim eu urna ullamcorper suscipit. Curabitur gravida sem non magna. Morbi dignissim scelerisque enim. Nulla porta nibh ut felis. Mauris commodo lorem vel elit.
Tags: marketing, openoffice, softwareI’ve had a long phone conversation with Sam Ramji today. It was plagued by some bandwidth problems on my side (next time I will have a dedicated PC for Skype) but it was definitely constructive for both of us: Microsoft and Associazione PLIO. We are both committed to start working about and around interoperability, maintaining our respective independence and therefore our different views on some issues.
During the call, Sam has pointed out that a very large percentage of OpenOffice.org users (close to 90%? maybe, although every Linux user and an increasing number of Mac users adopt it) are also Windows users (from the emails and phone calls that we receive on a daily basis, I would dare to say that all the Italians that use Vista have already switched to OpenOffice.org).
Therefore, interoperability is a key factor for Microsoft, because a malfunctioning OpenOffice.org on Windows would raise question marks about the operating system, and is a key factor for OpenOffice.org, because there are areas where performances can be improved with a better understanding of Windows.
Then there are document formats. During the recent press conference, Microsoft has stated the following:
To promote user choice among document formats, Microsoft will design new APIs for the Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications in Office 2007 to enable developers to plug in additional document formats and to enable users to set these formats as their default for saving documents.
Unfortunately, only a few people understand the implications of standard document formats for the user. During the last couple of weeks I have talked with many Italian journalists about this subject, and I have realized that their knowledge is still limited and sometimes even confused. We have a long education process in front of us.
Given this limited understanding, the chaos around standard formats has raised more than one eyebrow in those who have followed the discussion on the press. It’s time to stop being negative and start being positive, for the sake of the user.
Tags: Linux, openofficeAny idea about the author of this sentence?
The world is different today than it was 10 years ago, and so are we. Here on the city campus, MacBook Pros aren’t unheard of, and people with knowledge of Linux are in demand. Some of those MacBooks are running Vista, administrators are running PHP and ASP.NET on the same machine, and we’re seeing adoption of open source in and on top of a range of our technologies. As the world has changed, so have we, to the benefit of the company and our customers.
I have met this gentleman in the US a couple of weeks ago, at the Open Source ThinkTank. Still clueless? Then read the entire post: Why I’m excited about Yahoo!
Orvieto has submitted a proposal to organize the OpenOffice.org Conference in 2008.
I quote John McCreesh:
I believe one European bid this year stands above the others, which is the bid from Italy. I believe the combination of an experienced organising team, a delightful warm location, and a thriving local community would be hard to beat. I would urge anyone wanting an OOoCon in Europe this year to unite behind Orvieto.
Voting is open to all individuals who were registered as members of the Community on January 1st 2008. If you happen to be one of them, please go to this page and pay your duty.
I have discovered the British Library Digital Preservation Project:
The British Library is collecting and creating an increasing amount of material in digital formats. This material forms part of the collection and must be preserved for future use. The diversity of digital material and frequent changes in computer technology present challenges for long-term preservation and ongoing access.
The British Library is at the cutting edge of work in this field. The Digital Preservation Team is liaising closely with the other elements of the BL Digital Programme to ensure the longevity of our digital collections.
I was looking for Microsoft Office Binary File formats, which are stored there in addition - of course - to the Microsoft Web Site. I understand that it’s a minor thing, but I think that it’s probably the first time that such a document is stored outside the Microsoft web site, which means outside Microsoft jurisdiction.
I think that the evolution of Microsoft from an old fashion monopolist to a more “interoperable” company will be marked by many of these weak signals. This is one of the rationales behind the open letter that we have sent to Microsoft Italia. We see several weak signals that lead us to believe that the recent Microsoft announcement about interoperability is different from the other four on the same subject made in the past (Vinnie Mirchandani lists them all).
Today, we have decided to follow yesterday’s Microsoft announcement with an open letter to the company. This is my translation into English of the text (unfortunately, some of the extra care put in each word gets lost, but the meaning is there).
Welcome, Microsoft.
Following yesterday’s announcement, we are ready to co-operate at the promotion of open formats in order to support this new endeavour in the area of office suites. We are ready to co-operate, but we will criticize you for every uncertain or false step.
Inside interoperability there isn’t any space left for tricks: interoperability means that you have chosen to be on the same side of the users.
We believe in your good faith more than the European Commission does, as they have told the world that this is the fourth time that Microsoft makes an announcement about interoperability, without any impact - until today - on the company strategy.
We sincerely hope that this time, for a number of reasons - including our proactive opposition to the fast track standardization of Office 2007 file formats, which will go on until all the necessary changes will be made, the chances that mere words are going to translate into facts are higher than in the past.
At the same time, we invite all the companies that support the ODF format together with us - and those that belong to the OpenOffice.org community: Sun, IBM, Novell & Red Flag - to work for a full interoperability, as the technical and legal obstacles are going to disappear soon.
Users should be able to exchange transparently Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org documents, in both directions.
The software industry, which is not based just in Redmond, must demonstrate a true commitment to make ODF a more widespread format.
If this will happen, users will win, and the market - i.e., all of us - will win.
Associazione PLIO (Italian National Linguistic Project OpenOffice.org)
We know that many inside the community have a different opinion. Of course, we have carefully evaluated the pros and the cons of such a statement, and are quite sure that this is the right attitude for this specific time in the history of computing.
Tags: office suite, Open Document Format, open document format, openoffice, software