Hasannudin Saidin

Episode 69: Rebel Employees Strike Back

Note: We have been featured in the news. w00t!

Taking a break from the entire OOXML saga, some of us decided to execute an elaborate April Fool's plan on Dinesh Arnold Nair, our collective QubeConnect boss and a (self proclaimed) Sith Lord. The plan ("Operation Coverup") involved wrapping up all items in the Sith Lord's office with aluminum foil. It's one those things that is actually a lot harder then it sounds (who knew wrapping cables in aluminum foil would be such a bitching effort, eh?).

I brought up the idea initially several months to some of the Sith Lord minions. It was initially a simple effort to wrap up all belongings of the Sith Lord. Over teh tarik (Malay sugared tea) and many beers, the idea expanded to wrapping his furniture in aluminum foil, plastering his walls with brown wrapping paper, covering his car with even more brown paper, adapting the Star Wars intro crawl text video for the finishing touch and dressing up in Ku-Klux-Klan style robes. At one point, we discussed involving his wife into a more elaborate scam involving wrapping up stuff in his apartment, but decided against it when we realized his wife is truly Sith and we may end up getting skewered in the process.

Anyway, as  the plan grew and grew, before I realized, there were more volunteers then there was room in his office. No problem, we could always parallelize the wrapping tasks, right? I thought we could have been done in a couple hours with seven of us. Hah, that turned out to be woefully over-optimistic.

31st March 2008 arrived and three minions marched over to the nearest hypermart to buy the supplies. We ran into our first hurdle - who knew that there were so many grades of aluminum foil? We decided on the smartest engineering decision that made sense to us then and bought six rolls of the cheapest foil available. It later turned out to be not such a bright idea as the cheapest foil also was the thinnest which made wrapping a tad bit difficult. Oh well. We also bought a roll of brown wrapping paper which came with 10 pieces of 1x1 meter sized paper.

So, evening came and SMS's were flying wildly, planning this and organizing that, but mostly we were jumping with excitement. We waited for everybody to leave, and waited a bit more, and waited some more and everybody left except for the Sith Lord. Oh all days, he decided to spend this day running load tests on the QubeTalk (our IP-PBX). Grrrr. No matter, we left for an early dinner hoping that he would have left by the time we got back.

At 8pm approximat-ish, we get back (all seven of us!) and apparently he had left for the day, so we start in all earnestness. Fuck, it was tiring work. We wrapped, and wrapped, and wrapped, and wrapped. We wrapped his ashray, his loose change, his lighter, his papers, his laptop, his picture frame (hey Sith Lord, there's a surprise waiting for you underneath that foil), his wastepaper basket, his awards and god knows what else. And while we were wrapping, one of us was working on creating the Star Wars intro crawl text video (I had adapted the original Star Wars text earlier in the day).

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APDIP e-Note on Standards for Electronic Documents

APDIP (Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme) of the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) has just published their e-Note 18 on Standards for Electronic Documents.

Description:

This APDIP e-Note provides a brief introduction to the history of document standards, explores the different standards for electronic documents and details the development of OpenDocument Format for Office Applications (ODF). It also looks at how governments worldwide have started to adopt ODF in public administration. This APDIP e-Note provides a brief introduction to the history of document standards, explores the different standards for electronic documents and details the development of OpenDocument Format for Office Applications (ODF). It also looks at how governments worldwide have started to adopt ODF in public administration.

Office productivity software is extensively used to create electronic documents, spreadsheets and presentation files. These documents are widely shared within and across government agencies, commercial industries, educational institutions, and across countries, cultures and time zones. With millions of users of office productivity software, computer literacy is now equated by many to literacy in operating a word processor, spreadsheet or presentation application.

The office productivity software industry has had a tumultuous history in the last two decades, much due to harsh competitions. In order to ‘lock’ users to their software by making it difficult for end users to easily read, edit and save their documents in other office productivity software, corporations have developed electronic document formats that are closed, proprietary and lacked adequate documentation.

The closed nature of the documents have resulted in problems of electronic archeology: documents created by users 10 years ago or less cannot be opened with 100 percent fidelity in modern office software.

In response, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) started its work in 2002 to define an open standard for office documents (the ODF) to ensure interoperability between different office productivity software.

Governments and administrative bodies have been quick to recognize the merits of ODF and have started to integrate ODF as national policies for document use and exchange. This APDIP e-Note provide some examples from Australia to the US.

Other open standards discussed in this APDIP e-Note include the Microsoft-released Office Open XML and Adobe Systems’ Portable Document Format.

After the MTS 2007 -- ODF and OOXML

Return from Redmond: 10 fingers, 10 toes. I'm OK.

We is returned. On the final day of the MTS 2007, we met with Sam Ramji to further discuss the issues regarding the storm in a teacup known as ODF/OOXML. As an aside, Tan Loke Uei made a fantastic presentation on Mobile Devices. He was eloquent, the subject matter was presented in a totally fascinating manner and it was by far the most brilliant presentation throughout the entire three days. *gush* *gush*. We weren't there. We were at the time sitting down with Brian Jones and Gray Knowlton, Program Manager and Group Product Manager for Microsoft Office respectively.

During the meeting with Sam Ramji, we reiterated several things regarding the ODF/OOXML issue from the Malaysian open standards/source community perspective. It's a reiteration because we had already said the same things to the Microsoft Malaysia representative who accompanied us to Redmond. These are:

1. To say that the ODF/OOXML issue is simply a vendor fight between Microsoft and IBM is disingenuous and disrespectful of the efforts of the community in pushing for the use of open standards. We made the point that as far as we are concerned, IBM can be here today and gone tomorrow but we would still always push for open standards. IBM is not the boss of us, and we are not the boss of IBM. The way that ODF is embraced by just about everyone who have no vested interest in the matter shows how strongly we feel about having truly open standards. Microsoft and IBM can go bop each other on the head as much as they want, for all we care.
2. We continue to feel that Microsoft should have just extended the ODF format within the standardisation process in OASIS, instead of coming up with something else on their own. Now, Microsoft would say that the development of OOXML involved input from various entities, including the Library of Congress, the British Library, Barclay's and Novell but that still does not explain why Microsoft didn't just haul all these other chaps with them and joined the OASIS Technical Committee for ODF.

Sam raised the matter of how interoperability and standards are viewed, with the pragmatic approach being that if specifications are open (at the very least), interoperability can be achieved. Further, Sam noted that Microsoft had already made their Open Specification Promise, which is all nice and well. However, I couldn't help feeling that anything that Microsoft has done from an "openness" perspective are just reactionary, in response to external pressure.

We were asked the applications that used ODF by Sam, and we trotted out the ones that came into our heads, namely OpenOffice.org, KOffice, Abiword, Lotus and Gnumeric. From his perspective, the main application that uses ODF would be OpenOffice.org, which effectively represents the main competitor to Microsoft Office. While we just nodded, I wish that I had the presence of mind at that point to note that from a standards perspective, I would still view the issue from the flip side. Namely, it's not about the application per se, but about the use of the document format.

When the "community" press for the adoption of an open standard, we remain agnostic on the application that uses the standard. The standard allows for choice in application preference. This has always remained the overarching concern when ODF comes into any conversation.

Which brings me to the issue of choice, or rather limiting choice.

Day 2, Microsoft Technology Summit 2007

First off, let's face it, it's obvious that we won't be mentioning much else of what happened at the MTS2007 apart from the OSS bits. At least I won't anyway, because I'm just too jetlagged to process anything else. Secondly, I don't reckon we'll mention anything about taking a piss at Microsoft anymore after this, because you can only stretch a bodily function joke so far.

Onwards.

Sam Ramji, the Director of Platform Strategy and the lead for Microsoft's OSS Lab took to the stage in the morning to talk about what Microsoft is doing with regards to understanding and supporting OSS. It was ... interesting. Sam notes that there is a generational change within Microsoft today, since the new developers being hired are more likely to be exposed to OSS before being employed by Microsoft. This results in better acceptance overall within the company. He also mentions (during and after the talk) that this process of understanding and acceptance of OSS is an ongoing evolution and that Microsoft is today better disposed towards engaging with the community than before. He hopes and feels that the interaction between the two would only get better over time.

Sam talked about how his crew managed to pressure the product groups within the corporation to, among other things, optimise PHP for IIS 7.0 and to make Samba work properly with Vista. Echoing Bill Hilf's talk a day earlier, he noted that these things are done not so much to help the OSS community but for sound business reasons on the part of Microsoft. For example, he said that a large proportion of PHP applications were coded on Windows boxes which are then deployed on a LAMP platform. Therefore, from a revenue perspective, the Windows platform loses out. In the case of Samba, he guesstimated that there'd be some 50 million users accessing Linux-based NAS devices which wouldn't be able to do so anymore when they upgrade to Vista because there was some implementation changes in Vista which broke Samba connectivity. It's not an optimal reason from an OSS perspective, but I suppose it's reasonable enough from theirs.

We asked him about whether there were conflicts between his group and the various other product groups, and he said sure there were. But they're not the boss of him so he's going to do what he needs to do. For example, he invited some of the Mozilla team over which got on the IE team's tits, but he went ahead anyway.

Microsoft is schizo. But this is normal for any company with thousands of smart people employed. Which goes some way towards explaining why they'd have a team that's trying rather hard to both "interoperate" with OSS, as well as educate the rest of their shower about OSS yet at the same time have another bunch of people dissing OSS.

IBM spent $1,000,000,000 on Linux and yet do not have a native Notes port. Same difference. Superficially, at least.

Here are some random notes:

I think that in some cases Microsoft somehow views standards and interoperability as two rather distinct issues. Which is orthogonal to how most advocates of open standards would view it. From an open standards perspective, the standards begets interoperability and that's the end of that. For Microsoft, interoperability means making sure that their stuff works with other people's stuff, as long as a business case can be made. Occasionally, interoperability is an imperative, infusing them with the spirit of cooperation when they don't actually have a choice in the matter. They'd also be most comfortable using standards which they can control. But that's nothing odd. Other corporations look at it the same way too.

Bill Hilf, Sam and their team feels the pain whenever StevieB (which would be a good name for a member of a Boy Band) says something that riles up the OSS community, like threatening to sue countries for patent violation when using Linux, or that OSS is a cancer and un-American. Sam thinks that they've managed to get StevieB to show some love and understanding towards OSS -- where it also provides benefits for Microsoft.

I'm not sure that the disabled access doors at the Microsoft Conference Center behaves the way that it's supposed to behave. When you press the disabled access button, the outer door swings open but the inner door doesn't. I kept trying it throughout yesterday and today, enough to annoy Dinesh. Seems like itsatrap! Made a video of it, which you can find on YouTube here: The Handicapped Doors.

There are some other things which Dinesh and I discussed that I think should be said, but I'm just too jetlagged now to remember them. So we'll keep those for later.

Oh, and on the ODF/OOXML thing, it'll have to wait a bit. Sam said that we've misunderstood the issue. Or that we're misunderstood. I'm not sure. Same difference.

ODF article in New Straits Times newspaper

Check out Tech&U (formerly Computimes) in the New Straits Times today  -- article called "Open document format push".  It's online here while still available online, but I've transcribed the full text further below.

Excerpt 1:

“ODF also promotes interoperability, eliminating barriers that inhibit communications and information sharing appropriately and effectively within and across Government, especially in critical public applications like healthcare, public safety and education. Basically, ODF adoption will provide greater choice, freedom of action, cost effectiveness, access to innovation and greater control over the use of documents and the intellectual property contained therein.”

Excerpt 2:

Research company Gartner has predicted that by 2010, ODF will be required by 50 per cent of the governments worldwide and 20 per cent of commercial organisations.

The reference from Gartner is in paragraph 3 of page 2 of this Gartner document:
ISO Approval of OASIS OpenDocument Is a Blow to Microsoft

See the full article below.

Linux won!

Image: a chart from the "IBM Open Source and LinuxLine Survey"

Findings from a recent report, the IBM Open Source and LinuxLine Survey conducted by Unisphere Research include:

• 83% plan to implement new workloads on Linux during the next 12 months.
• 23% expect to deploy new applications or functions on Windows,
• 14% anticipate increasing their level of AIX usage

The most pronounced plans are within

• professional services firms (86%), followed by
• government or nonprofit organizations (84%)

ZDNet declares it "The war is over and Linux won".

This survey and plenty of other information and resources on open source can be found at a  portal launched last month called "Open Source at IBM".

ODF ISO/IEC 26300 migration expensive? Excuse me...!

While Malaysia moves into adoption of the ODF ISO/IEC 26300 International Standard, detractors claim that migration is expensive, and wasteful. On the contrary, there is cost savings!

Watch out, Malaysia, for these kind of words used by the detractors, with respect to adopting the standard:

• additional expense
• raised cost of document migration
• expensive transition
• negative economic impact to  industry
• investment to re-invest in training and re-tooling wasteful
• unnecessary cost to business
• raising cost to taxpayers

I've blogged about this before, showing case studies of cost savings realized from deploying office products based on the ODF ISO/IEC 26300 International Standard. I also highlighed the harder to quantify aspects, i.e. Sam Hiser's remarks:

"But what of the productivity gains -- the significant REVERSE COSTS / OPPORTUNITY GAINS -- from pushing desktop data into a format owned by the Commons? What of the budgetary control issuing from ODF's release of the Monopoly's pernicious lock (upgrade decision processes become internal)? What of the smoother, faster document turn-around?

The ODF Alliance has just published the same case studies with additional commentary: Preliminary Cost Assessments of Migrations to ODF-Supporting Applications

Marino Marcich of the ODF Alliance estimates:

“From the early analysis performed by a wide range of governments, it is very realistic to expect at least a savings of about 60 percent using ODF. And with the growing range of commercial and open source applications supporting ODF, there are more choices than ever for capturing those cost savings."

We refuse to believe the detractors' FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) statement of "increased cost" and  the like. The longer we delay, the longer we get to the opportunity of gaining from the savings.

Malaysia should then grab the opportunity right away!

Below is the transcript of the ODF Alliance's migration cost assessments:

The ODF ISO/IEC 26300 International Standard adoption -- Malaysia, let's grab the opportunities!

While the effort to recognize ODF, the international standard ISO/IEC 26300 as a Malaysian Standard is in progress, there may be concerns that Malaysia is "rushing too fast" as a country into adopting this international standard and that there won't be any support if we were to deploy it locally. This fortunately is not the case, as there has  been a large market share of ODF-implemented products in governmental bodies to date.

If you were to follow this link, you see a list of decisions by government bodies around the world to adopt office software supporting the ISO/IEC 26300 standard. The list is far from comprehensive and is only the tip of a very large iceberg.

The link also says that the Yankee Group in October 2005 put the OpenOffice.org market share among small and medium businesses at 19 per cent, up from the 6 per cent figure reported by Jupiter Research less than two years previously. One might suspect that software supporting the ISO/IEC 26300 today has a larger market share in government offices than among small and medium businesses.

The link describes the following countries/states/regions/cities which have adopted the international standard:

Australia

Austria

Belgium

Brazil

Canada

British Columbia

Manitoba

Ontario

China

Croatia

Czech Republic

Denmark

European Union

France

Germany

Hong Kong

India

Haryana

Kerala

Macau

Macedonia

Netherlands

Pakistan

Philippines

Poland

Portugal

Singapore

Spain

Andalucia

Catalonia

Extremadura

Switzerland

Turkey

United Kingdom

U.S.A.

Colorado

Florida

Georgia

Indiana

Maryland

Massachusetts

Montana

Nebraska

Nevada

New York

These nations are already enjoying the benefits of sovereignty, cost savings and increased choice in their applications to use.

Is Malaysia rushing? Or are we refusing delay, expediting opportunities? Leader or follower, we are certainly not alone!

Watch out for more FUD

Via Bob Sutor's Open Blog, How the anti-open game is being played in Europe, see the Techworld article Leaked letter warns of open source 'threat to eco-system'.
Excerpt:
"A leaked letter to the European Commission has revealed the extent of lobbying by proprietary software groups to prevent the widespread adoption of open-source software."

Watch out - this kind of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) messages may find its way to Malaysia.

[Update 18 October 2006, 03:45 PM:
Related blog posts:
27 Sep -- Open Malaysia blog: Appeal of Neutral Software Approach. A rebuttal.
15 Oct -- Rob Weir - An Antic Disposition: When language goes on holiday]

[Update 20 October 2006, 2:07 AM:
More comments:
19 Oct -- ZDNet: Microsoft-sponsored lobbyist to the EU: It’s a mistake to floss us]

French Recommendation for Interoperatibility Supports Use of ODF

Some background information on the French ODF recommendation: On the 3rd of October 2005, the prime minister of France (Dominique de Villepin) asked Carayon to head up a new report that would focus on, to put it blightly, world domination for French companies. In particular, the report would analyze the constraints and opportunities for France and among other things:

• “to weigh in the production of standards, in particular technical, by the international authorities, in particular European”,
• to sensitize the companies “with the negotiations in progress”, and
• to inform them “of the stakes and the content of the international discussions in the fields with regard to them”.

His report, titled "On Equal Terms", was published in September 2006 and made policy recommendations that:

• ODF be used as a document format in the French public sector as well as a document exchange format with other European countries
• France fund an open source research security center
• a system to share best practises in open source between French governmental agencies be set up

In an interesting coincidence, a study done by Ramboll Management reported that the Danish government could save USD$ 21 million over the next five years if they adopt OpenOffice. This report was commissioned by the Danish Open Source Business Association.

With other recent developments in this area, strong governmental and business interests in pursuing an agenda of promoting forth Free Software and Open Standards (FSOS) for cost reductions, economic impetus and national sovereignty are no longer just minor data points but a strong upward trend.