The famous and much awaited RGI (Référentiel Général d’Interopérabilité) has officially been published and enacted. This announcement was met with mixed reactions and as I have been following the RGI for quite a few years now, I thought I would write some of my thoughts about it. The RGI is actually old, …
We are now well in the middle of October and this means it’s our usual time of celebration at OpenOffice.org . OpenOffice.org is now 9 years old, which is no small accomplishment for a Free Software project. We will soon all gather to celebrate this event in Orvieto, where the …
Just as I was writing that I was about to go on vacations, some story had to break about OpenOffice.org. Essentially, the news are about Microsoft discussing OpenOffice.org as a competitor. That’s interesting, usually Microsoft does not like to speak about competitors coming from the Free Software Community, except when …
Dear Readers As many of you know, Ars Aperta has been active in standardization ever since its inception. Shortly after starting our business in 2006, we realized how critical a standard like OpenDocument Format would become for the ICT world. By creating an effective, xml based format for office documents, …
I wrote a bit more about Ars Aperta’s new certification project. The basic idea is to award certifications to organizations that contribute or lead FOSS projects. Several types of certification exist, but in this article I discuss the specifics of what is probably the first comprehensive FOSS certification to date …
These are very interesting times for ODF and Open Standards. Microsoft’s latest outrage by Gray Knowlton does at least show that if there’s a company who practices the « Do as I say, not as I do », it’s Microsoft. Gray Knowlton is now calling for Rob Weir, chair of the ODF …
Reports start to appear in the press about the ODF support quality enabled by the Service Pack 2 inside Microsoft Office 2007. I could say that I’m not surprised, but I somewhat had also expected the contrary. Unfortunately it seems we have here a poor implementation of ODF. If further …
To keep this post simple and clear, I would like to clarify two things: First, I have not tested the SP2 of Microsoft Office 2007, and hence I cannot relate my own experience of Microsoft’s implementation of ODF. Second, I do believe that given the information we have, and as …
These days are occasions to celebrate, both for the ODF and OpenOffice.org communities. Yesterday was the Document Freedom Day, celebrating the liberation of documents through open standards such as ODF. This global initative attempts to let people know about the importance of true Open Standards and why they matter in …