Using Linux on the desktop on your computers will lead anyone to rely on a media or music player. A media player may not play movies (contrary to a movie player) but should be able to handle playlists, albums, and podcasts. What people quickly discover though is that the Linux …
Christmas and the New Year are coming really close now and I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. This year was truly exciting for me and I believe that 2015 is going to be a very special one. One of the things that …
I have been writing a lot about the benefits of standards -especially open standards- for economic growth and citizens’ empowerement. Today however, I would like to explore, or at least highlight a more obscure side of standards. Standards can be used as weapons; by weapons I mean tools of influence, …
It has been a while since I have discussed open standards here, even though I have alluded to them in passing. There are currently a number of initiatives and policies ongoing at the European level that are bringing this topic back on the table, especially with regard to public procurement …
This post has a high trolling potential, I am aware of it. So let’s start with a few points meant as a caveat emptor. The views expressed here are mine , solely mine and do not represent the views of the Document Foundation nor my current employer. As a consequence …
Today I would like to discuss a boring subject: Spreadsheets. Actually it’s not that boring when you come to think of it. At least I’m going to try not to make it boring. Let me set something straight first: Spreadsheets are not just about numbers; they are about data. You …
Welcome to this April’s edition of Eyes and Ears. Today we have a pretty unique selection of tracks and one very nice book. Let me first start by the book, that I’m currently reading in its french translation. It’s written by the brilliant and famous scholar Elif Shafak and the …
There is a growing momentum towards specialized “text editors” these days, and these tools are not meant for “geeks” or “hackers”, far from that: there are targeted at people who write long chunks of texts, and only text. You may have already guessed who they might be: fiction writers, journalists, …
Some time around 2009 or 2010, the OpenDocument community realized that while it had won the moral battle over Microsoft and its dubious OOXML standard, it had lost the adoption and ecosystems war. Microsoft Office had been released and with it an undocument format called OOXML which, as far as …