Re: [sheflug] government open source policy

[Alex Hudson <home [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2006-03-14 at 11:02 +0000, David Willington wrote:
> I'm not having any specific problems apart from the general one of the
> school not having heard of open source. I've convinced the IT department 
> and head of IT that it's going to provide a good solution, certainly 
> better and cheaper than what they've got at the moment so things are 
> going well there. 

Oh, good news. To be honest, the "open source doesn't sell it to them"
doesn't really surprise me: it doesn't really tell them much about how
the product is going to fit their needs. This is one of the reasons I
don't like the term, "open source" is never going to be a winning
marketing argument because mostly people aren't going to care up front
(though in close comparison later, you would hope it would be valuable
to them - just initially, they're going to care more about whether or
not the product has the features they need).

> Does the eGIF mean that public bodies shouldn't send me word documents?

Not really. 

>From the e-Gif FAQ:
        
        Q. What does e-GIF support for .doc, .xls, .ppt and .pps file
        type mean?
        
        It means that these file types may be used as e-service access
        standards when using computer workstations. Such file types can
        be imported and exported into applications running on MAC and
        Linux workstation. The e-GIF does not favour any particular
        operating system or application product.
        
        Q. Is the use of Open Office and their Files types’ compatible
        with the e-GIF?
        
        Yes, definitely they are freely available as downloads. Open
        Office is also compliant to the governments open source policy.
        The native Open Office File types can be used when exchanging
        files for Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Picture, and
        Presentation between consenting parties. Otherwise, when
        exchanging files or when providing downloadable documents the
        files should be exported/imported using one of the file types
        defined in Table 6: Specifications for Computer Workstations of
        the Technical Standards Catalogue.

Now, tell me those aren't two of the most confused and irrelevant
answers you've ever read ;) 

The first answer - "e-Gif does not favour any .. application", but the
Office-only binary file formats are OK. Hmmm. Second answer - "Open
Office"(sic) is compatible because it's a free download, but you must
export in Microsoft format.

So yeah, actually, e-Gif mandates binary Office formats. 

Given that e-Gif likes XML, requires Dublin Core metadata (which is
OpenDocument format), wants XML forms (again, in OpenDocument - XForms),
etc. you'd think that OpenDocument would be a fit.

.doc is the ugly wart on the Govt. e-Gif policy. Actually, I should
write an article about this for AFFS' website, because I think a lot of
people don't realise what a chronic policy this actually is.

Cheers,

Alex.


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