Open Standards | Steve Woods

Swiss raise funds for LibreOffice development

14/10/2014 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards

Wilhelm Tux, a Swiss organisation promoting the use of free software, has launched a fundraising campaign to improve LibreOffice, with the target of raising €8,000 to implement the signing of PDF documents in LibreOffice, German IT news site heise reported yesterday.

LibreOffice can already digitally sign ODF files, its native file format. However, it has no equivalent function as yet for PDF files; the relevant code is still regarded as experimental and not mature yet. Collabara, a software company specialising in free software, will use the money raised to bring the code up to the stage of production application.
What is open?

10/10/2014 Steve WoodsLanguage, Open Data, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

The Open Knowledge Foundation is doing marvellous work in the fields of open data and open content.

The Foundation has just published version 2 of its Open Definition. This definition is released under a Creative Commons Attribution licence and is reproduced verbatim below (complete with US spellings and punctuation throughout. Ed.).

Open Definition

Version 2.0

The Open Definition makes precise the meaning of “open” with respect to knowledge, promoting a robust commons in which anyone may participate, and interoperability is maximized.

Summary: Knowledge is open if anyone is free to access, use, modify, and share it — subject, at most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness.

This essential meaning matches that of “open” with respect to software as in the Open Source Definition and is synonymous with “free” or “libre” as in the Definition of Free Cultural Works. The Open Definition was initially derived from the Open Source Definition, which in turn was derived from the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

The term work will be used to denote the item or piece of knowledge being transferred.

The term license refers to the legal conditions under which the work is made available. Where no license has been offered this should be interpreted as referring to default legal conditions governing use of the work (for example, copyright or public domain).

1. Open Works

An open work must satisfy the following requirements in its distribution:

1.1 Open License

The work must be available under an open license (as defined in Section 2). Any additional terms accompanying the work (such as a terms of use, or patents held by the licensor) must not contradict the terms of the license.

1.2 Access

The work shall be available as a whole and at no more than a reasonable one-time reproduction cost, preferably downloadable via the Internet without charge. Any additional information necessary for license compliance (such as names of contributors required for compliance with attribution requirements) must also accompany the work.

1.3 Open Format

The work must be provided in a convenient and modifiable form such that there are no unnecessary technological obstacles to the performance of the licensed rights. Specifically, data should be machine-readable, available in bulk, and provided in an open format (i.e., a format with a freely available published specification which places no restrictions, monetary or otherwise, upon its use) or, at the very least, can be processed with at least one free/libre/open-source software tool.

2. Open Licenses

A license is open if its terms satisfy the following conditions:

2.1 Required Permissions

The license must irrevocably permit (or allow) the following:

2.1.1 Use

The license must allow free use of the licensed work.

2.1.2 Redistribution

The license must allow redistribution of the licensed work, including sale, whether on its own or as part of a collection made from works from different sources.

2.1.3 Modification

The license must allow the creation of derivatives of the licensed work and allow the distribution of such derivatives under the same terms of the original licensed work.

2.1.4 Separation

The license must allow any part of the work to be freely used, distributed, or modified separately from any other part of the work or from any collection of works in which it was originally distributed. All parties who receive any distribution of any part of a work within the terms of the original license should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original work.

2.1.5 Compilation

The license must allow the licensed work to be distributed along
with other distinct works without placing restrictions on these other works.

2.1.6 Non-discrimination

The license must not discriminate against any person or group.

2.1.7 Propagation

The rights attached to the work must apply to all to whom it is redistributed without the need to agree to any additional legal terms.

2.1.8 Application to Any Purpose

The license must allow use, redistribution, modification, and compilation for any purpose. The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the work in a specific field of endeavor.

2.1.9 No Charge

The license must not impose any fee arrangement, royalty, or other compensation or monetary remuneration as part of its conditions.

2.2 Acceptable Conditions

The license shall not limit, make uncertain, or otherwise diminish the permissions
required in Section 2.1 except by the following allowable conditions:

2.2.1 Attribution

The license may require distributions of the work to include attribution of contributors, rights holders, sponsors and creators as long as any such prescriptions are not onerous.

2.2.2 Integrity

The license may require that modified versions of a licensed work carry a different name or version number from the original work or otherwise indicate what changes have been made.

2.2.3 Share-alike

The license may require copies or derivatives of a licensed work to remain under a license the same as or similar to the original.

2.2.4 Notice

The license may require retention of copyright notices and identification of the license.

2.2.5 Source

The license may require modified works to be made available in a form preferred for further modification.

2.2.6 Technical Restriction Prohibition

The license may prohibit distribution of the work in a manner where technical measures impose restrictions on the exercise of otherwise allowed rights.

Non-aggression

The license may require modifiers to grant the public additional permissions (for example, patent licenses) as required for exercise of the rights allowed by the license. The license may also condition permissions on not aggressing against licensees with respect to exercising any allowed right (again, for example, patent litigation).
Happy birthday TDF and LibreOffice

25/09/2014 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

On 28th September 2014 The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice productivity suite will both turn four. In that time LibreOffice has had eight major releases, close to 100 million downloads, attracted over 800 new developers, a large number of active volunteers in every corner of the planet and millions of desktops “migrating” from proprietary to free office suites.

LibreOffice is the fastest growing free software project of this decade: for 48 months in a row, it has been able to attract at least three new code contributors per month and an even higher number of volunteers active in localisation, quality assurance, marketing, communications and the development of local communities.

Earlier today (25th September) The Document Foundation announced the release of LibreOffice 4.3.2; this is the second minor release of the LibreOffice 4.3 family, further improving the quality of the most advanced and feature-rich free office suite for Linux, Mac OSX and Windows. Further details of the release of LibreOffice 4.3.2 are available on The Document Foundation’s blog.
Introducing FixMyDocuments.eu

23/09/2014 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

Fixmydocuments.eu is a campaign aimed at helping European public sector organisations make better use of open document formats, such as ODF.

A number of public sector organisations throughout Europe have decided to support open document formats when communicating with the public and FixMyDocuments.eu is a campaign to help them implement their decision effectively. One of the largest of these is the UK government, which recently opted for open standards for communicating and working with anyone outside Whitehall (posts passim).

Inspired by the FixMyStreet project, FixMyDocuments.eu aims to help European public sector organisations that have decided to support ODF to implement their decision by documenting, tracking and reporting their compliance online. Anybody can report public web pages which are not compliant with the decision, which are then checked and added to a central listing which is updated weekly.

One of the first supporters of FixMyDocuments.eu was European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes. In her statement of support (no. 6 on the list. Ed.) Neelie Kroes says:

When open alternatives are available, no citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to use a particular company’s technology to access government information. No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one, through a government having made that choice first. I know a smart business decision when I see one – choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed.

Well said, Neelie!
Welcome LibreItalia!

28/08/2014 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

Earlier today the birth was announced of LibreItalia, which has been founded by Italian members of The Document Foundation and has the objective of bringing together all the Italian users of the free and open source LibreOffice productivity suite to speed up the adoption and promotion of the suite that is designed as a free individual productivity and office automation tool capable of closing the digital divide and breaking down the barriers to information technology for the poorest in society.

In addition, LibreItalia will promote the ODF/Open Document Format (ISO/IEC 26300) standard for official documents, which was recently adopted by the UK government (posts passim) as a template for all content, together with PDF/A.

The initial Board of Directors, which will be in post for two years, consists of seven members, five of whom are directly involved in the LibreUmbria project (which was originally established to promote the use of LibreOffice in public sector organisations in the Umbria region. Ed.): Sonia Montegiove, Chair; Marina Latini, Vice-Chair and Chief Technical Officer; Giordano Alborghetti, Treasurer; and Andrea Castellani, Alfredo Parisi, Gabriele Ponzo and Italo Vignoli, directors.

All the new association’s news about LibreOffice is featured on the LibreItalia website. To become a member of LibreItalia, you’ll need to fill in an application using the relevant form after reading the site’s About us and Articles of Association pages. The membership fee for ordinary members is a mere €10.00 (reduced to €5.00 for students) and entitles members to a libreitalia.it mailbox.

Becoming a member of LibreItalia means supporting the values of transparency, sharing and working together, the same values which characterise the original LibreUmbria project.

For more information, email info (at) libreitalia.it.
LibreOffice 4.3 ready for download

30/07/2014 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech
Via its blog, The Document Foundation has announced the release of LibreOffice 4.3; this is the 8th major release of the free and open source office suite since the birth of the project in September 2010.

LibreOffice for all your office suite needs: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, database, drawing and formulas

LibreOffice 4.3 offers a large number of improvements and new features, including:
- Document interoperability: support for MS’ OOXML Strict, OOXML graphics improvements (DrawingML, theme fonts, preservation of drawing styles and attributes), embedding OOXML files inside another OOXML file, support for 30 new Excel formulas, support for MS Works spreadsheets and databases, as well as Mac legacy file formats such as ClarisWorks, ClarisResolve, MacWorks, SuperPaint and more.
- Comment management: comments can now be printed in the document margin, formatted in a better way, and imported and exported – including nested comments – in ODF, DOC, OOXML and RTF documents, for improved productivity and better collaboration.
- Intuitive spreadsheet handling: Calc now allows several tasks to be carried out more intuitively, thanks to the smarter highlighting of formulas in cells, the display of the number of selected rows and columns in the status bar, the ability to start editing a cell with the content of the cell above it and the user being fully able to select text conversion models.
- 3D models in Impress: support of animated 3D models in the new open glTF format, plus initial support for Collada and kmz files that are found in Google Warehouse, in order to add a fresh new look and animations to keynotes (support for this feature is currently on Windows and Linux versions only).
LibreOffice 4.3 also supports “monster” paragraphs exceeding 65,000 characters in length. This is an example of an 11 years old bug solved thanks to the modernization of the old OpenOffice source code. In addition, the accessibility technology on Windows has become a standard feature, thanks to the improvements based on IBM’s IAccessible2 framework.

The full list of new features and improvements of LibreOffice 4.3 is available on the wiki.

According to the Coverity Scan service, the quality of LibreOffice source code has improved dramatically during the last two years, with a reduction of the defect density per 1,000 lines of code from an above the average 1.11 to an industry leading 0.08. Read Coverity’s report for more information.

LibreOffice 4.3 and LibreOffice 4.2.6 – which will be released on Friday – are available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions and templates to enhance the software’s functionality and add specific features can be found at http://extensions.libreoffice.org/.
Document Foundation congratulates UK government

23/07/2014 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

The Document Foundation (TDF), the organisation behind the free and open source LibreOffice productivity suite, is congratulating the UK government for choosing Open Document Format (ODF), in addition to Portable Document Format (PDF) to meet user needs (posts passim).

“TDF has always been a strong supporter of ODF and a believer in open document standards”, says Thorsten Behrens, TDF Chairman. July 22 will be a date to remember as the culmination of a dream inaugurated when ODF become a ISO standard on November 30 2006. By standardising on ODF and PDF, the UK government is showing the world that it is entirely possible to find a way out of proprietary formats to enhance user freedom”.

LibreOffice supports both ODF – the suite’s native document format – and PDF (including PDF/A). Furthermore, LibreOffice can handle Hybrid PDF files, which combine the advantages of PDF and ODF by embedding a fully editable ODF document into a PDF without breaking any of the standard characteristics of both formats.
UK government opts for open standards

22/07/2014 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech
Great news for all lovers of open standards! It’s goodbye to the ubiquitous use of MS Office formats in Whitehall; and what’s more, the government has decided not to sanction the use of Microsoft’s OOXML ‘standard’ despite lobbying by the US software giant and its supporters.

The open standards selected for sharing and viewing government documents have been announced today by the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude.

The standards set out the document file formats that are expected to be used by all government bodies. Central government will begin using open formats to ensure that the general public and civil servants can use the applications that best meet their needs when viewing or collaborating on documents.

The selected standards, which are compatible with commonly used document applications, are:
- PDF and PDF/A or HTML for viewing government documents;
- Open Document Format (ODF) for sharing or collaborating on government documents.
When government departments have adopted these open standards:
- the general public, businesses and voluntary organisations will no longer need specialist software to open or work with government documents;
- civil servants will be able to share and work with documents in the same format, reducing problems when shifting between formats;
- government organisations will be able to choose the most suitable and cost-effective applications, knowing their documents will work for people both within and outside government (does this mean Whitehall will be moving towards using LibreOffice or OpenOffice, both of which are free of charge? Ed.).
The adoption of open standards comes in the wake of a consultation on open standards (news passim) which attracted over 500 contributions, as well as by talking directly to users.

The new standards will come into effect straight away for all new procurements subject to the HMG’s Open Standards Principles. The Government Digital Service will work with Whitehall departments to publish guidance and implementation plans.
EU Commission locked into Microsoft

08/07/2014 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

The European Commission has recently renewed its commitment to a proprietary desktop and secret file formats, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) writes. The Commission is refusing to make a serious effort to break free from vendor lock-in and is ignoring all available alternatives. In doing so, the EU’s civil service fails to practice what it preaches.

In April, the Commission signed two contracts with Microsoft: firstly, an agreement for “high-level services” worth €44 million and secondly a framework agreement on software licensing conditions. The actual licences are provided by Hewlett-Packard under a separate contract from 2012 that itself is worth €50 million. The contracts cover the Commission itself and 54 other EU organisations.

“We are extremely disappointed about the lack of progress here,” says FSFE president Karsten Gerloff. “The Commission has not even looked for viable alternatives. Its lazy approach to software procurement leaves the Commission open to allegations of inertia and worse.”

The Commission recently admitted publicly for the first time (PDF) that it is in “effective captivity” to Microsoft. Documents obtained by the FSFE reveal that the Commission has made no serious effort to find solutions based on open standards. As a consequence, a large part of Europe’s IT sector is essentially prevented from doing business with the Commission.

In a strategy paper (PDF) which the Commission released in response to official questions from Amelia Andersdotter MEP, the EC lays out a three-track approach for its office automation platform for the coming years. This strategy will only deepen the Commission’s reliance on closed proprietary file formats and programs.

“The Commission should be setting a positive example for public administrations across Europe,” comments FSFE’s Gerloff. “Instead, it shirks its responsibility as a public administrations, and simply claims that such alternatives don’t exist. Even the most basic market analysis would have told the Commission that there’s a vibrant free software industry in Europe that it could have relied on.”

Many public sector organisations in Europe are successfully using free software and implementing open standards. Examples include the German city of Munich with its internationally recognised Limux project and (believe it or not! Ed.) the UK government, which has made great strides in using free software and open standards to obtain better value for money in IT procurement.

However, the FSFE says it will continue to work with the Commission in spite of this setback and will help it to improve its software the way it buys software, such as by relying on specifications and standards rather than brand names, by using open invitations to tender instead of talking to a single vendor and by incorporating future exit costs into the price of any new solution. These practices are fast becoming the norm across Europe’s public sector. The EC should practice what it preaches and adopt these practices for its own IT procurement.

This post originally appeared on Bristol Wireless.
LibreUmbria@Scuola nominated for Egov 2014 prize

03/07/2014 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

News arrived via my inbox this morning that LibreUmbria‘s programme in schools (LibreUmbria@Scuola), which took place in recent months in collaboration with Perugia’s third teaching district (posts passim), has been nominated for this year’s Egov Prize. LibreUmbria is the project that is promoting the use of free and open source software amongst public sector organisations in Italy’s Umbria region.

The basic idea behind the Egov Prize has always been the fusion and sharing of good practice which other public sector organisations can use as an example and from which they can benefit. This will be the 10th year the prize will have been awarded.

LibreUmbria@Scuola aims to raise awareness and promote the use of free software in schools, from the primary level upwards by training parents and teachers who will in turn train others by acting as mentors.

The LibreUmbria@Scuola project has been implemented in arranging free seminars at schools for parents and teachers, on digital culture topics (the relationship between boys and technology, shared knowledge and free software, security, use of social media, cyberbullying). In addition to the seminars, computer courses in using the LibreOffice productivity suite running on Ubuntu Linux were also provided.