NL: Minister calls on software developers to fix ODF interoperability
The Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade, Frank Heemskerk, wants Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Google, Adobe and open source software developers to work together on interoperability in applications using the Open Document Format (ODF).
The minister's opened the ODF Interoperability Workshop that took place in the city of The Hague on Monday last week. "ODF applications must have the right degree of interoperability. We have to come up with a joint course of action for developing effective ODF support in each other's products."
According to Heemskerk, the country's policy of making open standards the default and to prefer the use open source software, will help create a fair software market. He explained this will help to save money, to increase innovation and to reduce IT vendor lock-in.
The two-day ODF workshop was organised by NOIV, the government's open source resource centre, bringing together about sixty participants, representing propriety software vendors as well as open source development projects.
According to Heemskerk, there is great interest in ODF in Europe. "I've sent the Dutch policy paper to commissioner Reding (Europe's commissioner for information society and media). A next step would be to coordinate the various implementation methods on the market, so that users are more willing to employ ODF."
"All Dutch government organisations are required to support ODF", said the minister. "This is crucial for long lasting document use. It should also enable us to switch to other IT options, to use new competitive solutions."
He called on the software suppliers to play a more pro-active role in this effort. "The framework you are going to develop will enable us to test the ODF support in each other's products. I appeal on you to go beyond compliancy and help achieve broad-based open standards."
Commenting on the workshop, one of the attendants, Florian Shiessel, involved in the city of Munich's move to a complete open source desktop, suggested on his personal blog that the next ODF workshop should be organised in Germany.
The results of the workshop will be published on its website.
More information:
Speech by Minister for Foreign Trade Frank Heemskerk
Florian Shiessel's web blog (in German)
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