Norwegian Minister: No More Proprietary Formats 697
Been on TV writes "The Norwegian Minister of Modernization today at a press conference in Oslo declared that proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communcation with government. He also calls for all parts of government to have a plan ready by 2006 for use of open source solutions. Taking great care not to mention the name Microsoft directly, but rather referring to 'the spreadsheet almost everyone uses' or saying this is the last time I will present a plan for information technology being broadcast on the net in Windows Media, the Minister sent strong signals in the direction of Redmond to open up or become irrelevant to the Norwegian Government."
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Two quick (and largely similar) stories:
-I was at a Rona recently getting some bags of gravel for a project. A gentleman walking by saw my gravel, at this point 9 bags on my cart, and suddenly decided that he needed gravel. It was obvious that he didn't intend to buy gravel, but seeing me buying gravel made him believe that there was something interesting about this gravel, and he should follow.
-Again at a Home Improvement store, yesterday I was at Home Depot and a gentleman was standing there trying to decide which soil to buy, asking the clerk to help him out, when I pulled up and started loading some "magic soil" into my cart. Instantly his mind was made up, and he started loading up. Seeing two people loading up, suddenly several other people pulled their carts over to get some of this deal. Of course I chose this soil completely randomly.
Both were cases of a social proof, and it's much like everyone waiting for the first one to leave a party. For these reasons this sort of event, even when it's a small, seemingly inconsequential Scandinavian country, are very much noteworthy. Often it's the pebbles that precede a landslide.
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
That's almost as good as "Mostly Harmless."
Re:Norway population 4,593,041 - IT budget $10,000 (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is whether the Norwegian market is large enough to sustain and develop a good competitor, and give it market exposure and testing. Sure, MS won't miss the income - but is it a large enough market to give a good proving ground for a significant competitor? That's what should worry Microsoft.
Re:Norway population 4,593,041 - IT budget $10,000 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good (Score:3, Funny)
a small, seemingly inconsequential Scandinavian country,
Hey! You said I'm inconsequential, you insensitive clod! Fortunately for you, I am Norwegian and don't know what it means.
Re:Good (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Much as I love Norway, Norwegians and Nemi, Peru is the one leading the way on this. They got their first and are even mandating open source software for all government use.
Still, great to see the Vikings joining in.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
MS will be using XML to replace proprietary file formats in MS Office. So the Norwegian's will still be able to use Office.
It still all goes back to patents. MPEG and SMPTE need to release MPEG4 (AVC) and SMTPE (VC-1) to the world, but that will never happen. And no Open-Source product will be able to compete effectively in these markets in the near future. The reason I say this is that it has been 10 years since MPEG-2, and we are finally seeing a MPEG-4 (http://www.mpegla.com/avc/ [mpegla.com]) and VC-1 (http://smpte.org/smpte_store/standards/ [smpte.org]). These will be used for future High Def. Video and Broadcast. MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 are on the way, but that's another story, and still patent encumbered.
Re:True (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a clue. That argument might have worked on some people 5-10 years ago but now that we have IBM and SGI making super computers with linux, you can hardly convince even the most naive among us.
Doesn't really matter anyways since MS is already going to open standards for the next Office.
The format is not so open anymore when you consider that basically all GNU software will be prohibited from using it. Without any real good BSD licensed Office software out there (as far as I know) what's the use?
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:True (Score:5, Insightful)
But then, perhaps all this wisdom and logic is wasted on you, Anonymous Microsoft apologist Coward. Of course Norway's policy matters: that policy is exactly the kind of pressure forcing Microsoft to abandon one of its favorite monopoly abuses. You're going to have to find some other abuse to love, while supplies last.
hardware.slashdot.org? (Score:5, Interesting)
Simple typo (Score:2)
Re:hardware.slashdot.org? (Score:3, Funny)
This is slashdot, and the story is about Open Source spreading. And you need to ask where?
Between the legs of course!
And this is as it should be... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And this is as it should be... (Score:3, Insightful)
Before this it was almost like saying: Mandarin only please!
Not everyone knows Mandarin in Norway - but some do I'm sure. People who are more well off would be able to get training, and as with everything, some
The horror, the horror! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The horror, the horror! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The horror, the horror! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The horror, the horror! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The horror, the horror! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The horror, the horror! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The horror, the horror! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The horror, the horror! (Score:5, Informative)
Check out their GDP per capita: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_gdp_ppp_c
Index of Economic Freedom is good too, although a bit socialist:
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/c
Norway can afford to do what it wants. They are very rich (being one of the largest oil and gas producers in the world helps), and aren't even in the European Union nor do they use the Euro. The Norwegians I know are also very well educated, and tons of good software comes from
Their drug laws aren't as terrible as those we have in the United States either, nor do they have the death penalty, etc etc..
Re:The horror, the horror! (Score:5, Funny)
See the loveli lakes
The wonderful telephone system
And mani interesting furry animals
Dangit - that was Sweden, wasn't it?
Re:The horror, the horror! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's somewhat more serious than that. Because if the government of Norway is going to be moving to OpenOffice.org formats (for example) then everyone that wants to communicate with the government (which likely includes most Norwegians) will have to have software that reads and writes those formats. That means that lots more Norwegians are likely to have a copy of OO.org on their machine. All of a sudden the file compatibility shoe is on the other foot and its MS Office that has poor compatibility with OO.org formats.
Not only does Microsoft lose the Norwegian government accounts, but it almost certainly will find it harder to sell to Norwegian businesses and individuals in general. If this experiment is successful then Microsoft is also faced with the negative PR of a Free Software office suite migration on a massive scale. Norway might not be much of a hit for Microsoft, but throw in a few more EU countries, and Microsoft would definitely start to feel the pain.
Besides, Microsoft still has a ridiculously high price/earnings ratio. If Microsoft wants to keep its stock price where it currently is then it needs to be generating new business, not losing existing business. Microsoft employees, and especially Microsoft executives, have a great deal of their personal wealth wrapped up in MSFT. The last thing that Microsoftees what is for Wall Street to reevaluate the MSFT share price.
Peru? (Score:5, Informative)
there once was a troll from Nantucket... (Score:5, Funny)
who told Microsft to go screw,
he said we don't need your proprietary formats
with Linux we'll reformat,
And now they're doing it in Norway, too!
Re:there once was a troll from Nantucket... (Score:5, Funny)
Who most certaily wasn't a bot.
He wrote a short rhyme,
in a very short time,
and so he got modded up a lot!
This is an emergency!! (Score:2, Funny)
Well i expect that Bill Gates will probably handle this one personally. Because the last thing that Microsoft would want to do is piss off the Norwegian's.
Re:This is an emergency!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is an emergency!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is an emergency!! (Score:4, Insightful)
And Norway is far more important than a single city.
The problem (for MS) is not that Norway is that important. The problem is that it sets a dangereous precedend.
Re:Norway is an OPEC member - NOT (Score:5, Informative)
They do, however, have a lot of oil.
Easy solution for Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Norway's GDP: $183 billion
Norway's Military spending: $4 billion
Microsoft's revenues: $36.8 billion
These numbers indicate that the best way for Microsoft to solve this issue is to simply raise an army and invade Norway. Don't be suprised if Norway is renamed to Billgatsia sometime in the next few years.
Re:Easy solution for Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
USA has still a larger GDP than Microsoft
Yeah, in some dream world, maybe (Score:4, Funny)
The USA will initially rush to the defense of norway after the invasion. However rather than repelling Microsoft's invasion force, the US military will surround the the Microsoft private army on all sides, capture their leaders, and bring the invasion to a halt-- then suddenly announce a "settlement" by which a truce is called under the terms that Microsoft gets to rule norway, and doesn't have to give any of the land back or disband their army, but must set up an internal review board to prevent further invasions from occurring
Re:Easy solution for Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
The_Petroleum_Fund_of_Norway [wikipedia.org] : $170 billion
Norway has far more cash in his pockets in this fund alone than Microsoft in total.
Re:Easy solution for Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
At Glasgow University, if you enter the examination hall with a personal army, you automatically get a pass, although don't take horses, otherwise you'll have to supply adequate water outside for them.
Message Received (Score:3, Interesting)
Office 12 with XML. Doesn't matter. It's MS. (Score:5, Insightful)
The *format* will be open (it's just plain XML), but the data it contains (the binary thing) is not. What if that ASCII-encoded-binary-field contains key formatting data? How do you expect to properly view the document?
See the trend? Microsoft is continuously trying to charge access for your *own* data! Just like DRM!
Re:Office 12 with XML. Doesn't matter. It's MS. (Score:4, Informative)
Now, essentially every microsoft product comes in a
Oh, and before you call me a windows zealot and some moderator mods me down for being a windows zealot, RTFJ. [slashdot.org]
Re:Message Received (Score:4, Insightful)
You realize that only reason that many offices don't use something like OpenOffice.org is because they can't get 100% compatiblity when sending/receiving MS Office docs right? Now I'm not naive, there are plently of companies that would die without outlook and love sharepoint and Offices workgroup features etc. But and this is a big BUT, universities, consumers, small businesses, and even many larger business haven't sold they're souls to the Exchange demon. Your just going to let potentially millions of users just walk away from MS Office to OpenOffice.org OR any other office suite because your now a believer in Open formats? You'll pardon those of us who've been around a while from taking a wait and see attitude. Ms has wielded incompatibility as a club to bludgeon competitors for years. Why would they stop when they A)have a monopoly in the Office market B) have an MS "friendly" DOJ and president C) have so much to "lose" by working with others?
Let me guess, there is some sort of provision or scheme somewhere down the road where OSS and GPL software won't be able to use this due to patents?
Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft pulled this "don't switch to alternatives just yet, the next version of Office will have an open format" trick the last two versions of Office. And you're falling for it a third time? Don't you people learn from repetition? I think Bush said it best, or tried to: "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me"
There is no doubt that there will be something "non-open" about the formats when Office 12 arrives. Microsoft are playing this game of "we're moving the direction of moving open formats", the catch is that they will forever just be "moving in that direction" - they'll never "arrive".
I suspect that in a few years you'll be posting on slashdot again with "don't bother switching to OpenOffice 3, Office 13 is going to have an open format".
Microsoft will give up their proprietary formats when you pry them from Bill Gate's cold, dead fingers --- the core of their entire business model is that nobody else is compatible with Office.
Re:Right (Score:4, Informative)
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again" [about.com]
As you alluded to, this has often been attributed to Lincoln, although we don't have quite as definitive proof as the above video. I've also seen it attributed as an ancient Chinese proverb, but either way, I'm pretty sure it predates both Bush presidencies.
Re:Message Received (Score:4, Insightful)
"Sure it's open, anyone can use it. Oh, there is the matter of patent royalties..."
Here's the (open) fomats (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/default.mspx [microsoft.com]
Re:Here's the (open) fomats (Score:5, Informative)
Please read this entire document carefully to understand your rights. [microsoft.com]
Additionally... (Score:5, Funny)
and he added: my sister was bitten by a prøprietary førmat ønce...
Re:Additionally... (Score:3, Funny)
In other news, the people in charge of adopting proprietary formats were sacked.
Re:Additionally... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Additionally... (Score:4, Funny)
Corpse Collector: I dunno. Must be Bill Gates.
Man with Body: Why?
Corpse Collector: He hasn't got shit all over him.
I hear a new tune (Score:4, Funny)
or should I say she once had me.
So I switched os's
isn't it good
Norwegian Minister"
Now if US companies would get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
I left a message with them and explained the problem but I think it will take a LOT of people (hint, hint) to email companies who use proprietary formats before they'll get the message.
Actually CNN hasn't done a thing since (Score:3, Insightful)
I have bothered to go to their site in a while. I'd rather go to BBC.co.uk
I would recommend that you do so if you want news.
Re:Actually CNN hasn't done a thing since (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.cbc.ca/listen/index.html [www.cbc.ca]
Yes, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Norway isn't really a big enough country for other countries to worry about conforming to its standards of documents. They're probably still going need Office, or OO.org atleast, to read files sent to them from other countries.
Re:Yes, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
What are the Norwegians going to do when the US or British governments, for example, send them a .doc? Tell them they have to redo it over again in a non-proprietary format?
I imagine a secretary will open it with openoffice and save it to a standard format. If they are feeling evangelical, they may do just as you have suggested and request a standard format.
Picture this, you're a U.S. ambassador and a foreign government that controls a fair bit of oil and is historically friendly to you and well respected by the rest of the world sends you a letter asking you to please resend the papers you sent them, but in a format that does not require them to buy special software from an American company. Do you A) tell them no; or B) tell your executive assistant to do it? The clock is ticking here. Gee, sure is a tough choice huh? For that matter if you have to do this a dozen or so times are you going to get pissed at the Norweigans or at your IT guys who can't seem to send documents in the right format (whatever the hell that is)?
The truth of the matter is Norway can easily dictate the format they receive documents in, and if other countries (ones we are less inclined to cater to like Peru) ask for the same, it is much more likely we will do so for them as well. Some U.S. government officials might even wonder what the big deal is, research the issue, and try to mandate the same for their department, office, agency or whatever.
Im not surprised. (Score:4, Insightful)
Demanding your own data to be readable by anyone without tullbooting to a certain vendor is so obvious it almost hurts. The problem is people really dont understand how it works, once they do they wont put up with it. Governments is in a perfect position to demand theese kinds of rules since they serve the public and not any perticular company. It cant be considered a trade hindrance either since there are plenty of free open formats for the propriarity vendors to implement free of charge in their applications.
Put this in perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
Population of Norway: 4,593,041
GDP of Washington State: 192,500,000,000
GDP of Norway: 183,000,000,000
So, like, Bill and Steve feel threatened?
Re:Put this in perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Open Source is not very important (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now I'm looking at an OS browser showing HTML with CSS. There are som jpegs around and some png's as well. If Microsoft or other company had their way, all of those formats would be secret, closed and patented and the software should be licenced from them.
Open Source is nice and efficient way of writing code, but real freedom is inside open standards.
As it is now, every government and every company has a lot of unreadable documents sitting around on their disks. They only become readable, when a licence is paid to MS or Adobe etc. And who knows, how long these companies will be around? And what if they choose to abandon old platforms and try to force everybody to use the newest Longhorn 2020 Ultra Plus for $499 pr. licence? This is not freedom.
What if I work for some government office and would like to make a nice, indexed and searchable database of my Word documents available to the public. Where is the innovation, when the standards are closed and secret and unreadable for my programmers
Knowing what's inside your own documents is essential. Specially if you are a government.
I hope that EU will look at Norway and learn. There's not much hope for the US I'm affraid. Too much corporate influence inside the political system.
Money better spent elsewhere (Score:5, Informative)
- it has lots of money, and
- the Government controls much more than it does in the U.S. -- for example, private schools, universities/colleges and hospitals are nearly nonexistant. Heck, even the largest ISP in Norway is largely owned by the Government!
Now, for years, the Government has been spitting out money to Microsoft to purchase licenses for Windows and Office in all schools, universities, departments, hospitals and the like. Each and every high school in Norway has Windows and Office readily available for its students, many of whom have Microsoft Word and Excel as a part of their compulsory curriculum. A middle-sized high school in Norway spends up to 15,000 USD on Microsoft licenses alone.So Microsoft has done very well in Norway. In fact, Microsoft's Norwegian division did such a good job at dragging money out of the Government, that its CEO got promoted [www.digi.no][link in Norwegian] to be the CEO of Microsoft Russia!
Fortunately, certain groups [skolelinux.org] and politicians have realized that the money spent on Microsoft could be spent on more important things, and have objected to pouring out money to Microsoft, and Linux has been tried out in several schools throughout the country, with largely positive experiences.
The Government has therefore finally realized that the continuous flow of money going to Microsoft is better spent elsewhere, and that there are cheaper and better alternatives. And with this statement from the Minister, Norway is one step further on its way to stop this terrible waste of money.
That means no more Java! (Score:3, Funny)
ogg (Score:3, Informative)
NRK ogg [www.nrk.no]
The official streaming is in the windows media format though...
Re:Which means txt & pdf (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Which means txt & pdf (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Which means txt & pdf (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, it's XML and XML can be extended, but then it's no longer the OASIS standard document format.
And don't try to pretend that you can use your own namespaces to create your own functionality. Yes, you can, but since the OASIS standard
Re:Which means txt & pdf (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know though , PDF was a fairly forward looking format and seems to be doing ok (.pdf and OS X seem to be fairly great , well pdf is if its used properly as opposed to people shoving everything in a pdf)and nobody can fault a pure text document for its functionality
Not to mention the plethoira of open standard formats out there.
All i can say is , Way to go norway .
Re:Which means txt & pdf (Score:2)
Doesn't he know that open communication formats that can be read without specialized proprietary tools have no place in the future?!
Re:Which means txt & pdf (Score:2)
Re:Which means txt & pdf (Score:4, Interesting)
How so?
What he's saying is, "The way software will compete in Norway is how it runs or interacts with the user, not how it stores information."
All it does is prevent being locked into a vendor because migration to other software is nearly impossible until|unless someone hacks the file format and creates a conversion program.
Here's a story from my background:
When I worked exclusively in mainframes and mid-ranges, the desire was to move from Data General's CEO (office automation): word-processing documents, spreadsheets, and calendars to IBM's PROFS system. DG wouldn't sell, let alone give the internal file formats. IBM's file layouts were open books. Management solicited quotes from local software whores and the best bid they got was a $50'000 retainer, 6-8 people with a minimum of 6-8 months. They came to me and asked if I could do it but without a firm schedule - to see what I could do to steam things open. The quality of the local DG customer service dropped dramatically as not only were they losing a big customer, but someone was hacking their secrets. But DG Sales stepped up the pressure to retail their pressence.
It was my first PL/I series of programs - I'd already worked extensively in at least a dozen other languages. (in order, the first few were LISP, FORTRAN, assembler, COBOL, BASIC). Once you've got a nice assortment, languages are languages - you aren't locked into a particular mindset but can also steal concepts from one and use them in another.
Anyway, I finished all three programs in less than three months without working overtime and without offloading my regular work. It was turned over to the migration team and it converted several hundred thousand word processing documents and spreadsheets, and hundreds of calendars flawlessly. No runtime errors and no reports of problems from any users during the years of use after the migration.
The gist of this is that if the file formats are open, you probably don't have to roll your own as there would probably be businesses which write & sell them. But application vendors don't want their customers to have the ability to move to anyone else at will. It goes against the grain of how they do business.
It will be interesting to see the status of this situation in two years - someone set a reminder and let's reexamine what's happening and what happens to this guy. The issue will die or he'll be swept by the wayside as this type of thinking is not popular in the business world!
Re:Which means txt & pdf (Score:3, Interesting)
Alright, but suppose that they gave you the software at a lower price in the first place because they knew that you would not be able to switch vendors easily? It could be argued that this should be disclosed up-front, but even if it had been you know what would have happened...some middle manager would have siezed upon the opportunity to save a buck no
Re:Which means txt & pdf (Score:3, Interesting)
OO.O promotes its own open formats , but it has the compatability to resonibly render Word documents , it is not yet perfect but it is rathe rgood.
Companys are not willing to switch , mainly due to retraining cost.
OO.o is not put forward on its compatibility with Word (its just one of the many features) , its put forward on its functionality and open nature.
Re:Hrmmm... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hrmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hrmmm... (Score:4, Informative)
Check out "Office 2003 XML Reference Schema Patent License" [microsoft.com] Hell, the title says it all, doesn't it?
Re:Hrmmm... (Score:2)
More specifically, formatting can easily be screwed when going from Quattro Pro to Excel or Excel to Open Office for example.
Re:Hrmmm... (Score:2, Informative)
Of course, you could always just claim that it's not an open standard b/c microsoft hasn't released it... *note: we're talking the binary versions. (e.g. n
Re:What about non-tech (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course you will. The whole reason that patents were introduced was to entice people to reveal their trade secrets to the world so they would become available as public knowledge. That's the opposite of proprietary file formats.
Re:What about non-tech (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically, they're saying that you can't provide government info in a format that would require someone to buy software to be able to read it. Which, all in all, is a good thing - information is more publicly available with fewer differences in who can access it.
Re:What about non-tech (Score:3, Interesting)
this just in... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:All two computers... (Score:2)
Re:open standards idealism (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:open standards idealism (Score:3, Interesting)
Embracing open standards is fine, but to do so at the expense of proprietary standards is stupid. More broadly, you can't afford to be idealistic in this industry; you have to be practical.
Actually, Norway is exactly the kind of customer who can afford to be idealistic on behalf of their current citizens and on behalf of future generations. For a reasonable amount of money they can switch over to open streaming video technologiesand other open standards that rely upon no patents or particular software v
Re:open standards idealism (Score:5, Interesting)
sorry the world just doesn't work that way. You don't just take your chips and go home because in the end you just end up hurting yourself. Most of the time idealism translates to stupidity.
Freeing the slaves was pretty impractical. Trying to coordinate voting across a huge nation instead of just having a bunch of little monarchies was impractical too. Police informing those accused of a crime of their rights is impractical too; 90% of people they inform either know already or don't care. Sometimes an idealistic solution is the right answer. In this case it is idealistic and practical and will probably save them money and time in the long term. The Norwegians are not running a business, they are doing what is right for their people and what they have announced is certainly something I would probably do were I in their place.
Re:open standards idealism (Score:3, Funny)
"Embracing open standards is fine, but to do so at the expense of proprietary standards is stupid. More broadly, you can't afford to be idealistic in this industry; you have to be practical.em>
No kidding! Just how useful has ftp, http, and smtp been? We'd be much better off with proprietary standards!
Re:oh no! The end of M$ is near... (Score:2)
Re:oh no! The end of M$ is near... (Score:2)
Heja Norge! (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, Norway is small.
It's also per-capita on of the richest nations in the world, with plenty of high tech business. And did I mention oil?
She also punches far above her weight class in international affairs with a long and distinguished history of diplomatic intercession and hosting, and could serve as a shining example to many other nations, particularly her European neighbors.
So, of course, it's easy to make disparaging remarks about a small nation, particularly posting on a site like this where the readership is predominantly USian (and, geeky or not, still subject to that typically USian fault of not knowing or caring about the rest of the world) but in fact this is a fairly prominent nation with some real influence, and it could be a turning point for MS dominance in other areas as well.
You have TOTALLY missed the point. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ballmer and his top managers has travelled around the world trying to stop even cities from switching to open software.
Microsoft seems to be scared of a domino effect.
You are either an idiot or working for a Redmond company? :-)
Re:Plz discuss the point and not the jokes (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll ignore your baiting and rambling and respond to the part of this that seems to actually attempt to make a point.
What I'm saying is that they can quit putting out documents in proprietary formats while still using the same software. They can, and they should, and the costs of doing so are, if not non-existent, certainly miniscule.
Would th
Re:Oh no, not the Norwegians! (Score:2)
Oh, and not all of Scandinavia is "fjord-riddled".
Parrots. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Can someone please explain (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that proprietary formats -- by definition -- cannot guarantee free access to the information they contain, and free access is essential to the functioning of a democratic government.
is Norways really irrelevant? (Score:3, Funny)
They only produce 1/2 of what Saudi Arabia produces. And 1 1/2 times what Iraq does.
Surely we can neglect countries as insignificant as this.
Re:It works both ways. (Score:3, Interesting)
Were the governments of the world to declare that they wanted only proprietary software, you'd probably find Open Source not in that market. Of course