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Open Source

About OpenSource and standards policies and adoption.

Open Source in South Africa

• South African government adopts Open Source policy - 22 February 2007
  Under the new plan, all new software developed for or by the government of South Africa will be based on open standards. Adopting open standards in itself doesn't require the solutions to be open source or free; however, the government did say it plans to migrate its current software to free and open source software.
  • Statement on the Cabinet meeting - 21 February 2007
• Free/Libre & Open Source Software and Open Standards in South Africa
  by the National Advisory Council on Innovation - Open Software Working Group (local copy)
• POLICY ON FREE and OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE USE for SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT
  Department of Public Service & Administration, August 2006 (local copy)
• National Advisory Council on Innovation
• Open Source Software in Government Official .gov.za site
• Open Source Centre of the Meraka Institute
• http://www.tectonic.co.za/ - Open Source news for ZA

OpenDocument

is a document file format used for describing electronic documents such as memos, reports, books, spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. OpenDocument is an OASIS Standard and a published ISO and IEC International Standard referred to as ISO/IEC 26300:2006.
One objective of open formats like OpenDocument is to guarantee long-term access to data without legal or technical barriers, and some governments have come to view open formats as a public policy issue. OpenDocument is intended to be an alternative to proprietary formats, including the commonly used DOC, XLS, and PPT formats used by Microsoft Office and other applications.
The governments of Belgium, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States, have been examining the ramifications of selecting a document format. Other governments around the world are also considering the adoption of the format.

French gov't report recommends standardizing on ODF This followssimilar recommendations made in Massachusetts, the European Union, UK and Belgium. The list of members of the ODF Alliance continues to grow. It includes Google, Oracle, IBM, Sun, RedHat, Novell, Corel, the BBC, the Cities of Vienna, Bristol, etc...

• Open Document Format
• Software for OpenDocument
  • OpenOffice.org Open Source applications for Linux, Windows, OsX
  • Google Docs & Spreadsheets free web-based applications
  • ODF viewer for Windows, OsX and Linux
  • http://www.sun.com/software/star/openoffice/index.xml plugin for MS Word 2003, from Sun
  • ODF Converter plugin for MS Office 2007, from Microsoft
  • Wikipedia:OpenDocument software
• OpenDocument Format Alliance
• OpenDocument Fellowship