Open Source Alliance Cyberjaya

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, announced on his blog that he has accepted a seat on the board of directors of the Linux Foundation.

The Linux Foundation was founded in January 2007 when the two leading non-profit groups supporting Linux, Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group (FSG), joined forces. By uniting their efforts, the groups hoped to further their goals of supporting and standardizing Linux. Shuttleworth believes that the new organization is off to a good start in reaching those goals.

“I’m very impressed with the results of the early work being done at the new Linux Foundation,” Shuttleworth said. “I think it’s a credit to the folks who set up the new entity that they have been able to narrow the focus substantially and get buy-in from all the major players on the goals for 2007.”

Shuttleworth says this is why he has “accepted a seat on the board of the Linux Foundation, not in my capacity as founder of Ubuntu or via Canonical” (Shuttleworth’s company, which supports Ubuntu), “but as an independent representative of the free software and Linux community.”

While Shuttleworth is “not a great fan of consortia,” he “agreed to take on this role because I think the management have a mandate [from the backers] to deliver something that’s really important for free software — an open process of standardization that delivers results in competitive time frames. I’ll do my best to help them achieve that.”

Source: Linux-Watch

The D Daily (Korea): The MIC, pushing for ODF, MS office might be hurt

http://www.ddaily.co.kr/english/?fn=view&article_num=21636

조휘섭기자 hscho@ddaily.co.kr
2007년 03월 09일 06:59:51

The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) announced on the 7th that it is intending to adopt Open Document Format (ODF) as its software document standard for administrative work.

In that case, software that does not support ODF will be completely excluded from the public agencies.

Currently, software from Microsoft and Haansoft that dominate the Korean market does not support ODF. However, Haansoft said that they have planned to make its product support ODF.

One official from Haansoft said, “We are preparing for ODF support software internally. However, the software might be hard to have all the features of existing Haansoft’s office software for technical reasons.”

Microsoft, on the other hand, is reluctant to make its software support ODF. Since the software giant monopolizes the office software market, standardization of software will result in lowering market share for the company.

Therefore, if the Korean government adopts ODF files as a standard, Microsoft will not be able to provide its product to the government offices.

One official from the Ministry said, “We only have a basic plan at the moment. We are not implementing it yet. We will discuss with the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs over this.”

Source: Open Malaysia