open

New York appears to be the latest state concerned with the long-term accessibility of its digital documents.

RoAnn Destito, chair of the Governmental Operations committee in the New York State Assembly, introduced a bill on Wednesday to study "production and preservation" of the state's electronic documents.

The study's director would investigate how access to "electronic data can be created, maintained, exchanged and preserved by the state in a manner that encourages appropriate government control, access, choice, interoperability and vendor neutrality."

The bill also recommends that New York confer with other states' electronic document strategies. … Read more

Google has added a new option to Google Docs and Spreadsheets to make files open for others to look at without the need to register or sign in with a Google account. To make any doc or spreadsheet open, users can click option for "invitations may be used by anyone" in the "Share" tab. Once enabled, any invite to view the spreadsheet will take users right to it, bypassing any annoying log-in screens. Users will still need to log in and be on the collaborators list to make any editing changes, but this should open things … Read more

Bills introduced over the past year to promote open digital document formats in U.S. state governments have foundered, according to a review of state-level standards activity.

Computerworld on Sunday published an article that found that bills in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, and Oregon around open formats did not pass. The bills called for the use of standards and open document formats in desktop software.

A number of European governments have adopted Open Document Format (ODF) as the standard for electronic documents from productivity applications. Microsoft's rival Open XML format has been certified as an Ecma standards and is now … Read more

Penguins aren't generally considered the speediest animals around, but this weekend one of the birds will be zipping around the track at the Indianapolis 500. Two Linux enthusiasts have taken it upon themselves to increase the visibility of the open-source operating system by getting a penguin-adorned car into the big race.

Their grassroots effort, called Tux 500, is aimed at raising funds to sponsor a Linux-sponsored race car operated by Chastain Motorsports. While the original fundraising goal of $350,000 appears to be out of reach, as of Thursday morning, Tux 500 had collected more than $16,300, with … Read more

RedFlag Chinese 2000 Software will work with Sun Microsystems to improve the OpenOffice.org software in the Chinese market, the companies said Wednesday.

RedFlag will work on integrating features for the Chinese market, adding about 50 engineers to the project, and Sun will help train the company's engineers, a Sun representative said. No money is changing hands as part of the partnership.

RedFlag produces a Chinese variation of OpenOffice.org called RedOffice. The company is a subsidiary of the Chinese Academy of Science.

SAN FRANCISCO--Zmanda, which develops the open-source Amanda backup and recovery software, has raised $8 million in a second round of funding. Helion Venture Partners led the round, and earlier investors BlueRun Ventures and Canaan Partners participated, the company said Tuesday in conjunction with the Open Source Business Conference here.

The company plans to use the funding to expand its business and its research and development. The company sells support subscriptions to its Zmanda Network, which includes support for Amanda Enterprise and Zmanda Recovery Manager software.

LAS VEGAS--I'm here at the Interop conference, networking-geek heaven. Yesterday was Network Access Control day, so I'd be remiss if I didn't wish everyone a belated happy NAC day to start.

Yesterday's big networking news didn't break here. It came from Redmond, Wash.: Microsoft announced two partnership announcements.

First, Microsoft announced that its version of NAC called Network Access Protection would interoperate with the Trusted Network Connect (TNC) framework from the Trusted Computing Group, or TCG. Not content with a single new friend, Microsoft made a similar announcement with Juniper Networks, declaring NAP interoperability with … Read more

Microsoft said that it has voted in favor of making OpenDocument Format, or ODF, a recognized standard at the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

The company said it also anticipates that its Open XML File Formats will be submitted and approved by ANSI as well.

ANSI often votes on whether International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards should be added to the American Standards List, Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager of interoperability and standards, said in a statement. ODF gained ISO certification about a year ago.

Microsoft, which had one of many votes, chose to vote in favor of ODF … Read more

Sometimes we analysts have an "all sizzle and no steak" reputation. We come up with high falootin' concepts, write reports and columns, and get quoted in the media, but we don't really "do" anything.

Former executive vice president of marketing for EMC, Bob Ano, once put it to me this way: "If I make a bet on your latest 'vision' and you turn out to be wrong, I lose my job and reputation. You simply change a few PowerPoint slides and move on."

With this as background, I am proud to say that … Read more