ODF Adoption TC Call - 19 February 2008 - Minutes

[donald_harbison@us.ibm.com]

Dear ODF Adoption TC Members:

Here are the minutes of today's TC meeting:

Attendees: 

- Don Harbison, Co-Chair, IBM
- J.David Eisenberg, Individual, Group
Member
- Charles Schulz, Ars Aperta, Group
Member
- Aslam Rafee, South Africa Department
of Science and Technology, Group Member
- Louis Suarez-Potts, Sun Microsystems,
Group Member

Members: 5 of 37 (13%)
Voting Members: 4 of 7 (57%) (used for
quorum calculation) 

** A quorum was achieved.

** The TC heartily welcomes Aslam Rafee
as a new Group Member. Some of us first met Aslam at the First International
ODF User Workshop in Berlin, October 29 - 30, 2007 http://www.odfworkshop.org/


** The TC discussed the ODF entry on
wikipedia.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
The TC agreed it was likely the most heavily visited site on the Internet
for information on ODF and therefore the TC members will carefully review
and collate information that merits update and correction. We agreed to
maintain this effort as a regular, ongoing agenda item for ODF Adoption
TC action. Members were advised to first carefully review the proper procedures
for editing entries. 

Please review the Wikipedia Policies
and Guidelines document here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines

We will decide on next steps during
the forthcoming March 4th ODF Adoption TC meeting.

** Don reported that the ODF TC is expected
to publish ODF v1.2 for OASIS public review in the second quarter. We need
to begin the process of preparing materials to post on opendocument.xml.org
reflecting this important update to the standard specification.

** Event Discussion: 

1. OpenForum Europe is hosting a conference
entitled: 'Standards and the Future of the Internet' http://www.openforumeurope.org/press-room/ofe-events/copy_of_pre-announcement-openforum-europe-roundtable-on-standards-and-the-future-of-the-internet-international-conference-centre-geneva-26-february-2008

Highly distinguished speakers, include
Vint Cerf from Google, the Godfather of the Internet, Robert Sutor, Vice
President, Standards and Open Source, IBM, Håkon Lie, Chief Technology
Officer, Opera Software, formerly with W3C and Andy Updegrove of Gesmer
Updegrove LLP, and author of the well known blog Consortium.Info.org. 

The conference is being held concurrent
and adjacent to the ISO JTC1 Ballot Resolution Meeting on DIS29500, OOXML.
There is no content commenting on DIS29500 included in the OFE conference.



2. OpenOffice.org 2008 proposal for
venue and ballot period is underway at OpenOffice.org here: http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2008/cfl/
Registered members of OpenOffice.org as of January 1, 2008 are invited
to vote up to midnight UTC Friday, February 29, 2008. There are six locations
to choose from this year:

    * Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    * Beijing, China
    * Bratislava, Slovakia
    * Budapest, Hungary
    * Dundalk, Ireland
    * Orvieto, Italy

With the depth and breadth of interest
in hosting OpenOffice.org's annual conference the community members are
beginning to discuss how best to organise, plan and execute this important
event. Louis commented that professional event firms are now required,
and that the era of volunteerism is passing. The scale and scope now warrants
professional event management services.

We conducted a detailed discussion on
the need for regional events. Louis summarised efforts in India, South
America and other regions commenting on the challenges, but also stressing
the need. Aslam indicated a strong OpenOffice community is active in South
Africa. 

3. FOSEM  2008 is convening in
Brussels this coming weekend, Feb. 23 - 24, 2008. This is a developer only
gathering bringing together leading developers of open source projects
from across Europe with some participation from other regions of the world.
Louis indicated that lots of beer is involved and everyone enjoys the camaderie.
:) See http://www.fosdem.org/2008/
...for details.

4. Open Publish http://www.open-conferences.com/baltimore/
 This conference will be held in Baltimore, Maryland, USA on April
23 - 24, 2008. Don is investigating the possibility of speaking to present
on ODF.


** Round Table

1. Aslam Raffee

Aslam provided an excellent summary
of ODF policy change in South Africa. The government has published this
policy in the MINIMUM INTEROPERABILITY
STANDARDS (MIOS) for Information Systems
in Government V4.1 on October 23, 2007. http://www.oss.gov.za/MIOS_V4.1_final.pdf

The country is now in the midst of implementing
this policy. The first stage is to ensure the ODF documents may be read
(March 2008) and then read/write support (Sept 2008) capability will follow.
The public document for this policy implementation is now out for review.

Other news from South Africa highlighted
include the excellent work of a local NGO to translate OpenOffice into
the 11 official languages of South Africa. For more information see:  Open
Office translators win multilingualism award  -- http://translate.org.za
<http://translate.org.za/

The national standard body SABS and
active members of the open source software community in South Africa are
willing and able to provide advice and guidance to other countries in the
region of southern Africa interested to follow the example of South Africa.
These countries include: Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique.

2. Charles Schulz

Charles updated the TC on his planned
participation at the OFE conference in Geneva next week. 

3. Don Harbison -- mentioned that supporters
of OOXML are drawing attention to the Sun Covenant for ODF implying that
ODF will be negatively affected were Sun to leave OASIS at some future
date. Louis will investigate and take action if necessary.

Don reported that the IBM Lotus Symphony
development team is in the final stages to complete code contribution to
OpenOffice.org for accessibility frameworks and Lotus SmartSuite file filters.
The development staff from IBM and OpenOffice are working closely together
and this will positively affect OpenOffice V3 and future versions of Lotus
Symphony. 

Don confirmed IBM is in support of the
Red Flag proposal to host OpenOffice.org 2008 in Beijing. 

4. J. David Eisenberg -- reported on
his recent trip to attend the Southern California Linux Expo. See http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/
for details. He noted that ODF was not discussed. Of particular interest
was the new Acer laptops with Linux in the $400 price range include OpenOffice
and run very well, according to J.David.

5. Louis Suarez-Potts -- reported on
the support for standards in Canada and the associated challenges. 

The meeting was adjourned.


Regards,


Don Harbison
Program Director, IBM ODF Initiative
Business & Technical Strategy
IBM Software Group
tel:1-978-399-7018
Mobile: +1-978-761-0116
email: donald_harbison@us.ibm.com