I thought that my “Walk the Talk” article will never see print but I guess I was wrong. It was because of millions of hits that rendered the Manila Bulletin server to slow down — it is a “good problem”, really. 
Glad that it is now online again. 
Anyway, to continue what I have written – I am sure that some of you are asking why I wrote it and to whom it was addressed. Funny thing is, my intention was only for one group but later on, I realized that it also applies to another organization.
Not to be accused of being biased, I’ll talk about the first one first. I have mentioned it far too many times already but I guess I have to mention it again with hopes that they will realize that they really need to do something about it. The organization is none other than our partner, Sun Philippines (not Sun Microsystems in California but its local partner). Ask for a document from any SunPhil employee and chances are you will get a Microsoft Office formatted file. To think that they are supposed to be promoting StarOffice, which is derived from OpenOffice.org, maintained and developed with Sun Microsystems, Inc. and a community of open source developers.
“Most of our clients are using Microsoft Office”, this is the standard reply you will get from them when you ask why they are using Microsoft Office file formats instead of StarOffice file format or the ISO standard Open Document File (ODF) file format. Isn’t it part of your job to market and promote StarOffice to your clients, too? Granted that they are numerous, why can’t you use a platform independent file format such as RTF instead? Both StarOffice and Microsoft Office support it 100%! What is even worse is that they assume that you are also using Microsoft Office, too! Not everybody uses/can afford/pirates Microsoft Office, y’know.
The other organization is rather less known locally as compared to SunPhil but it has its share of the limelight, both locally and internationally (being an internationally funded project). The organization in question is the Philippine Open Source Initiative or POSITIVE. POSITIVE aims to introduce Open Source to Computer Science and Information Technology degree granting colleges and universities by providing them with free courseware and tools. Yes, this is very much similar to the Java Education & Development Initiative (JEDI), of which I am part of. Accuse me of being biased but hey, I am merely stating the facts! I have nothing against POSITIVE since I am one of the advocates of Open Source and I do not think that anyone can even challenge me on this even if they also know that I advocate the Mac and Java, which is not (yet) open source’d.
Anyway, back to the topic. Check out POSITIVE’s courseware – as of my last check, which was two weeks ago, their slides are in Microsoft PowerPoint and their documents are in Microsoft Word. These file formats can be opened, although not perfectly, by OpenOffice.org or StarOffice. They could have done it using RTF, PDF or HTML, if they refuse to use ODF. Does this mean that they are giving the schools free copies of Microsoft Office? Are they encouraging these schools to pirate it just so the teachers can use their materials? Give me a break! Practice what your preach! How can you encourage Open Source when you yourself don’t use it?!
I just hope that they realize what they are doing before it is too late. SunPhil is an staunch supporter of Open Standards and Open Source and POSITIVE pushes for Open Source — if they don’t practice what they preach, people from the Open Source community may soon think twice about where they stand.
Technorati Tags: Open Document Format
(Jerome is not in the photo but he promised to attend our next meet).
