See below for the most comprehensive list of mandatory open standards known to man: the software standards Portugal passed into law this week.

While the UK left punters wondering how it would enforce its own open standards mandate, in Portugal it is now illegal to do anything else. If you do business in Portugal – and some people do – and you do business in the public sector – and a lot of those who do, do – this is how you do it henceforward. If you don’t the government will simply be unable to buy your software.

It took Portugal’s administration a year to put the finishing touches to this list, following an extensive public consultation – about two to three years work in all. But when you get down to the nitty gritty, is it just a statement of the bleedin’ obvious?

What difference does it ma-a-ake

ODF was the acronym on everyone’s lips when Portugal published the list this week. The mandation of an open document standard might have wide repurcussions in a world where local authorities like Bristol have claimed they can’t use anything but Microsoft because all their major business systems communicate using Microsoft’s proprietary document format. The UK’s coalition government has been harping on about this since before it came to power in 2010. It still hasn’t simply mandated ODF.

Some of Portugal’s other prescribed standards will also make a difference, insists Gustavo Homem, president of the Portuguese Open Source Business Association (ESOP).

“Email/groupware servers will have to offer SMTP, IMAP, CALDAV and LDAP, so you can’t lock things up in a single brand “server + client” monolith,” he says. “Public websites have to comply to HTML+CSS. There can be no excuses now for IE-only websites.”

Portugal hopes also that its GIS standards will lead to raw GIS data becoming a common public currency.

Homem says it shows government is taking IT reform seriously. “This is incomparable to the situation 5 years ago,” he says. Now the country only has to change the idiotic purchasing habits of an entire generation.

Oh-oh-oh

Even in the UK, where the open standards policy relies for its fate entirely on the strength of the Cabinet Office, there is hope from even the most wisened quarters that its a step that will be followed by other steps in the right direction.

“I’d like to put it down as a good start,” says Gerry Gavigan, chairman of the Open Source Consortium, a UK trade body.

In Portugal, like the UK, government policy was said to have been derailed by intense lobbying from proprietary software vendors, led by Microsoft, whose cash cow is its hold over the standards of communication in public computing. That’s why it took so long. Because the devil will find work for idle hands to do.

But that’s just ODF. There are 30 standards in this list. They form the architectural blueprint for the future of public computing. That’s the idea, anyway.

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Data formats, including codes of characters, sound formats and images (still and moving), audio, graphic data Standard Description Status Deadline Info SQL Structured Query Language Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp PNG Portable Network Graphics Recommended n/a https://www.w3.org/TR/PNG SVG Scalable Vector Graphics Obligatory 6 February 2013 https://www.w3.org/TR/SVG XML Extensible Markup Language Obligatory 6 February 2013 https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/ XSLT 2.0 XSL Transformations Obligatory 6 February 2013 https://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/ XSD XML Schema Definition Obligatory 6 February 2013 https://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-0/ https://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xmlschema-1-20041028/structures.html https://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xmlschema-2-20041028/datatypes.html XSL 1.1 Extensible Stylesheet Language Obligatory 6 February 2013 https://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/ XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://xmpp.org/rfcs/rfc6120.html UTF-8 8-bit Unicode Transformation Format Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3629

Document formats (structured and unstructured) and content management, including document management



Standard Description Status Deadline Info ODF 1.1 Open Document Format v1.1 (Second Edition) Obligatory Citizen Docs: 6 February 2013 / Other docs: 1 July 2014 http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.1/OS/OpenDocument-v1.1.pdf PDF 1.7 Portable Document Format Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/pdf/pdfs/PDF32000_2008.pdf XML 1.0 Extensible Markup Language Obligatory 6 February 2013 https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/ HTML 4.01 Hypertext Markup Language Obligatory 6 February 2013 https://www.w3.org/TR/html401/

Technologies web interface, including accessibility, ergonomics, compatibility and integration services



Standard Description Status Deadline Info ATOM 1.0 Atom Syndication Format 1.0 Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4287 CalDav Calendaring Extensions to web DAV (CalDAV) Obligatory 1 July 2014 2014 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4791 CSS2.1 Cascading Style Sheets 2.1 Obligatory 6 February 2013 https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2 HTML 4.01 Hypertext Markup Language Obligatory 6 February 2013 https://www.w3.org/TR/html401/ HTTP/1.1 Hypertext Transfer Protocol Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616 HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2818 Javascript 1.5 Javascript 1.5 Recommended n/a Website WCAG 2.0 — nível «A» Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 — nível «A» Obligatory 6 February 2013 https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20 WCAG 2.0 — nível «AA» Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 — nível «AA» Obligatory 6 February 2013 https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20 WCAG 2.0 — nível «AA» ou «AAA» Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 — nível «AA» ou «AAA» Recommended n/a https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20 WCAG 2.0 — nível «AAA» Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 — nível «AAA» Recommended n/a https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20 WebDAV Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning Access Control Protocol Recommended n/a http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3744 XML 1.0 Extensible Markup Language Obligatory 6 February 2013 https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/ XSL v1.1 XML stylesheet language XSL v1.1 Obligatory 6 February 2013 https://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xsl11-20061205

Streaming protocols for transmission of sound and moving images in real time, including transportation and distribution of content and services point to point Standard Description Status Deadline Info RTSP Real Time Streaming Protocol Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2326.txt

Electronic mail protocols, including access to content and extensions, and instant messaging services Standard Description Status Deadline Info IMAP 4 Internet Message Access Protocol Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501 MIME RFC 2045, 2046, 2047 — Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://tools.ietf.org/html/ POP3 RFC 1939 — Post Office Protocol Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1939.txt POP3S, IMAPS RFC 2595 Using TLS with IMAP, POP3 and ACAP Recommended n/a http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2595 SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol — RFC 5321 Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt SMTPS RFC 3207 SMTP Service Extension for Secure SMTP over Transport Layer Security – http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3207.txt Recommended n/a http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3207.txt

Geographic information systems, including cartography, digital cadastre, surveying and modeling Standard Description Status Deadline Info WCS Web Coverage Service Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://www.opengeos-patial.org/standards/wcs WFS Web Feature Service Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wfs WMS Web Map Service Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wms WPS Web Processing Service Obligatory 6 February 2013 http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wps

Technical specifications and communication protocols in computer networks Standard Description Status Deadline Info IPV6 Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Recommended n/a http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2460

Technical specifications of security for networks, services, applications and documents Standard Description Status Deadline Info TLS 1.0 Transport Layer Security Obligatory 1 January 2014 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2246