Massachusetts’ plan to standardize desktop applications on OpenDocument, an open standard not supported by Microsoft Office, essentially comes down to a matter of control, according Stephen O’Grady. O’Grady has been following the story closely and explains that as a sovereign entity, Massachusetts feels the need to be in complete control of its desktop technology, rather than relying on a single company for its office productivity needs.
Man I love that story, somebody play me some reggae…
Software man don’t sell me
any more of your lies.
He’ll just keep on pushing
and our freedom compromise
Rise up, wise up, stand up for what’s right.
Wise up, rise up, don’t give up the fight.
Software man don’t sell me
any more of your lies.
Lies of the new millenium:
– Inherently more secure;
– Does not have bugs;
– Millions of developers all over the world actively review sources of our software;
– 100% compatible with most widely used document formats.
Uh, I don’t think anyone seriously believes software has NO bugs. More secure, I can buy, but secure depends on the environment, other programs, who uses what, and how the program was written.
And, 100% compatible with most widely used document formats is EXACTLY why Massachusetts is switching! Anyone can read those files 100% correctly- the source and format specifications are available. Open Source software is NOT 100% compatible with Microsoft formats (maybe 90%? 95%?) because Microsoft formats aren’t open, thus to use them 100% you HAVE to buy expensive software from Microsoft.
With an open format, you can easily have multiple programs capable of reading the same formats, and thus they will be able to switch if they ever need to. Besides, converting out will be easier, since they know 100% what the format is.
Seriously, it looks like their major reason is control of the format, or lack thereof. It has far less to do with a love of Open Source Software.
Lies of the new millenium:
– Inherently more secure;
– Does not have bugs;
– Millions of developers all over the world actively review sources of our software;
– 100% compatible with most widely used document formats.
The interesting thing about OSS is that you can verify if something is true or not at any level of detail you wish.
Kind of like the nutrition labels that tell you what your food contains. The labels — the source — are both open for verification. This is a very good thing.
While you can do the same thing with closed source, it is a much much harder task.
I think that since we have this horse in front of us (and it isn’t quite dead yet) we can beat it in one more news post.
Anyhow, this quote from the interview sums it up rather nicely, I believe:
<blockquote>“That doesn’t really work for me simply because the OpenDocument format is a standard that anybody can participate in. If Microsoft chooses to participate in it, it certainly can at anytime. [Microsoft] has not, to date, felt that its own Office Open XML formats are superior technically, which is certainly their right to believe. My contention has been all along that if Microsoft wants to cater to customers like Massachusetts that make this decision, all it has to do is implement the OpenDocument format within its product. It already does so for a number of other formats, including WordPerfect and RTF [Rich Text Format]. There are a number of different ‘save as’ options within Microsoft Word, so all it has to do is add the OpenDocument format to that list and all of the sudden they’re competing alongside Sun and IBM and anybody who wants the business of the state of Massachusetts.”</blockquote>
I don’t see Microsoft sticking to their hard line “no OASIS” position for too much longer. The point where they add support will qualify them for Massachusetts government, and (being as ubiquitous as MS Office is) they will likely be a shoe-in.
Sun’s Star/OpenOffice offering has gotten a lot of attention from this event. I wonder if Microsoft would have been better served by just immediately supporting ODF, and not letting any attention go toward competing products.
I don’t see Microsoft sticking to their hard line “no OASIS” position for too much longer. The point where they add support will qualify them for Massachusetts government, and (being as ubiquitous as MS Office is) they will likely be a shoe-in.
Sun’s Star/OpenOffice offering has gotten a lot of attention from this event. I wonder if Microsoft would have been better served by just immediately supporting ODF, and not letting any attention go toward competing products.
While I agree that one quote is spot on, I disagree that Microsoft will adopt OpenDocument soon.
Microsoft would be wise to work on supporting OD file import/export so when they really need to show support they can do so quickly. They would not be wise to let anyone know about it before they are forced to.
The reason is simple; MS makes most of it’s money on file format lockin. If they announced support for OD too early, quite a few customers would start trials where they convert to OD format and eventually deploy non-Microsoft office programs (OpenOffice, StarOffice, WordPerfect, or any of the about 1 dozen others). MS (as a company) will need to find ways to extend the lockin at the point that the file format doesn’t matter any more. How they do that is open to speculation, though there are some early signs they are moving in that direciton.
For now, Microsoft will continue to say OpenDocument is somehow incomplete or inferior even if it is not. This will be repeated constantly by Microsoft and MS suporters with very little evidence that it is true. (The only valid item I see missing is the lack of formula consistancy in the ODS format. For example, formulas don’t work the same way if the ODS is created in OpenOffice.org and loaded in KOffice or bisa versa.)
To me, it doesn’t matter what Microsoft does beyond being an annoyance in the long term. Like Mass. Commonwealth, I will use OD and promote it over any other office format for new projects for generally the same reasons they stated (though not for exactly the same reasons as I’m not a member of the government of a sovereign state).
Anyone who’s been following the actions of Massachusetts since their “open source software trough” initiative started (which was in part also a money-saving strategy) would see that the desire to keep control of their own documents was paramount.
You can see a bit deeper into it by looking at the actions of some of the communities within Massachusetts that made the switch earlier and then put pressure on the Commonwealth itself. Saugus and Billerica are two such examples; Saugus is the better one though as it has lots of stuff online and can be readily followed by doing an occasional Technorati Saugus Search via http://www.technorati.com/search/Saugus . You can also read a lot more background by digging back through the Saugus site at http://www.saugus.net/ , the Saugus blog at http://www.livejournal.com/community/saugus/ , and even (to a lesser extent) the Saugus forums at http://news.saugus.net/ .
Some of these posts make very clear the goal is to keep control and easy access of government documents. Microsoft gets mentioned, of course, but primarily because switching away from Microsoft formats will be the single biggest change for regular users. The biggest focus is the preservation of document control.
The official documents on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts site at http://www.state.ma.us/portal/site/massgovportal/menuitem.769ad13be… also back up this notion. It’s all there in black-and-white for anyone to read; what’s surprising is how much discussion it’s generating when the reasons seem so clear to anyone who’s actually been following the story over the years it’s been building.
I haven’t followed it as closely as you have, except for the last month or two. Thanks for the links!
We live in interesting times.
knowing what i know now about Microsoft’s file formats and MS-Office’s different versions, it would be foolish to not demand Open Document formats, why would somebody rely on a closed file format the can be changed at the whim of a corporation whos only objective is to make as much money as possible from their customers (holding your files hostage)., there is no way i would subject myself & co-workers and my customers to that…
FOSS is the only way to share information & technology…
“FOSS is the only way to share information & technology…”
While I am an Open Source user and supporter, I don’t agree that ‘the only way’ is Open Source. This is juat a matter of standards support, and it doesn’t matter if the code behind it is propriatary or open source at all.
Quote “FOSS is the only way to share information & technology”
EEEERRRRR – WRONG!
Committee based – mutually agreed upon standards – is the way to share information.
shoot! hit the button prematurely!
What I meant to say was:
I dont understant why most of the Free & Open Software people think that FOSS is the best way of doing things. I submit to you that this is WORSE than a closed format. At least with a closed format, you have *some* consistency. With FOSS, if you don’t like the direction of project- no problem – just fork it and you got your own! This is worse.
Collaboration based committees with mutually agreed upon standards is the best way to transfer files because everyone knows the metric and can implement it, and there is only ONE metric, not a lot of forks
We’re talking about file formats. You don’t fork a file format. Your post really makes no sense in this context.
We’re talking about file formats. You don’t fork a file format. Your post really makes no sense in this context.
Are you serious? File formats are extremely easy to fork. The Internet is based upon an open file format (HTML) and that has managed to be forked. It’s entirely possible to create an HTML document that adheres to standards and yet renders differently on all major browsers. Microsoft until IE7 has had a serious bug in its PNG support that prevents it from supporting transparency. This is a fork, because the PNG standard has support for transparency, yet Microsoft’s implementation has none.
The PKZIP format is a well documented, de-facto archiving standard, and yet several implementations have custom extensions for things like encryption.
Granted, some file formats are better designed than others. Things like JPEGs tend to look the same no matter what application is viewing it. However, all it takes to fork a file format is a slightly different implementation of the viewing/editing software. This is exactly how Microsoft’s embrace, extend, and extinguish strategy works.
its called democracy for the citizen, not democracy for the corporations
I am glad i don’t live in Massachusetts what a bunch of whack-o’s. Crippling their productivity just so they can be anti-Microsoft..really smart.
I am glad i don’t live in Massachusetts what a bunch of whack-o’s. Crippling their productivity just so they can be anti-Microsoft..really smart.
Since you have the details, and they are overwhelmingly convincing to you, could you provide them in a way that others who currently disagree could benifit from your insight and experience?
Since you have the details, and they are overwhelmingly convincing to you, could you provide them in a way that others who currently disagree could benifit from your insight and experience?
Simple really, the state of Massachusetts is trying to exact a change via legislation against a particular product. They haven’t stated any technical reasons for the exclusive use of the OpenDocument format. The equivalent analogy is if they decided that Crayons were the only writing utensil allowed so as to force Bic to make wax writing utensils. This is solely a political move by the idiots in the Massachusetts state government. Its blatantly obvious to me evidently the other posters here only see it as a case for the acceptance of OpenDocument and not what it really is, a anti-Microsoft/anti-corporation ploy. These types of action and behavior do not advance OpenDocument as a standard.
Simple really, the state of Massachusetts is trying to exact a change via legislation against a particular product.
No, they haven’t. Anyone can bid for Massachusetts Government contracts to provide products that support OpenDocument. It’s an even playing field.
They haven’t stated any technical reasons for the exclusive use of the OpenDocument format.
While it was not an implementation meeting, they were very clear on the governmental reasons for choosing OpenDocument. Go listen to the 2 hour discussion they had on the subject a couple weeks ago;
http://www.peapodcast.com/msc-oss-sig/MTLC-MAOpenFormats-2005-09-16…
I’ve already gone over this in detail with others, so please please please — listen to the whole thing and don’t jump to conclusions.
They aren’t jerking Microsoft around. They have been at this process for years; it has less to do with technology or products than it does with process and procedures.
The equivalent analogy is if they decided that Crayons were the only writing utensil allowed so as to force Bic to make wax writing utensils.
So, what would stop Bic from making crayons, let alone pens that don’t smear? (Personally, I like Zebra pens as well as a dozen others over crummy Bic stick pens.)
This is solely a political move by the idiots in the Massachusetts state government. Its blatantly obvious to me evidently the other posters here only see it as a case for the acceptance of OpenDocument and not what it really is, a anti-Microsoft/anti-corporation ploy.
They’ve been working on this type of transition for years. Microsoft is a member of OASIS. Microsoft could support OpenDocument, just as Bic could support crayons (or smear-free ink … we are talking Bic after all), but Microsoft chose not to support OpenDocument.
These types of action and behavior do not advance OpenDocument as a standard.
You’re right. OpenDocument is already an OASIS standard, is being proposed for ISO and as the standard document format for the European Union.
It’s a good thing that the “Microsoft Office Open XML” format has the same level of backing as a national and international standard. It does, doesn’t it? Well, ‘MSO OXML’ is widely supported in actual products from competing vendors…making it standard, right? OK…OK…it will be in MS Office 12. When that is released. Then we can all just use one product from one company. It’s the standard. Right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
From the top:
“Massachusetts feels the need to be in complete control of its desktop technology, rather than relying on a single company for its office productivity needs.”
We all need to be in complete control of our lives in every aspect, but for so long we’ve let big corporations rule our choices and dominate our lives.
Linux and the free open source movement is opening up minds and showing people they do have the power to make their own choices and not just suck from the virtual nipple of a Borg.
read here…
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050929134232923
As someone who’s pro open source and pro free markets it’s frustrating to see comments from people who simply hate any corporation say that this is about open source. You’re just giving Microsoft fodder. This is about open standards, standards that allow competition.
I’m considered right wing and I think this is a good fiscal decision by the left wing Massachuseites. They’re forcing Microsoft to compete on features and price. Microsoft will never underbid OpenOffice but it can compete on features. .Doc is the biggest cash cow in history. If it dies Office dies. If Office dies, Windows dies. So no, they’re not going to add support for Open Document, even when it gets ISO approval.
The nice thing about free and open standards is that people are free to implement a free and open solution if they so choose. Usually, someone will. In fact, the reference implementation should probably be open source. Code is more specific than any possible specification.
Your handle is an oxymoron! By your logic, we should
all be driving cars with starting cranks since that’s the
way Ford Motor Co. built them. Thank God that there was
real competition in the Automobile industry that forced Ford
to add electric starter motors to their vehicles.
Well, you know about advertising;
* If they have to tell you what something is, chances are it isn’t.
I apply the opposite to whatever I’m told. If it rings true, I’ve just detected a lie. If it doesn’t, I might be fooled.