“I’m very sorry to report that Peter Quinn, the CIO of Massachusetts who has been at the center of a controversy relating to his efforts at the Information Technology Division to adopt the OpenDocument format for the use of the Commonwealth’s Executive Agencies, has resigned.”
I hope that this does not stop MA and other places in the US, ER and even the world from daring to question the mantra “Microsoft Knows My Business Better Than I Do”
Nope, it’ll just scare CIO’s and they’ll keep their mouths shut about new ideas.
Or it will make organizations think twice when MS shows up, they might be losing some work force in the bid.
I hope that this does not stop MA and other places in the US, ER and even the world from daring to question the mantra “Microsoft Knows My Business Better Than I Do”
How on earth is stupidity like this modded up on OSNews?
Neither Microsoft nor its proponents argue that Microsoft knows your business better than you, nor would it be sensible for them to do so.
They do argue that Microsoft make better business tools than their competitors – and are on fairly solid ground in doing so.
It is possible, even likely, for sensible, knowledgeable people to compare MS Office to its competitors and choose MS Office. Your time would be better spent investigating the deficiencies that drive people away from the products you promote and agitating for improvements to be made in those products. Bashing MS Office in online forums using stupid arguments does not further your agenda, and in fact only weakens it.
Neither Microsoft nor its proponents argue that Microsoft knows your business better than you, nor would it be sensible for them to do so.
Never felt the brunt of their sales pitch have you?
Let it be known… publicly challenging Microsoft is a bad career move. That is of course unless your name is Eric Raymond and you enjoy showing the world how blissfully arrogant you are.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.php?p=208
This news is a shame to hear though. We need more supporters of Open Standards / Open Source in high places.
We don’t know if that is the case for Peter Quinn until we see where he lands. Alot of large companies might like to hire Mr. Quinn, having seen in him an unbiased supporter of “what makes sense” rather than just going with status quo. At least, the businesses that follow the Andy Grove paradigm of constantly reinventing in order to stay ahead (“Only the paranoid survive.”) Ironically, after Grove’s departure, Intel has slipped, and could probably use a man like Quinn right now. In any case, I think you’ll see it won’t be long before Peter Quinn finds a great opportunity – the rules are the same as even 5 years ago.
Sounds like he just wimped out instead of trying to hold his position and stick it out.
or maybe he was told to resign or be fired… government jobs usually give you the chance to take the high road out so people think it was your decision to leave.
Civil servant job, no one get’s fired, well you really don’t want want to know what it would take to get fired. Usually you get side lined in the deep freeze and quit from boredom beyond human endurance.
Perhaps he just simply didn’t enjoy the publicity. And maybe he values his privacy more than push the OpenDocument format. Not every geek has the same level of passion.
It’s also entirely likely that he knew a futile situation when he saw one, and didn’t want to spend any more time fighting a losing battle. If the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was fool enough to be swayed by more Microsoft vaporwear, I don’t blame him one bit for quitting.
I read someplace that he was under “review”. Maybe he was threatened with not only being fired, but also jail time? Politics can be very unforgiving at times, and especially when millions of dollars are invloved. Who knows what happened….
I hope the best for him and can’t wait to see what he has to say…
–ZaNkY
He WAS reviewed, and everything has been found to be OK.
That article in the boston globe has been proven completely false on everything but who P. Quinn is.
He WAS reviewed, and everything has been found to be OK.
That article in the boston globe has been proven completely false on everything but who P. Quinn is.
And yet, the Boston Globe got away with it while selling more papers in the proces, and another persons life is ruined by lies in the media.
Maybe it’s time accountability got added to running media.
Looks as if Mr. Quinn dosn’t have much of a backbone when it comes to slander and rumors. Too bad he didn’t choose to file a couple complaints of even sue the newspaper. Celeberties have sued tabloids for much less.
Looks as if Mr. Quinn dosn’t have much of a backbone when it comes to slander and rumors. Too bad he didn’t choose to file a couple complaints of even sue the newspaper. Celeberties have sued tabloids for much less.
Mr Quinn has been in the soap-opera of the century, and you’re berating him for not starting law-suits he can’t win?
No wonder..
He was probably paid to resign. I hope he got a bundle from MS.
I doubt Microsoft had a lot (if anything) to do with this. Having worked in government organizations in the past, it is generally not a good idea to attempt activism, technology or otherwise, in a unilateral fashion. This is exactly what many in the government of Massachusetts are claiming Peter Quinn attempted.
Open standards are a good idea, but this guy should have worked the political aspects of his campaign for ODF a lot more carefully. He may have been long on vision, but he was short on political acumen.
nicely stated. I work for the MA DOC and there are policies in place where if you have to talk to the public you must go through an approved mouthpiece. This makes sense since you can’t have everyone claiming they speak for a certain organization. The result would be chaos. This guy got caught in that chaos and probably it was suggested he resign instead of being fired. That is what they usually do to you.
You should look up the facts about how MA reached a decision (to mandate ODF and PDF, and to decline MS XML and MS Office Open XML), and how all of a sudden mud flew really deep.
The only one who could have been interested in that mud throwing was Microsoft, and in fact ALL opponent “grass roots” nonprofits of the decision have been found to be payed substantial money by Microsoft, with the notable exception of the accessibility guys. In other words, astroturfing was used by MS to create the false image of a public who felt left out by that decision.
Activism was not being attempted by Quinn or anybody else in that office, they clearly stated what level of openness they needed to be able to provide proper service to the public, and Microsoft refused to meet that level of openness for several months (if recent changes are enough remains to be seen). Conclusively the ODF format has been accepted, and the MS Office Open XML format has not been accepted.
It just happened, that Quinn had to make a decision which was not compatible to Microsofts business interests, but I do not see a problem with that, Quinn works for MA, not MS.
Activism was not being attempted by Quinn or anybody else in that office, they clearly stated what level of openness they needed to be able to provide proper service to the public, and Microsoft refused to meet that level of openness for several months (if recent changes are enough remains to be seen). Conclusively the ODF format has been accepted, and the MS Office Open XML format has not been accepted.
Oh, give it a rest. Jeez, you FOSS guys seem to think that people that utter morons. Quinn et al certainly DID embrace activism on the part of OASIS to get ODF adopted as the standard interchange file format of Massachusetts. His basic problem is that he overlooked or ignored the requirements of state agencies, relating to accessibility, security, cost, etc. He hand-waved these concerns as if they didn’t matter at all. THAT is the reason that Quinn screwed himself. If he had gotten the various state agencies together and sought their approval — regardless of whether the outcome was ODF or MS — he would have kept his job.
Let this be a lesson to any CIO in any organization: Do not try to force change down the throats of people without evaluating their requirements carefully. That is a fundamental responsibility of any CIO — not playing politics with document formats. Which is essentially what Quinn did, and it cost him big-time.
As for FOSS supporters blaming MS for astroturfing them, you only have yourselves to blame. If you could have answered the requirements put forth by the state agencies before the decision was made, this would be a non-issue. But you can’t. ODF falls short in a lot of ways. In typical FOSS fashion, you blame MS rather than look at your own shortcomings and address them.
But look on the bright side: You were successful in getting MS to open up its XML license. You elevated awareness of the ODF format. And you pointed out the need for organizations to have long-term data stability and recoverability plans. All of these things will contribute to making the desktop Office environment a friendlier place for data storage.
You are exactly right! Sounds like the boot licking developer idiot they put in charge of the Unix environment i work in. Despite a significant investment in HP9000,SUN,Oracle hardware/software he decides one day that he is going to migrate the environment to Linux. Just like that no business plan, no justification, no benifit analysis just a “hey we are going open source” with a high five to anyone that agrees with him. This whole environment is going to melt down hopefully i will be working somewhere else soon.
Oh, give it a rest. Jeez, you FOSS guys seem to think that people that utter morons. Quinn et al certainly DID embrace activism on the part of OASIS to get ODF adopted as the standard interchange file format of Massachusetts.
Give the crap a rest. The reasons for moving to ODF were laid out extremely clearly, and of course you’re not engaged in any sort of activism there are you?
His basic problem is that he overlooked or ignored the requirements of state agencies, relating to accessibility……..
And how would you know?
Give the crap a rest. The reasons for moving to ODF were laid out extremely clearly…
… by OASIS. Are you suggesting that Peter Quinn had no contact whatsoever with OASIS members?
… and of course you’re not engaged in any sort of activism there are you?
Yeah, I am. It’s called telling the truth. I get a little annoyed by people trying to candy-coat FOSS activism as “gooooood” and commercial activism as “baaaddddd”. You can’t have it both ways. Pick one.
And how would you know?
Because, unlike many of you, I READ.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20051214/tc_zd/167401
Are you suggesting that Peter Quinn had no contact whatsoever with OASIS members?
You mean OASIS members like Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Adobe, Novell, Corel and Boeing:
http://www.oasis-open.org/about/
It was his job to consult with people like that. Lets face it Anonymous (IP: 24.17.211.—) , you don’t even know what OASIS is. So just look up the URL and find out. Hell some of you MS trolls are so dumb.
Edited 2005-12-28 00:07
… by OASIS. Are you suggesting that Peter Quinn had no contact whatsoever with OASIS members?
Oooooh, the political machinations of Peter Quinn and Oasis conspiring against Microsoft! You do realise, of course, the above means nothing in the context of why MA chose to go down the ODF route and the reasons were not laid out by Oasis? That’s a flat out lie. It is, however, indicative of what’s going on in your head ;-).
Yeah, I am. It’s called telling the truth.
Nope, you’re lying. See above.
I get a little annoyed by people trying to candy-coat FOSS activism as “gooooood” and commercial activism as “baaaddddd”. You can’t have it both ways. Pick one.
I have never advocated anything of the sort, but you seem to assume that I and others have – for whatever reason ;-).
Because, unlike many of you, I READ.
Unlike you, I read and learn beyond Yahoo articles ;-). The disability and accessibility stuff came out of the woodwork at a nice time for Microsoft and has never been an issue in alternatives for Microsoft Office. No one has come out with a comparison of Open Office, Star Office, KOffice, IBM’s stuff as to what problems there are – this appeared out of nowhere ;-).
But look on the bright side: You were successful in getting MS to open up its XML license. You elevated awareness of the ODF format. And you pointed out the need for organizations to have long-term data stability and recoverability plans. All of these things will contribute to making the desktop Office environment a friendlier place for data storage.
Whatever.
Whatever
So take your ball, go home, and cry to Mama…
So take your ball, go home, and cry to Mama…
Look’s like what you’re doing right now :-).
And others are accused of FOSS and open source activism, anti-Microsoft sentiments, not being able to accept other opinions, lying, not reading articles, creating some sort of Oasis and anti-MS conspiracy, anti-commercial activism…….
Like I said – whatever. Out of interest, do you get paid to post here?
This is exactly what many in the government of Massachusetts are claiming Peter Quinn attempted.
Which means he was pushed. You don’t claim anything. I take it no one gets accused of activism over Microsoft Office?
This is exactly what many in the government of Massachusetts are claiming Peter Quinn attempted.
Which means he was pushed. You don’t claim anything. I take it no one gets accused of activism over Microsoft Office?
Double post – apologies. Dodgy network.
Edited 2005-12-28 01:03
Also the document format wasn’t mature and in the wild yet so he could simply point out how everybody else is using it now-a-days. Case in point Apache, MySQL, Firefox and Linux. I’m sure Mass. will one day use OpenDocument, but probably after we all adopt it on our home boxes and workstations.
Under most circumstances, a corporation will try to get you to quit. Looks better for them instead of firing you outright (makes it look like your decision & helps to keep morale high @ the company).
In the story it says he “was not forced to resign”, but doesn’t mean this is true. Was probably told to say this.
“The principal reason for his resignation is his desire not to be the personal focus of controversy regarding the open format decision.”
I highly doubt someone would quit their job over using an open document format.
His bosses got rid of him, this makes it easier for them to reject open document format & continue to support Microsoft, etc.
American politicans and civil servants are as corrupt as the businesses they’re supposed to regulate and oversee. If it weren’t for Europe setting standards and Asia bailing them out, they’d be a basket case economy. In fact, going by the weakness of the dollar and levels of borrowing, they already are. So, sad. Their light once shined so bright…
Just because you can download Open Office for free does not mean forcing MA to switch over to it would save time or money.
Like it or not, the people of MA are probably more productive on MS Office than OO.o. Even a minor degradation in productivity would likely more than offset the amount of money saved by making the switch.
OSS fundies tend to push OSS even in cases where it is not the right tool for the job. I don’t know anything about Peter Quinn outside of this decision, but with nothing else to go on I would lump him into this group.
I am not saying this is for sure the case, just offering some contrast to the “MS GOT HIM FIRED!” crap I have read so far in this thread.
Boy are you an idiot.
Corel is working on implmenting ODF. Star Office already Supports it. This isn’t about Open Source it’s aobut Open Formats. look at what MSFT has done with HTML and javascript. They created their own HTML standard, and refuse to support the one the rest of the world does, and they created activeX to counter Javascript. Of course 50-70% of the worms and malware out there take advantage of design holes in ActiveX. Holes that MSFT was told about in 1999.
MSFT doesn’t care about standards. MSFT could easily implment ODF. But no one can implment MSFT XML. It’s the redistribution clause in MSFT licensing. So if I create a program to read write it I can not distribute that program to anyone else.
If they switch from .doc to ODF they would also likely switch from MS Office to OO.o in the process unless they are planning to run OO.o along side of MS office just for the sake of having ODF support.
Not necessary should Microsoft choose to support it.
It is too bad Microsoft choose to create their own formats instead to supporting other standards.
Boy are you an idiot.
Wow, such stunning eloquence. Must make you proud.
Corel is working on implmenting ODF. Star Office already Supports it. This isn’t about Open Source it’s abut Open Formats.
You ignored his point. He said “OSS fundies tend to push OSS even in cases where it is not the right tool for the job.” ODF was not suitable for use by MA employees for a lot of reasons (accessibility, security, cost, etc). You guys seem to think that open formats trump EVERYTHING. Which is nonsense. If you’re a professional, you can’t look at issues from a single vantage point and claim that all others are crap. It merely makes you look incompetent.
look at what MSFT has done with HTML and javascript. They created their own HTML standard, and refuse to support the one the rest of the world does, and they created activeX to counter Javascript. Of course 50-70% of the worms and malware out there take advantage of design holes in ActiveX. Holes that MSFT was told about in 1999.
Irrelevant.
MSFT doesn’t care about standards. MSFT could easily implment ODF. But no one can implment MSFT XML. It’s the redistribution clause in MSFT licensing. So if I create a program to read write it I can not distribute that program to anyone else.
First, deal with the issues above in my previous comment. Second, MS is under no obligation to adopt a so-called “standard” by a group that it unilaterally dedicated to eliminating MS Office file formats. Establishing a “standard” by getting anti-MS industry players to sign on board is the oldest trick in the book. The fact that you guys ascribe some kind of higher purpose to it just illustrates what dupes you are.
Wow, such stunning eloquence. Must make you proud.
Goodness me. Where have these anonymous twits come from all of a sudden?
You ignored his point. He said “OSS fundies tend to push OSS even in cases where it is not the right tool for the job.” ODF was not suitable for use by MA employees for a lot of reasons (accessibility, security, cost, etc).
You’re confusing ODF and Open Office, as Microsoft has ;-).
Irrelevant.
Far from irrelevant. It shows Microsoft takes standards and pretends that they can be used by others when they simply can’t. Ergo, Microsoft can’t be trusted. Simple, eh?
Second, MS is under no obligation to adopt a so-called “standard” by a group that it unilaterally dedicated to eliminating MS Office file formats.
A government agency has had enough of being told that they must continue to use Microsoft Office until the end of time because that’s the format their documents are saved in and the only software they can be opened with. It’s called a monopoly. No ther industry works that way, and it has been explained countless times.
Establishing a “standard” by getting anti-MS industry players to sign on board is the oldest trick in the book.
Oh, pity us! The anti-MS people are out in force! What about the MS people who are anti everything else?
Cry me a bloody river.
The fact that you guys ascribe some kind of higher purpose to it just illustrates what dupes you are.
The fact that you’re posting tosh to a forum like this tells me exactly what kind of person you are ;-).
Far from irrelevant. It shows Microsoft takes standards and pretends that they can be used by others when they simply can’t. Ergo, Microsoft can’t be trusted. Simple, eh?
Fascinating. So MS’s XML format can’t be used by others? Its DOC format can’t be used by others? Ergo, you’re a zealot with an axe to grind.
A government agency has had enough of being told that they must continue to use Microsoft Office until the end of time because that’s the format their documents are saved in and the only software they can be opened with. It’s called a monopoly. No ther industry works that way, and it has been explained countless times
Peter Quinn should have considered communicating his wishes to more than one “government agency”. That would have given him a clue that the requirements he defined were inadeqate to meet the needs of the other government agencies that would have to abide by any document format change. As it stands, what he did was dumb, dumb, dumb.
Oh, pity us! The anti-MS people are out in force! What about the MS people who are anti everything else? Cry me a bloody river.
I realize that it’s got to be annoying for you guys to have to contend with differences of opinion. You’re way too used to shouting down people that dont’ agree. Hence, your use of “Boy you are an idiot” and other choice phrases…,
Fascinating. So MS’s XML format can’t be used by others? Its DOC format can’t be used by others? Ergo, you’re a zealot with an axe to grind.
Can you show me the product that supports the doc format. I am running linux at home and would like to try alternatives to open office…
See http://www.openoffice.org/
obviously you did not read my comment.
I am using open office right now and I was asking about the alternatives.
My point is that the doc format is not free and open and what ever is in use today is all reverse engineered.you are yet to show me the alternatives due the MS oen standards. The same is the case with the other MS products.
I am not asking for a open source product but only a open standard. I am not sure if you will take this in the same manner if a honda car runs only on gas from honda gas station and the papermate pen write only on papermate paper. then why the hell i should accept the MS doc format and others want me to follow it ?
Fascinating. So MS’s XML format can’t be used by others? Its DOC format can’t be used by others?
No it can’t – twit. There are definitely no multiple implementations of Microsoft’s XML format, the features of it are driven by those of MS Office and Open Office and others’ doc support has been reverse engineered and put together over a period of years. There’s no spec for it.
Which banana boat did you get off?
Ergo, you’re a zealot with an axe to grind.
Oh, yer!
Peter Quinn should have considered communicating his wishes to more than one “government agency”.
Considering he’s the only one with authority to initiate that kind of change…….
I realize that it’s got to be annoying for you guys to have to contend with differences of opinion. You’re way too used to shouting down people that dont’ agree. Hence, your use of “Boy you are an idiot” and other choice phrases…,
Yawn. Thanks for that useful titbit. I know it’s difficult for people like you to accept that you’re doing the very thing you say others are doing……
Hence, your use of “Boy you are an idiot” and other choice phrases…,
Never did use that phrase – if you actually looked at who was posting. I don’t know who anonymous is, but they seem to be posting much of the same stuff ;-).
… ODF was not suitable for use by MA employees for a lot of reasons (accessibility, security, cost, etc)…
Not true, and no one in Massachusetts (who hasn’t accepted any money from Microsoft, that is) says otherwise. The detailed cost analysis shows that ODF is more cost effective, but that wasn’t the reason for switching. The reason was vendor lock-in. The accessibility issue is largely bogus… it has very little to do with the format, and I’m certain that by the time the transition is complete there will be no more accessibility problems at all (after all, all the accessibility features touted for MS-Word are third-party products — why should one believe that they won’t expand their support to other vendors’ products too once there’s been a demonstrated demand?) Security is a really ridiculous thing to bring up as it’s completely unrelated to file formats and has always been an area of particular problem for Microsoft, anyway.
First, deal with the issues above in my previous comment. Second, MS is under no obligation to adopt a so-called “standard” by a group that it unilaterally dedicated to eliminating MS Office file formats. Establishing a “standard” by getting anti-MS industry players to sign on board is the oldest trick in the book.
Er… Microsoft was and is a member of OASIS and they themselves worked on that standard. If it was so bad when they were working on it, why didn’t they raise any issues then?
Not true, and no one in Massachusetts (who hasn’t accepted any money from Microsoft, that is) says otherwise.
Wrong. MA State agencies had serious issues with ODF. And they weren’t paid off by MS.
“When we heard about the OpenDoc format, due Jan. 1, 2007, well, you folks are all used to bloggers,” said Myra Berloff, director of Massachusetts’ Office on Disability. “Well, I’m not. And I was blogged to death in my e-mail. Had all the leaders in the disability community giving me a crash course in open source and OpenDoc format and that it wasn’t going to be accessible to them.
“For those of us who don’t use accessible features we don’t think of the fact that we run around pointing and clicking and listening to our computers. If you can’t do that, you are shutting down access to a world of people who can no longer do that.”
The detailed cost analysis shows that ODF is more cost effective, but that wasn’t the reason for switching. The reason was vendor lock-in.
You guys are amazing. Any “detailed cost analysis” that was done, if any, clearly didn’t include the cost to add accessibility support, training, etc.
The accessibility issue is largely bogus… it has very little to do with the format, and …
Yeah, it’s so “largely bogus” that the Massachusetts Office on Disability must be wrong, eh? They must know more about the issues than you, right?
I’m certain that by the time the transition is complete there will be no more accessibility problems at all (after all, all the accessibility features touted for MS-Word are third-party products — why should one believe that they won’t expand their support to other vendors’ products too once there’s been a demonstrated demand?) Security is a really ridiculous thing to bring up as it’s completely unrelated to file formats and has always been an area of particular problem for Microsoft, anyway.
You’re tying yourself in knots. Above, you said that nobody was claiming problems except for people who were specifically being paid off by MS. Now, you’re admitting that there are problems but you’re “certain” that they’ll get resolved quickly. Hilarious. Nice shell game. Too bad I noticed which shell you were hiding the marble under.
Er… Microsoft was and is a member of OASIS and they themselves worked on that standard. If it was so bad when they were working on it, why didn’t they raise any issues then?
A lie. You should be more careful.
http://www.oasis-open.org/about/foundational_sponsors.php
Wrong. MA State agencies had serious issues with ODF. And they weren’t paid off by MS.
Really? The only politicians in the State I can think of who are having serious issues either accepted money from Microsoft or are working closely with someone else who did.
“Well, I’m not. And I was blogged to death in my e-mail. Had all the leaders in the disability community giving me a crash course in open source and OpenDoc format and that it wasn’t going to be accessible to them.
And it’s apparently a course you failed, since OpenDoc is an old format abandoned by Apple years ago and OpenDocument has little to do with open source and certainly isn’t dependent upon it.
“For those of us who don’t use accessible features we don’t think of the fact that we run around pointing and clicking and listening to our computers. If you can’t do that, you are shutting down access to a world of people who can no longer do that.”
And just how pray tell is a format doing that? JAWS doesn’t care about formats, only applications (and things like JAWS are only really needed in systems like MS-Windows that don’t have decent built-in accessibility, anyway).
You guys are amazing. Any “detailed cost analysis” that was done, if any, clearly didn’t include the cost to add accessibility support, training, etc.
Actually, they did factor in pretty much everything. All that information is still on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts site, I believe; http://www.state.ma.us/ It turns out that training people to use another office system isn’t particularly harder than training people to use a different major version of the same office system. Why is that so surprising?
Yeah, it’s so “largely bogus” that the Massachusetts Office on Disability must be wrong, eh? They must know more about the issues than you, right?
If they don’t actually specify any real problems (which I’ve not seen yet) and are being led for political reasons, then yes, they are wrong.
You’re tying yourself in knots. Above, you said that nobody was claiming problems except for people who were specifically being paid off by MS. Now, you’re admitting that there are problems but you’re “certain” that they’ll get resolved quickly.
Nope, just that if there are any real problems (and I’ve not seen any yet, and I live in Massachusetts in an area where open formats are already being used) then I’m sure they will be resolved quickly once there’s a larger population working with them. As of now, I’ve not heard of anyone actually experiencing real problems with the format change. I’ve only heard of people complaining that there may be accessibility problems with an open XML format (although again what exactly these problems are supposed to be is up to the imagination of the reader as these things can be processed with basic XSLT templates and screen readers). Do you know what the real supposed problems are, or are you just repeating the panicked cries of “it may not work!”?
A lie. You should be more careful.
Not at all. They used to have representatives in OASIS. If they don’t now, that says something, too and you can form your own conclusions.
“Er… Microsoft was and is a member of OASIS and they themselves worked on that standard. If it was so bad when they were working on it, why didn’t they raise any issues then?”
A lie. You should be more careful.
http://www.oasis-open.org/about/
If you can read english you will see that Microsoft is a member of OASIS. It did however boycott attending the technical committee working on the ODF, though it was fully entitled to attend.
Initial participants in the foundation of the OASIS ODF Technical Committee in 2002 came from:
Boeing, Stellent, Sun Microsystems, CSW Informatics,
National Archive of Australia, Society of Biblical Literature, Arbortext, SpeedLegal, New York State Office of the Attorney General, Corel and Drake Certivo
They were later joined by representatives from IBM and I believe Novell. Microsoft declined to join the committee.
“MSFT doesn’t care about standards. MSFT could easily implment ODF. But no one can implment MSFT XML. It’s the redistribution clause in MSFT licensing. So if I create a program to read write it I can not distribute that program to anyone else.”
Could it possibly be because Microsoft knows their format is technically better than ODF? I think so. Why would they implement an inferior format?
“Could it possibly be because Microsoft knows their format is technically better than ODF? I think so. Why would they implement an inferior format?”
Good point. How do we measure better? It seems to me that we want the better format, but we also want a standard.
What is important in a format is a good balance of flexibility and simplicity. What is important in a standard is stability over time and a good balance between simplicity and flexibility. These are the criteria I would use to measure the “betterness” of a format. If the MS format fits the bill, great. I just have some doubts that the MS format will remain stable (in the sense that it doesn’t have significant changes every other year), as well as the fact that it is in Microsoft’s business interests to avoid simplicity so that the bar is raised as high as possible for rival software tool developers.
The requirements of a standard – simplicity and stability are directly opposed to making profit because they level the playing field for rivals by providing said rivals both time (from stability) and a low-capital entry point (from simplicity) to the market. Any profit-driven business will, if it has the clout, oppose a standard for its own survival.
Even if the MS format were found to be technologically superior as a format, it will most certainly never be superior as a standard.
“Even if the MS format were found to be technologically superior as a format, it will most certainly never be superior as a standard.”
Except the MS format has become a market-driven standard. And I will always prefer the market driven standard dictated by consumers over standards pushed my some coalition of vendors.
I would disagree.
I’d rather have a “de jure” standard than a “de facto” standard, any day.
Microsoft’s .DOC format is a de facto standard by its very nature. It is a forced “standard” – nothing else – even if it so-called market-driven.
Also, I don’t like the idea of any one company potentially holding my data hostage. What do you do if Microsoft decides today is a good day to just get out of the business?
If it weren’t for standards agreed upon by these “coalitions”, we’d all be running PCs with Microchannel architecture (or some other vendor lock-in technology) instead of ISA/PCI/PCI Express. IBM’s biggest mistake was making the PC architecture open. How fortunate for the rest of us!
If Microsoft went out of business tomorrow, your Office installation would not suddenly cease functioning.
What a weak argument.
Not quite weak as you think.
Yes, my Office installation would not suddenly cease to exist but eventually it will become legacy. The same thing will happen to Windows. Do you really believe that you will be able to install Windows XP and Office 2003 on the hardware available 20 years from now?
No, so that gives you 20 years to re-save all of your .DOC files into any number of available formats.
However, just because new hardware becomes available doesn’t mean you’ll have to switch to it. Who says you can’t use your current PC in 15 years from now, running the same Windows/Office?
There are people and businesses still doing that with DOS. Hell, the guy who runs the local video rental here is still using a 286 with DOS 3.0 or something to keep track of all of his movies and customers. It works perfectly fine for him, since he wrote the software. He has no intention of switching.
Attention “Linux Is Poo”…
No one ever said it would “suddenly cease functioning” except you. You made an assumption – something you’re all too prone to doing from what I’ve seen in this forum.
You also missed the whole point on vendor lock-in.
What a weak comment from you, as expected.
Edited 2005-12-28 20:18
“Vendor lock-in” is that wonderful term that you anti-MS zealots like to throw around, but don’t do much thinking about. How is lock-in from Redhat any different than lock-in from Microsoft?
Tell me, who is going to force you to upgrade your hardware, operating system, and Office version 10 years from now? No one. No one, except you. Take that or leave it, but it’s the truth.
What file format(s) is Red Hat locking customers into?
“Except the MS format has become a market-driven standard. And I will always prefer the market driven standard dictated by consumers over standards pushed my some coalition of vendors.”
I agree. The MS format is the market-driven (popular) format but that doesn’t mean its a good standard. It may be that way simply because it has been the best choice in the past, or that it was coupled with the popular tools (MS Office). You bring up a good point; for a standard to fulfill its reason for being, it needs to be adopted in a significant way. A crumby standard that is used by everyone is much more useful than a good standard used by no one. I’m hoping the market will start to see the benefits of adopting a format that has a shot that will level the field by staying more static over time and being simpler to work with, which in turn will eventually benefit comsumers by providing better competition in the software office tools market and allowing consumers to get more life out of their office packages instead of being forced to upgrade when the format changes every other year.
Might include:
1) Being caught behind the market demand for open formats, and needing to implement quickly.
2) Attempting to balance lock-in with openness (do you doubt they will try to accomplish this?)
3) Skills: they may just not be as good at designing file formats as they are at doing other things. After all, if they were good at it, you wouldn’t see the hodge-podge of file formats that have been the historic trail of Office through the years.
Jody – you’re right, the OSS tool is not always the better one in terms of productivity. Productivity, however, was not the central factor in the decision for ODF. ODF was chosen because it is OPENLY documented and capable, so in the year 2095, goverment documents will still be accessible because the format they are stored in is completely documented and that documentation is fully available to the goverment.
Productivity is important but if one day you can’t read all your work… then that productivity has lost much of its original value.
Microsoft may open up their documentation as well, and this will be a step in the right direction. However, judging by the constant change in the MS doc formats, I would still be leary of the MS route, as the very purpose of a standard is to a large degree defeated if that standard is constanly in flux, open or not.
And if MS was really a competitive company, they’d be able to implement ODF and have the Office suite maintain dominance *because* it is more productive than OOo…why are they and so many afraid of that? Maybe the productivity issue is a myth? For me, it sure is. There are so many features in Word that I just hate – can never get them to work the way I want (bullets and numbering for instance, thinks it is smarter than I am). How much time is lost on things that I don’t need training on…I know how it works…but it never works quite right, and takes an extra 10 minutes to make it obey? Unbelievable that anyone who uses Word would even make the productivity claim. Or for that matter, any word processor. They are so commoditized these days. It would be a stretch to say that any of them are marginally more productive than any other one of them, IMHO.
It never fails to amaze me that *anyone*, in good conscience, can defend anything Microsoft does…that is, short of giving money away to worthy causes. That’s about the only thing they can be allowed to hang their collective hats on.
“It never fails to amaze me that *anyone*, in good conscience, can defend anything Microsoft does…that is, short of giving money away to worthy causes. That’s about the only thing they can be allowed to hang their collective hats on.”
How about the fact that they make better products! And it is a FACT.
like ?
How about the fact that they make better products! And it is a FACT.
Not fact…mere opinion. For me, they’re far worse than anything else out there. And I never recommend a Windows computer to anyone anymore. So make sure you know the difference between your opinion and a fact.
If you look into it, half the causes they donate to are not worthy. Bill and Melinda G. are donors to the UN fund that pushes birth control around the globe. You can disagree or not on the issue of birth control in general, but one thing for certain – western countries have no business pushing it in other countries whose value systems find the notion offensive. That’s just a lack of respect.
So they ruined an honest man’s career to maintain the monopoly, and continue to lock out others. Time Magazine must be proud of their “man of the year.” He’s a true humanitarian.
I would hope this MA IT guy was not playing politics and he probably wasn’t, but we had to fire a guy that turned out to be a open source jihadist.
A little backdrop. We’ve been using linux in our products for over 8 years now so we’re aware of all the issues and like it as a technical platform. About a year ago we hired a jack-of-all-trades type guy to write some scripts, setup networks for our testing, overall troubleshooting and other assorted support roles for our engineers and as a sometime customer support guy.
Anyway, things were working out well for the first 3 months. The guy seemed to know his stuff and was working out well. Out of the blue, one day he started harrassing a secretary about using OpenOffice. She had been using WordPerfect for years, knew all the shortcuts, and was not about to switch. Anyway, he would come by her desk every other day or so and start evangelizing about Linux and OpenOffice, so finally his boss had to have a word with him.
To make a long story short, instead of shutting up and doing the job he’s paid for he starts to now harrass the engineers about running linux on their desktops instead of XServers or VMWare or something else. Now these engineer guys have been around for a long time ago and were having none of it, so basically his boss and the big boss had to set him down and have a final word with him. All of a sudden he erupts into a tantrum and starts screaming about how everybody in the company should be running linux and how he shouldn’t be silenced (our engineers can run whatever they want).
Well, that was that. He was canned on the spot. Be prepared to face the consequences if you start harassing people with your religion or politics.
“To make a long story short,”
Too late
“instead of shutting up and doing the job he’s paid for…”
i.e. shut up an use Microsoft for all your needs. Amen brother!
Did you stop to read the posting in any detail? Microsoft was not mentioned once. The poster stated that the company have a long track-record using Linux, and didn’t mention anyone using MS products. Maybe they were, but the simple fact the secretary was using WordPerfect tends to suggest they have a pretty unbiased approach to IT procurement, no?
You’ve succeeded in coming across every bit as flaky as the ‘jihadist’ in the anecdote, who – notably unlike the unfortunate Mr Quinn – was not employed to make IT strategy decisions for his employer. Good thing too, I’d say.
I would hope this MA IT guy was not playing politics and he probably wasn’t, but we had to fire a guy that turned out to be a open source jihadist.
While there certainly are open source jihadists, this isn’t the story of one of them. This is the story of a CIO working for his own employer’s best interests who was taken down by Microsoft jihadists.
Parts of Massachusetts have been using open formats already. Most notably Saugus, Massachusetts switched over years ago without any of the supposed problems, lost productivity issues, accessibility difficulties, etc. ever materializing. The main web site for Saugus is http://www.saugus.net/ but there’s a bit more info on the Saugus blog at http://www.livejournal.com/community/saugus/4324.html
While there certainly are open source jihadists, this isn’t the story of one of them. This is the story of a CIO working for his own employer’s best interests who was taken down by Microsoft jihadists.
Except he WASN’T working for his employer’s best interests. His employer is also obligated to provide services to people whose needs aren’t met by the OSS community. Quinn ignored or overlooked those requirements. Therefore, it’s not surprising that he lost his job.
If the government is going to pay the cost of a computer running windows and office on it then I have no problems but they are ignoring the folks like me who cannot afford to buy windows. Last time I checked it costs around $175 for a full version of windows and $450 for the MS office.So is the government biased !!!
Except he WASN’T working for his employer’s best interests. His employer is also obligated to provide services to people whose needs aren’t met by the OSS community. Quinn ignored or overlooked those requirements. Therefore, it’s not surprising that he lost his job.
This isn’t about open source or the OSS community. It’s about open standards, and the requirements that state documents be accessible to everyone decades from now and not just those who can afford to purchace and who choose to purchase particular software.
No state department has produced any legitimate concerns (that I’ve seen, anyway). Are there any real concerns? If there are, please state exactly what they are. There have been a lot of false concerns, but none of them have actually held water when put to the test.
I would like to see how any public (tax funded) agency can justify spending tax payers money on software from Microsoft instead of using slightly less powerful software free of charge.
Better surely to spend the money where it is meant to be spent on public services and so on.
Yes there are training costs to using Linux but people are not born understanding Word and Excel either.
This guy forget to base his IT strategy on the latest Microsoft marketing spiel and paid the price.
a global coroporation – sun or apple – i can’t remember – once banned the use of powerpoint. transparencies and paper and pens were handed out. productivity went up.
in my experience in “business” – doing the right thing is not teh same as doing well in business structures. use MS. talk the jargon. and people love it.
in fact “technologies” such as powerpoint, excel macros, and overly rich document serve nothing but to celebrate medicority. mediocre people feel better when they can produce fancy excel sheets and use ms exchange as a filesore or documen management system.
crazy.
a global coroporation – sun or apple – i can’t remember – once banned the use of powerpoint. transparencies and paper and pens were handed out. productivity went up.
You’re “misremembering” the issue. First, it was Sun.
We had 12.9 gigabytes of PowerPoint slides on our network. And I thought, What a huge waste of corporate productivity. So we banned it. And we’ve had three unbelievable record-breaking fiscal quarters since we banned PowerPoint. Now, I would argue that every company in the world, if it would just ban PowerPoint, would see their earnings skyrocket. Employees would stand around going, “What do I do? Guess I’ve got to go to work. — Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems. [SJM, 03Aug97. Keith Bostic [email protected], QOTD, 06Aug97.]
Second, McNealy didn’t conclude that productivity increased. He merely commented that they had 3 consecutive record-breaking quarters. Which I would argue had nothing to do with banning Powerpoint at all. It was the dotcom era. McNealy could have sold dog-crap, as long as it had the Sun server logo attached to it. As proof, look at Sun today. Having OpenOffice at its disposal isn’t preventing Sun from practically being delisted from the stock exchange, in its precipitous slide into “mediocrity”.
They dont need to switch software to use odf there are already third party plugins that allow you to read write odf in ms office. So there goes that argument. The only difference would be ms doesnt control odf and thats what its all about control. Use worperfect staroffice koffice abiword openoffice.org whatever you like all of those are more stable and safe than ms office. A good idea would be to take the $400 per license which adds to millions and give that to sun or
another free alternative to develop more accesibility items for the suite so that folks with handicaps can be free.
Also open office feels more like legacy versions of office more than office 12 actually does the ui is alot different in office 12 (youd say that requires more training) Id say people arent imbeciles they can figure this stuff out in a few minutes no matter what you put infront of them.So there is no reason NOT to use odf at all. And many would say there is no reason not to switch to a more cost effective office suite.
WOW……. What a mess….
Just a few items come to mind.
Nobody pay’s the full price for a version of Windows.
Nobody pay’s the full price for a version of Office.
Nobody is losing their ass because an OS gets pulled from the market. (see the OS/2 story for an example)
ODF isn’t going to change the world.
Linux isn’t going to change the world either.
Microsoft isn’t going to do ODF, and a lot of others ain’t doing it either.
CIO’s shouldn’t mess with politics, or think they run things. (they simply do what they are told)
Open source advocates should select battles they can win, rather than fight the war on all fronts.
90% of the breathing people on the face of the earth have never heard of open source, foss, or Linux. (and could less give a damn)
If you build the best product, people will pay for it.
Geeks and squints don’t know shit about public relations, getting formats approved, or dealing with governments and large corporations.
Stop blaming Microsoft for everything on the face of the earth. It’s not worth the time, or effort.
Promote your stuff, and leave Microsoft out of it.
And above all else….
NEVER attempt to dictate a change in format or operating system unless you seriously have your shit together. (nobody did this time)
Some valid points, however:
Promoting your “stuff” against a monopolist
who owns the environment it runs on is like entering a drag race where the other car is positioned on the finish line and his pit crew is blow-torching your tires
You arent going to win.
ODF (standards in general) is the ONLY way you compete against powerful corporations: if every ruler has 12 inches it doesnt matter who’s selling it, the best quality CAN win.
“…the best quality CAN win.”
Which is exactly why Microsoft has done so well!
You have been answered and corrected by another post in a very clear and inligent way. I just want to add that:
-You, certanly, are not going to change the world.
-You have not much ideaa of economics, politics and other social sciences. If you had , you would understand the perils of a Monopoly like Ms.
Or worst, if you understand the perils, then you are a son of a B*** (hope is not the case)
ODF may change the world, or at least a couple of big things . I can say it from the perspective of someone that is not from the USA and had lived during years in several countries and travelled worldwide …
-Open source advocats fight battles in many frons, but the fronts are there. Thr fronts were not mere inventions of the FLOSS advocats .
AND the ODT format is an important battle, worthy to fight !!!
-Linux just could make it.. and change a couple of really big things … whether you like it or not.
– You said “If you build the best product, people will pay for it.”
LOL, really naif… That proves again that your knowledge in social sciences and marketing is not huge, exactly…
Even if is the best product (which is not the case generally in Ms products), people do NOT pay for it if they do not have the money for… they may steal it !
If they can not afford it, due to its excesive offert price it will create resentment, even if they steal it!
People just would buy if they know it .. if the product its the best and do not reack the knowledege of the masses; people would not buy it.
People would buy literraly ANY SHIT if it the marketing is well done. The everyday economy in developed countries is the best prove of it.. THe USA being the best example.
People buy ciarettes, stupic fashionable useless things, bad food in in shit ‘Big food chains places’, bad music that they forget in 2 or 3 months, and Ms software because they think there are not alternatives…
-Everybody mess with Politics. Just because Politics mange a big part of the visible money face, and Corporations are the first to mess with politics…
– You said “Geeks and squints don’t know shit about public relations, getting formats approved, or dealing with governments and large corporations.”
You may have a point there…
On the contrary, MS does know a lot about all that. That’s how they, managed to reach their position selling inferior products, and how they manage to have half the world or more cornered and taken by the balls,, while many people just don’t even realise of it !!!
– You said “Promote your stuff, and leave Microsoft out of it.”. Easy to say, and demagogic… LOL
Only that you can not promote your stuff and can not compete freely against a monopoly. That’s the point.
Do you get it ???
Regads
Angel–Fr@gzill@
I doubt if any of you noticed the relevance of the preceeding thread on OSNews:
Creating Accessible Applications with Eclipse
and its link:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/dec05/pilgri…
The platform on which IBM is supporting the ODF format is the Workplace client with its IBM editors. This article reports on accessibility work for the Eclipse platform which is directly relevant to the workplace client which uses the Eclipse based Rich Client Platform (RCP) as its base. Given the way MS tried to stir up problems over accessibility issues it is an example of IBM’s approach to providing accessibility for its products that use the ODF.
Quote: “I doubt Microsoft had a lot (if anything) to do with this”
And I, and many others, will disagree. In fact, I’ll strongly disagree. My reasoning is as follows:
We all know that Microsoft did not want ODF, and it’s due directly to Microsoft that a particular corrupt senator (and yes, I will use these words as they are my beliefs) got involved and killed ODF.
I can almost certainly say that Microsoft placed pressure on the Massachusetts government to ‘get rid of him’. This sort of pressure is usually very well hidden from public eyes, because it shows how corrupt the politicians and governments are. Kickbacks from large corporations are a large part of doing business as a politician these days. If we banned ALL contributions by corporations and businesses to politicians or governments, we’d go a LONG way to fixing some of the corruption issues.
Quote: “but this guy should have worked the political aspects of his campaign for ODF a lot more carefully.”
No, he shouldn’t have. He’s not a politician, and he shouldn’t be playing the political field. He’s the CIT officer, and that’s his area of speciality. In reality, he’s an expert in his field, a politician isn’t and should NEVER become involved in this. Period. It’s like saying a teacher is more qualified to repair motor vehicles than a qualified motor mechanic!
In reality, this shows the real levels of corruption in politics, and how broken the system really is. Politicians no longer serve the people, but the corporations. Franklin and Lincoln would be rolling over in their graves at this sort of thing.
Dave
Quote: “you FOSS guys seem to think that people that utter morons”.
Most ‘ordinary’ computer users are morons. It’s a fact.
Quote: “His basic problem is that he overlooked or ignored the requirements of state agencies, relating to accessibility, security, cost, etc”
I suggest you read up a bit more pal, he most certainly did investigate these areas.
Quote: “Let this be a lesson”
That you don’t really know what you’re talking about…
Quote: “not playing politics with document formats.”
Certainly, NOT Microsoft document formats, since they’re large enough to bribe senators and whole governments!
Quote: “If you could have answered the requirements put forth by the state agencies before the decision was made, this would be a non-issue.”
Please! Read the transcripts at groklaw.net before you comment – Quinn and others were regularly meeting with other agency departments, for the past 18 months! He was keeping them well and truly in the light. Get your facts right. Posts like yours really piss me off because they are not factual. If you want to be pro Microsoft, fine, do so, but be factual.
Quote: ” You were successful in getting MS to open up its XML license.”
huh? They most certainly haven’t! They’ve made a PR attempt of appearing to open up their formats, without actually doing so. Ever heard the term “trojan horse”? That’s all this latest PR stunt from Microsoft is.
Dave
hahaha! And how did you manage to get modded up for such a trollish comment?
Let’s see:
#1 webserver suite – Apache (double the amount of IIs and growing)
#2 dns server – BIND – I don’t see any Microsoft product even coming close!
Samba? Have a look at some of the comments of the Samba developers – they’re scathing of Microsoft’s coding implementations with SMB. Samba are basically having to copy Microsoft’s bugs to ensure that Samba interoperates with Microsoft Windows networks! I’m serious!
Microsoft might make a few things here and there that are better, but most certainly not everything like you’re implying. And I might add, better is a personal interpretation – what I consider better someone else mightn’t, and so forth.
Dave
#1. Proof?
#2. Proof? MSDNS is in use in many, many networks, simply because many, many networks make use of AD. Where is Linux’s answer to AD? There is none. Redhat has basically admitted that themselves.
What right do the Samba developers have to call something a “bug” if they don’t have the actual documentation of the SMB protocol on hand?
Where is Linux’s answer to AD? There is none. Redhat has basically admitted that themselves.
Well I’m no active directory expert, but what does it do? Authentication? Profiles? DNS? Workstation settings? There are plenty of Linux technologies that can acomplish all of the above. Now sure there isn’t a Linux equivalent for managing Windows workstations just yet, nothing free anyway (that I know of), but Samba combined with openldap has at least some of the functionality.
What right do the Samba developers have to call something a “bug” if they don’t have the actual documentation of the SMB protocol on hand?
They’ve completely reverse engineered it. By my reckoning that gives them at least some credibility.
It does all of that, and more, in a single, central, unified manner. Sure, you can mish-mash a bunch of Linux technologies together to create a simulated (but limited) effect, but you don’t have the core benefit of AD — a central area where you can configure it all.
As for Samba, yeah, they’ve reverse-engineered it, and props to them for that — but until they get official documentation from Microsoft which describes every aspect of the protocol and its supporting libraries, I don’t think they have any real right to call something a “major bug”. 😉
Quote: “ODF was not suitable for use by MA employees for a lot of reasons (accessibility, security, cost, etc). You guys seem to think that open formats trump EVERYTHING.”
Are you a paid Microsoft shill by any chance? Read my previous reply. I suggest you read and actually know what you’re talking about before you post next time.
Quote: “Irrelevant”
Bullshit it’s irrelevant. It’s a fact that Microsoft has no intentions of supporting public, open, formats and standards. If it does so, it stops them from having vendor locking. Therefore, ergo, their main concern is lock in, not looking after their customers.
Quote: “Second, MS is under no obligation to adopt a so-called “standard” by a group that it unilaterally dedicated to eliminating MS Office file formats.”
It’s about making them open. Open. Do you even comprehend that word? Obviously not. I’ll treat your post(s) with disdain, because, in reality, that’s all they deserve.
Dave
> Why would they implement an inferior format?
according to most FOSS “activists”, to try to kill off other formats and maintain their monopoly. microsoft has implemented inferior formats before (html, java, activex, etc.), usually for that very reason.
Edited 2005-12-28 03:06
And that shows that Microsoft doesn’t (and doesn’t want to) play nice with others. It wants EVERYTHING it’s way or it has a tantrum and starts bribing politicians. Nice eh?
Dave
in case anyone cares, my troll detection script i wrote says segedunum’s comments on this article are 87.6% likely to be trolling posts…
“standard dictated by consumers” my ass. DOC, XLS, PPT and every other MS format are anything but “dictated by consumers”. It’s dictated by money put on the magazine’s directors. Don’t you remember how Word became the “standard”… when everybody was using WordPerfect? Every computer magazine began to say Word was THE standard. And the same happened with Excel, Powerpoint, … It’s like when every videogames magazine says “this is the best game ever” when everybody knows it’s a piece of shit or al least the same thing than the game before it, but it sells millions.
At stake are tax payer money. Who will foot the cost for retraining if Mass. dumps Windows/Office ?
Same people who will be footing the costs to train users in the next version of MS-Office?
If they switch from .doc to ODF they would also likely switch from MS Office to OO.o in the process unless they are planning to run OO.o along side of MS office just for the sake of having ODF support.
====
Funny thing, there is already the Visioo free ODF viewer, and also now a plugin for MS Word that will let you safe to ODF.
So it won’t be long now before the whole “But you need to use OO.O” BS will be proved to be, well, BS.
(Just like the whold ‘The Browser can’t be removed from the OS’ lie, but don’t get me started on that).
Could it possibly be because Microsoft knows their format is technically better than ODF? I think so. Why would they implement an inferior format?
———-
In a word, Patents. Software patents should be illegal. That being said, this is why MS wants MSXML.
Oh, and for the record, the group wasn’t dedicated to ousting MS Office or MS in general. Indeed, up until 3/4 of the way through the project, they thought the WOULD use MSXML, but then MS patented their XML (which is bullshit) and that just revealed their ulterior motives.
This is not about FOSS. This is about a convicted monopoly abuser controling an essential facility: the file format (network effect, barriers to entry, etc. etc.)
The question is not whether the file format eventually is XML or binary or whatever. It is not whether it provides more functionality to customers.
It is whether it can be privately, secretely altered by a convicted monopoly abuser.
For the sake of the public spending – and for that matter, the whole economy at large – it should not.
That’s it. No need for lenghty discussion: that’s undergraduate economics.
The end result in this case is that once again CIO will keep silent about their FOSS deployments. No one has ever been fired for buying MSFT. Now one more has been fired for not having done so. This helps the monopoly abuser. This deserves everybody else – including MSFTies themselves.
If it weren’t for standards agreed upon by these “coalitions”, we’d all be running PCs with Microchannel architecture (or some other vendor lock-in technology) instead of ISA/PCI/PCI Express. IBM’s biggest mistake was making the PC architecture open. How fortunate for the rest of us!
====
Wrong, IBM’s problem was having idiots in marketing, and the foolish manuver of NOT licensing MCA. MCA came long before PCI and Plug and Play, and would have been much better than EISA, which was largely ignored anyway.
But I digress…
Looks like this might cost both parties a lot more than a gained/lost Microsoft contract.
#1. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html
There, go suck on that one Linux Is Poo.
#2 As for this…try this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_system#DNS_software
and then this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIND
and then this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Systems_Consortium
and:
http://www.bind9.net/
I’ll quote:
The BIND DNS Server is used on the vast majority of name serving machines on the Internet, providing a robust and stable architecture on top of which an organization’s naming architecture can be built.
Of course, it doesn’t give myself exact statistics, but they are hard to predict anyways. This took me all of about 2 minutes to find these links. If I took longer, I could most probably find something to substantiate my previous comments.
Actually, this page looks interesting:
http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sw/bind/
I’m too lazy to go finding exact pages.
Dave
“His basic problem is that he overlooked or ignored the requirements of state agencies, relating to accessibility, security, cost, etc. ”
The requirement of the state that Quinn was addressing was a requirement to be able to read electronically stored records for a long time … perhaps over 100 years. Since the incumbent Office formats failed to meet this requirement in only 10 years … Quin was required to seek a format replacement. One that was not the proprietary property of one company.
Accessibility – MS Office does not provide accessibility – a product called JAWS does that. This will not work with Office 12 anyway.
Security: MS products <> security. Demonstrably so. Anything else is better by far.
Cost: Quinn himself readily demonstrated that the cost of his solution was less than one tenth of the cost of staying with Microsoft.
As a retired public servant (albeit from the other side of the world) I find this cow-towing to mediocre and crass commercial interests instead of good and worthwhile public policy deplorable.
At least Peter Quinn was able to get the idea up and running (if only for a short period). In my experience, such an idea floated to the Australian Government would never have got off the ground for fear off offending firstly Mr Gates and then secondly Mr Bush.
There is an old saying over here in Oz about smelly brown stuff that always floats to the top. Massachusetts change of direction just helps to prove that saying.
Regards,
Peter
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things — Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 6
Edited 2005-12-28 08:11
Goodness me. Where have these anonymous twits come from all of a sudden?
Redmond, WA.
Is that nobody (state, company or organisation) need or want a vendor “lock-in” situation.
A common open format is a must just like a open common internet protocol is.
I feel sorry for Peter Quinn. But his resignation does not stop the demand for open standards.
Locking at the MS monopoly, “defacto standard” with .doc
etc. is like remembering the British having a monopoly on
selling salt in India.
Things like that never survive.
MS knows that very well and they will fight that with any means as long as they can.
What a Big Brother era we live in. What are the odds that others will publicly and significantly take on the 800 pound gorilla after this fiasco?
By the way, my document standard is ASCII text. I imagine I’ll still be using it in 2099. And since Notepad comes with Windows, I think I’m all set.
Dude, if I had mod-points you’d get the lot! I own MSOffice, have OpenOffice installed, but in honesty I use Notepad* more than either
Maybe this is a codemonkey thing, but if I am writing docs primarily for my own consumption, I’ll just use something I can open in a nanosecond and won’t try to ‘guide’ me in any aspects of formatting [read: shredding the readability of my work. No favouritism, MSO and OOo do this equally].
I realise this adds little to the debate of the moment, but I like the parent’s style.
Word processing format: .txt
Spreadsheet format: .csv**
Presentation format: .txt***
Database format: .csv**
*Other plain text editors are available
**WHAT? Searchability? Hey, you can get ‘grep’ for Windows too, y’know!
***Just practise fast switching between pages when you present [I find Alt+Tab very useful]
Windows is Pee
Windows is Pee, Ms is Poo and… the MS standards are Pee + Poo.
The alwais use the own monopolistic way and alter the standards. An their ways are technologically inferior many times…
The only rationale for this is that doing so the take profit of the monopolistic advantages !!!
doc is inferior to odt, its less complete, hevier and slower. Trhei new proposed standard WML based is also inferior to odt and NOT free in reality. Also does not adjust plainly to the XML… standards!!!
Down with the monopolies. The era of the monopolistic abuse in the means of prodution is comming to an end …!!! Let them swallow their Pee + Poo…
“Vendor lock-in” is that wonderful term that you anti-MS zealots like to throw around, but don’t do much thinking about. How is lock-in from Redhat any different than lock-in from Microsoft?
Missing the point as usual, LIP?
Notice the issue is about file formats. ODF does not lock you in with RedHat, Novell, Mandriva or any other Linux vendor. Heck, it doesn’t even lock you in an OS – you can use Windows or FreeBSD or even Linux is Poo’s Amazing Technicolor Operating System.
The MS Office formats, on the other hand, DO lock you in with Microsoft products (you can use OO.o, but you won’t get 100% compatibility). Ergo, choosing MS file formats does in fact lock you in, while choosing alternatives does not.
That said, even if you do choose to go with RedHat, you’re not locked in. You can switch to a different Linux vendor and keep your exact same work environment.
Always ready to defend the multinational empire against the underdog, hmm? I’m sure they appreciate your help.
Tell me, who is going to force you to upgrade your hardware, operating system, and Office version 10 years from now?
Everybody using new and incompatible MS document formats will force you to upgrade Office as soon as they start sending such docs to others. It has been like that since the beginnings of Office (MS can pull the “incompatibility trick” even if they are using XML). Or was there a need to go from e. g. MS Word 5 to 6, 2000 to XP, etc.?
Upgrading hardware and operating systems is a logical consequence of upgrading software and failing hardware.
To answer your question: No, you are not forced to upgrade Office or the OS the same way as Windows is secure out of the box (i. e. as long as you don’t connect it to the internet).