Microsoft Office Formats Not Really Being Opened

Contradicting this earlier article claiming otherwise, smith_barney writes "Contrary to reports, Microsoft is not opening up its proprietary Office XML schemas. Essentially, the state of Massachusetts is simply repositioning what it considers an 'open format.' According to a report in BetaNews, Microsoft told the state it would ease licensing restrictions, but only for 'end users who merely open and read government documents.' This hasn't stopped Microsoft from tooting its horn, but Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox says, 'Buzz about so-called open formats is little more than PR FUD.'"

Comments

question

[vdthemyk]

Isn't this like saying, "we wrote the English Dictionary so no one is allowed to read English without our approval?" To me, if you want to copyright an idea for a product, go ahead, if you want to protect intelluctual property, that's fine too, but formats for files? Come on! So what if my program can read and write files that your program reads and writes. As long as I didn't take your way of writing those files, I should be fine.

Re:OpenOffice.org

[bjhonermann]

I also dont like how it doesn't automatically save in .doc or have an option to do so.

Tools -> Options -> Load/Save -> General

You can set the default file format to whatever you want from there. Also, I think OO.o actually prompts when you first install it now as to whether you want to use .doc or .sxw.

For those who haven't read this yet:

[bersl2]

The Future Is Open: What OpenDocument Is And Why You Should Care ~ by Daniel Carrera

Why don't you RTFAQ

[berglin]

How do you verify the accuracy of Slashdot stories?

Massachusettes isn't a state.

[notthepainter]

It is a Commonwealth. There are 46 States and 4 Commonwealths.

Boring, I know. But I live here so I get to have at least one pet peeve.

Re:Massachusettes isn't a state.

[Captain Nitpick]

It is a Commonwealth. There are 46 States and 4 Commonwealths.

No. There are 50 states, 4 of which call themselves commonwealths. There are also two Federally recognized commonwealths, Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands. The use of "commonwealth" by Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia carries no legal meaning.

Re:Microsoft Word 2000 is VERY quirky.

[denison]

You don't need an extra cost package to produce PDF documents from Word. PDFCreator at SourceForge does the trick and it's free.

Brazil Makes Move to Open Source Software

[Go_Ask_Alex]

From NPR...

"Morning Edition, January 31, 2005 The government of Brazil says it will switch 300,000 government computers from Microsoft's Windows operating system to open source software like Linux. Microsoft founder Bill Gates wants to meet with Brazil's president to discuss the change. Brazil is dropping all proprietary software."

Listen here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4471963

The Brazilians are just saying no!

Re:Governments used to set standards

[Detritus]

Vendors used to try to subvert standards, for example, EBCDIC, for character encoding, but who uses that these days?

Probably the dweebs who generate and print your paycheck.

How do you spell your name? (clickety-clack)

Standards often get bogged down in politics. For EBCDIC, it was IBM vs. the competition, who pushed ASCII. Everyone could have standardized on EBCDIC, but that wouldn't have served the interests of IBM's competitors. It's the same logic that led the Europeans to create a whole library of communications standards that were similar, but incompatible, with the Bell System's standards. They were trying to protect their domestic markets and telecommunications companies.