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The Massachusetts Office Party
Quattro Vezina writes "The Inquirer reports that the state of Massachusetts has performed a modern-day Boston Tea Party, by dumping Microsoft Office in the proverbial ocean. According to the article, 'every state document must be in PDF or using Open Office formats' starting in 2007." Forbes has the story as well. More from the article: "The switch to open formats such as these was needed to ensure that the state could guarantee that citizens could open and read electronic documents in the future, according to Massachusetts - something that was not possible using closed formats. The proposal, which is open for comment until the end of next week before it takes effect, would represent a big boost for open source software such as Open Office, which is created by volunteer programmers and made available free of charge."
This was also covered on groklaw, yesterday.
I hardly see how Open Office and PDF formats "guarantee" citizens will be able to view electronic documents in the future any more so than MS Office formats.
Open Office formats are zipped XML. All you need to get at the data in them is an unzip program and a text reader. It's a good way to "guarantee" that anyone can view them in the future.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
If the format is properly documented and the documentation is available, it is only a matter of getting someone to write an appropriate viewer or conversion tool.
If the formats documentation is not available, you are pretty much at mercy of whoever invented it, and their willingness and ability to provide viewers and conversion tools.
Actually, the Boston Tea Party was held to incite the British into open action against the rebel minority in the colonies. In effect, the rebels wanted to increase the divide between Britain and the colonies so that the colonials who preferred amity and compromise would come to their side.
The pretext of the BTP was to protest the imposition of import taxes, it had nothing to do with opening up the market to American tea traders.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I wish the media would understand that there is a difference between Free Software and Volunteer-Developed Software. There is overlap between the two groups, but they are by no means identical.
[1] Of course, this didn't really happen, because we all know Sun are evil and out to destroy all open source software.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
No, it doesn't. That is a built-in feature of OS X. Any program with a print option in OS X has a "Save as PDF" button.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
This is amusing.
.sxw extension to .zip & throw it into whatever unzipper you wish to.
However, less-astute readers should remember that the OO.o formats are well-documented & any other program can easily write an implementation to spec.
They are also XML files, which can be understandable in plaintext. This means many people don't even have to bother looking at the spec to extract useful information.
So why the gobblygook? Look at that "PK" at the beginning of the string. That indicates that it is zipped. Rename the
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
http://www.planetpdf.com/
I've only used Adobe's reader.
I have used a free pdf maker, and it worked fine.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
KDE now has a very nice and efficient implementation (kpdf), which will be available for all major platforms eventually.
I am trolling
This is more of a push by the state of Massachusetts to force Microsoft and other similar vendors to provide an export option that contains no proprietary data in it.
.doc files and other proprietary storage formats. Basically, MA is making a law that states that they do not ever want to be committed to any one vendor, and that all they really care about is the document and the actual information it contains.
While it's true that standards change over time, the fact that there would be an open standard means that a document could be successfully reconstituted (all standards include version information). Requiring an open document storage option means that even 5 years after a standard has gone the way of the dodo, a developer such as myself could still recreate the document if needed.
This is not true of
BS. What Adobe really offers is the documentation on how the format works. Microsoft doesn't do that for their formats.
... you know that any official/legal notice will be sent by US mail, certified mail, or delivered by hand.
Not true at all, at least not in Masachusetts.
There are a number of agencies that send out things like tax and license notices via email, if you've registered to receive them that way. If you don't pay, you will eventually get that registered-mail notice. But if you do pay, that email becomes your only notice. It's a real convenience for us computer-literate types, and saves the government a lot of money. It's been years since I've received a hand-delivered government notice. Some things still arrive via first-class mail, but very often the email/web approach has handled it already.
They can get away with it legally, because such "pre-notice" messages aren't the legal notices; they're just a convenience for the taxpayer.
But we've had problems with government web sites that are only tested, and only render sensibly, with IE. Some downloadable docs are only in MS-Word format. Again, this is legal, because you aren't forced to use them; you can always use the hard copy. You can take a day off work, drive downtown to the agency, and pick up the docs you need. Or you can buy a Windows machine and download the Word doc, saving yourself a day off work and lining Bill Gates' pockets by another (to him) small amount.
There are those who think that it's not quite right for the government to be in bed with a major manufacturer like this. It's not a new story, of course; that's why the Boston Tea Party is brought up. Look up the history of that event. It's not an exact parallel, but it's close enough for media reports.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.