Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Massachusetts Office Party

Posted by Zonk on from the we-all-saw-how-the-first-one-went dept.

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."

5 of 731 comments (clear)

  1. Groklaw coverage by stevey · · Score: 5, Informative

    This was also covered on groklaw, yesterday.

  2. Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future? by ozmanjusri · · Score: 5, Informative

    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."
  3. Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future? by Ihlosi · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:So, which will MS Office support? by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!!!
  5. Funny, but.... by Noksagt · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is amusing.

    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 .sxw extension to .zip & throw it into whatever unzipper you wish to.