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."

Comments

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Coryoth]

Currently, Microsoft office can't read or write either of these formats[1]. So which is Microsoft going to add?

Both? PDF is making steady inroads as an interchange format and from what I understand of Avalon it should make generating PDF on Vista pretty much as easy as on OS X. It would make sense to support it.

As for OpenOffice.org - they're using the OASIS format and Microsoft is a sponsor of that so you'd think they'd get around to it eventually. I think Microsoft is realising that locking up Office document formats isn't going to work for much longer (see their various efforts to create more "open" XML based formats for MS Office) and are trying to work out what to do instead.

Jedidiah.

Re:Why doesn't microsoft offer the option...

[ShieldW0lf]

If Office opened and saved OO.o documents, there would be a flood of people migrating away from it.

Think about it, if you knew you could download OO.o for free and anyone with Office could open/edit/save the files you'd made in it, would you spend hundreds of dollars for Office? Hell, what could possibly motivate you to buy it at that point?

I would say that if MS opens the door to OO.o formats, they may as well just shoot themselves in the head and be done with it, because they're toast.

Re:it seeems to me ...

[PriceIke]

Here's an example, not MS-based, but a true story and one that illustrates (I think) the GP's point.

One closed format is the QuickBooks one. Last year, as I went to start preparing my taxes, I opened up my business' QuickBooks file so I could generate reports for my accountant. Now, so there's no misunderstanding, I *puchased* this software about two years previous and was using it on my Mac G4 computer all that time. When I upgraded my OS several months prior, I backed up everything to another drive, performed the OS upgrade, and copied everything back. So when I went to open QuickBooks it acted like it had just been installed and asked for my serial number. No problem, I found it and entered it.

Then QuickBooks goes to match that against some nebulous database elsewhere on the net, and returns an error message: this serial number cannot be authenticated. Oh really? It was just fine when I entered it the first time. I tried again and again, always to get the same response. So I called Intuit to get a working serial number .. know what they told me? They don't support my version of QuickBooks anymore. If I wanted a new serial number that worked, I would have to buy the new version. The upgrade would cost me $200+shipping.

That's extortion. Maybe unintentional extortion, but extortion. If I wanted access to MY data using MY software on MY computer, I was going to have to pay them AGAIN. This was not an arragement I agreed to when I bought the software. Having no choice, I did, but it taught me an important lesson about software "ownership" and the rights and expectations of those who do business with companies like Intuit, like Microsoft, and others who, in the name of "security" and "copy-protection" are stripping away basic rights of legitimate users to use their legally purchased software and hardware.

If I had had an alternative to accessing my QuickBooks software file, especially an open source one, you bet your ass I would have used it.