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

As a Massachusetts Resident

[rob_squared]

I appreciate this. But its more for their own bottom line than for the tax payers. While both will benefit, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention all the reasons for their choice.

And anyway, why wasn't I invited to this party?

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[MyLongNickName]

The government's bottow line is the same as the tax payer's bottom line. Either through taxes or deficit, every dollar that is spent by big brother comes out of our pocket. Not quite sure of the point of your post, except to jip by out of FP! :)

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[coreman]

I'm a resident too and think this will be great. Big thumbs up.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[MindStalker]

Hold on... Isn't governments bottom line = taxes?
Yes they probably didn't do it to LOWER taxes, but this will allow savings that can lead to tax dollars being spent on the local economy rather than go to Microsoft. Or atleast be put to better use in some way. Like filling up the gas tanks for state vehicles... :/

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[avalys]

Your knee-jerk needs to be reprogrammed. It's still in bitch-about-companies mode.

The government is not a corporation. The government takes your money by force and spends it. Any time they're spending less money, you should be happy, because it's your money they're saving.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[rob_squared]

Hah, who said I wasn't happy? I'm pointing out an additional reason why they're doing this, that's all.

The less (wasteful) money I have to pay, the better.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[PriceIke]

This post is "informative"? I guess I thought everybody knew that. Sad.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[/ASCII]

I think it is surprising how little people care about open formats. For me it is very important to know that I'll be able to open and edit my own documents twenty years from now, and to convert them to whatever format is all the rage then.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Short Circuit]

Michigan could do with a move like this. We're running a deficit and our economy's not getting any better. The Republican-controlled legislature is pushing tax cut after tax cut, without much in the way of spending cuts. Something like this could save some real dollars.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but as an addendum, don't forget that deficit spending isn't necessarily covered by the tax payers, but rather by the tax payers' children.

Of course, since the rapture is coming "any day now", the current federal deficit won't be a problem.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[bogaboga]

As a non resident of Massachusetts, I'd like to know from you the resident, why it is Massachusetts alone in the union (USA) that appears to be pushing for doing away with proprietary formats. Why? Can you throw more light on this?

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[gowen]

Any time they're spending less money, you should be happy, because it's your money they're saving.

That's right. Because we all know that government's never do anything beneficial to the community: like roads, education for those who couldn't otherwise afford it, public transportation, water supplies, defense, the police...

A knee jerk libertarian is a still a jerk.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Divide By Zero]

As a non-resident, I'd like to offer the following hypothesis: They're smarter than the rest of us?

Seriously. I live in Michigan (big budget deficit), I work for the fed gov't (nuff said) and Mass is the first state I hear doing this? This kills me. Oh, for the ear of the state/federal CIO.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[kilodelta]

We're slowly moving away from MS apps in RI too. For example, most servers are now LAMP vs. being MS IIS, Exchange, etc. There are still a couple of Novell GroupWise servers but those are slowly being phased out.

For example, my agency has 60 users. For MS Office assuming a government discount that makes the end price $200 we'd be shelling out $12,000.

And lets not forget the obscene pricing of MS software for servers. A 50 user MS-SQL for instance would run you approximately $8K to $10K and that excludes the OS.

LAMP - server cost $5K. Cost of software $0, Cost of configuration time: $1K or so. So for the $20,000 above you could buy three new servers and have them congigured to do what you want them to.

And a desktop can be had for
So yes, it is a bottom line exercise and a clear signal to Microsoft that:

a) We won't pay bloated prices for sofware that we only use a small subset of features on, but isn't crippled from occasionally using the gee-whiz features.

and

b)Constant upgrade cycles in which we shell out full retail for something that is an upgrade.

They had better wake up and smell the coffee. As government goes, so goes business that interacts with government. Microsoft could be staring at a huge defection of customers in the near term.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[saider]

Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[shis-ka-bob]

I agree completely. Here is one example. A dissertation is often printed about three times (one for the department, one for the univerisity library and once for the student to keep). If the document is shared, it is shared electronically. What are the odds that you can read an Word 3.0 document compared with the odds that you can read a PDF, LaTeX or even RDF? It blows me away that people will work hard to produce a document that should become part of the corpus of human works, and then save in in a format that will be dead in a few years.

Open formats are the clear answer.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[pete6677]

Because Microsoft did not effectively lobby the Kennedys. For those that don't know, that is the political family who runs Massachusetts. If they want something to happen, it happens.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[MvD_Moscow]

Yeah, so lets give all our money to corporations, they will find better use of it, right? Please, corporations were benefit us, not waste money making us buy more shit that we don't need. I'd rather give my money to a government which at least at times spends money on things like public services and social security rather than a corporation that has no concept like humanitariansim. Corporations are good for certain things but not replacing the government.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[fitten]

Any time they're spending less money, you should be happy, because it's your money they're saving.

You must be new here...

Whenever they "save" money in one budget, they put that into another budget, they don't give it back. This means that they spend the same amount of money, spending less on one thing and more on something else. If they spent "less" money, then they would be able to lower taxes which means they get less money into the coffers and that is not allowed.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[mysticgoat]

This isn't about reducing taxes.

This is about "free as in speech"-- assuring that state generated documents will be readable by any citizen no matter what operating system or software they are running.

It wasn't the "Boston Beer Bash" you know...

I think we can expect that for the next three years the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (it isn't a State) will have increased overhead costs due to conversion and training. I doubt that any competent audit will ever be able to show that the change to Open Office decreased expenses.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[avalys]

Okay, let me rephrase. Any time they waste less money, you should be happy, because they will hopefully spend it on something more worthwhile.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[XxtraLarGe]

I agree. I work for a Michigan College's online study program, and we require all of our instructors post their documents either in .RTF or .PDF files (unless they're teaching a specialized computer course like Microsoft Word, Office, or Powerpoint), so that people on Macs, Linux or even older Microsoft systems can read the documents. It would be nice to see the government have the same concern for its citizens as we have for our students.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Shotgun]

When I was laid off, I spent nearly a year working as a security guard. ProEngineer was giving away a 3D CAD program, ProDesktop, so I thought I'd use all that late night desk time to draw up my airplane.

Fast forward a few months, ProEngineer decides the giveaway didn't make them much money, so they kill the program. They were nice though, and gave all the current users a 5-year liscense key to use their current copy.

Fast forward a year. My laptop crashes, and I have to wipe and re-install. My ProDesktop key is gone. I now have several megs of very detailed and very useless drawings.

This is the reason that governments should be using open formats. Thank you, Massachusetts. ...and all those Slashdotters claimed there wasn't a God.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Boing]

I think it is surprising how little people care about open formats.

How can this be surprising? To 98% of the people in the world, the computer is, and shall remain, a black box. They don't care how it works inside. They don't care about LZW compression, or XML, or TCP/IP, or C++, or the difference between OR and XOR. They don't think of their files as being in a "format" unless poor user interfaces dictate that they must. To them, the file is a photograph they took, or a screenplay they've written, or a song they downloaded, and the internals of its definition are irrelevant.

And to take a small jab at the open source community, this is where we have problems reaching the desktop market. We design interfaces for ourselves, and we care about the internals. We want to know that PNG supports alpha transparency, or that our Windows XP installation is on /dev/hda1 while our Linux swap partition is on /dev/hdb2. We care whether the songs we listen to use VBR to save a few extra kilobytes on a 300 GB hard drive.

But when you provide these things as options to a user who doesn't know or care what they mean, you're asking them to commit to a choice when they don't want to. They'll feel helpless, and stupid, and if/when they complain, we too often reply "well it's not our fault you can't use it. RTFM."

Okay, I kinda veered off topic there... regarding open formats: in the end, there's relatively little difference between an open and a closed format on a twenty-year timeline, from the perspective of the 98% group. Either way, they're not going to be the ones designing the conversion tool. If it's an open format, they have to hope that enough geeky guys with free time find it an interesting or relevant enough problem to solve. If it's a closed format, they have to hope that the company's still in business and updating its tools, or that it released something before it went belly-up, or that it opened its file formats, or that its developers are good samaritans. And here's the kicker: the 98% group does not know which of these alternatives is more likely to be the case. They probably don't realize the problem exists. It's not because they're stupid or willfully ignorant, because once again they only see the computer as a tool. You might as well call them stupid or willfully ignorant for not knowing what machine screws are used to hold their washing machine together.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[colinrichardday]

Because only Massachusetts is home to the Free Software Foundation?

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[avalys]

And where do you think your government's money goes? In this case, it was going to Microsoft.

In many cases, government work is subcontracted out.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Bloke down the pub]

Spending less money doesn't necessarily mean getting less stuff. Although it usually does.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Skye16]

I agree, but when it comes to the government, it's important that records are kept and are able to be looked at later. We sure would look stupid if we couldn't figure out what half of our constitution said because it was in a dead file format.

Really, though, we shouldn't have to break the law (patent law?) to read important government information from years bygone.

As a home user, however, I honestly don't give a shit. Word 2003, OO.o, WordPerfect - hell, a text file - none of these ever contain anything I'd ever want other than for the immediate future. Then again, my needs are different from everyone else's, so, while I, personally, don't need or care about an open file format, others actually may.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[xtracto]

Well, I remember when I decided do get rid of the pile of 5 1/4 in. floppies I had accumulated (like 120 or more), I engaged in the daunting task of revising each one of them to see wtf did they had... I found a lot of documents I have done in several formats, from Qpro spreadsheet (dont remember the extension) to PW (Professional Write anyone remember that program? it saved me thousands of times when the !"£@ MS Word for 3.11 didn't want to work) and Banner, Printmaster between several other files.

Of course, I could not open a lot of those files (some others where 1337 h4ck1ng and cr4ck1ng courses, anarchist cookbook etc etc... from my "computer hippie days")... of course, I am sure that will suddenly happen with the .DOC 95 MS Office format or others... in 100 years... if instead we have an open format, you are SURE that someone will know about it.

And, if you use a human readable format like LATEX (which I am using lately to write scientific papers) then it will be easier at least to get the /information/.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[schon]

Umm... didn't they invent the orgy? :o)

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Bloke down the pub]

Doesn't matter. Even if you couldn't port OO to run on Windows ZP2017 or SuSe19.4, you could theoretically write a translator if you wanted to because the format is open. Heck, worst case, you could decipher it manually using a hex editor.

Whether it's worth it or not is another issue - for some important scientific data or historical documents it might well be.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[advocate_one]

you'd have been equally stuffed when the 5 year license key had expired

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[diablobsb]

you forgot "huge orgies"

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[jcr]

Your statement assumes that because these functions are performed by governments, that other means to provide them aren't possible.

-jcr

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[psm321]

I wish it was like that here at U of Mich. Professors really seem to like .doc here. CS professors are a little better about that in general, but not all of them.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Harry Coin]

Have you ever worked in / around the Federal Government? My experience in the USAF was that at the end of every fiscal year, every project went on a ill-advised spending spree to ensure that they spent every penny of their budget (flat screen LCDs, the newest computers, expensive peripherals) all of which was totally unneccessary. Every federal project does this at the end of the fiscal year so that they don't come in under budget, otherwise they'd have their budget cut because the don't need the money. Since money == clout in the government, there is never, ever any "extra money". It's all spent. Every time.

The Federal Government will not spend your money wisely, because it is not their money. End of story.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[gowen]

I didn't say governments are completely and unambiguously great -- just that they're not unambiguously bad. Money spent by government is not necessarily wasted, which is what the original comment implied.

This is not a subtle philosophical point.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[gowen]

that other means to provide them aren't possible

Great. Pay-as-you-go policing and a subscription-only Army (haven't paid? fight your own war). And a lack of free education... that's just fine as long as you don't mind generating a massive underclass.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Federal Government will not spend your money wisely, because it is not their money

You don't think the money the federal government is spending rescuing Louisians from the roofs of their houses isn't being wisely spent? You don't think the money spent paying the FDNY so they could run into the Twin Towers and rescue people like you wasn't wisely spent?

Man, you're a tough crowd.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[eno2001]

Yup. Yeah. This is all about political revenge. They're going to inconvenience their people my making the switch to a new office suite (which I frankly love) just to shake their collective fist at Microsoft. Yeah. That're REAL rational. Take off that tinfoil hat. You're as bad as the liberals and libertarians.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[man_of_mr_e]

Umm.. I don't believe the term "Open Office" in the article means OpenOffice.org, I beleive it means Open (office documents) not (open office) documents.

Office 12 is going to save to XML by default anyways, so I don't see how this is "dumping" Office.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[gbutler69]

I beg to differ. People are, in general, absolutely willfully ignorant. Why? Because ignorance is bliss. If you don't know, you won't be upset about it. Actually, I find it a very attractive way to live. Unfortunately, I'm one of the stupid people who feel they actually need to know. Even more unfortunately, the more I know, the more I wish I didn't know.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Harry Coin]

I am not saying that governments are unambiguously bad either. I'm sure that the city of New Orleans is wishing that they had more police, fire, and emergency services right now.

What I am saying is that the U.S. Federal Government is notoriously bad at spending taxpayer money wisely, either through bloated budgets, pork-barrel projects or crony capitalism. Even your previous comment says that money spent by the Government is not neccessarily wasted. Faint praise indeed. Therefore this move in Massachusetts is akin to seeing the pope on TV endorsing french ticklers.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[advocate_one]

the OpenOffice document format IS human readable when you've unzipped it...

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[RealAlaskan]

Because we all know that government's [sic] never do anything beneficial to the community: like roads, education for those who couldn't otherwise afford it, public transportation, water supplies, defense, the police...

We can see what happens when they do all that. We can see all the nifty roads with the nifty potholes, we can see Amtrak, we can see the $400 hammers and $900 toilet seats that are defending our country.

We can't see what would happen if they didn't do that. It's quite possible that we would have a far richer society, with far greater social and economic equality, if they weren't doing all that ``for'' us.

Everything on your list of ``what the government does for us (whether we like it or not)'' has been provided by private enterprise, and could be again. Would we be better or worse off if the government gave up its monopoly on any or all of those things? I don't think the answer is obvious, but I lean towards ``better off''.

A knee jerk libertarian is a still a jerk.

And a knee jerk liberal is a liberal jerk. I'd suggest that you (and everyone who's afflicted with a jerking knee) read Bastiat's ``The Law'' and Henry Hazlet's ``Economics in One Lesson'' to help you avoid making unwarranted assumptions about how much good government is doing us all. There's a lot more to learn, but those two will get you started.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Chosen Reject]

You don't think the money spent paying the FDNY so they could run into the Twin Towers and rescue people like you wasn't wisely spent?

For the record, if FDNY ran into the Twin Towers and rescued the GP, I don't think the money was wisely spent. But I digress.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Marc2k]

Halliburton? Walmart? Exxon? Microsoft?

You forgot Shin-Ra.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Shotgun]

Ask them for a licence key?

The answer is a clear and resounding NO!

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[sxpert]

this includes also the totally useless invading of sovereign countries, fomenting coups in others (south & central america anyone) and tons of other similar crap

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Shotgun]

You know, intelligent people keep backups of important data ... ever wonder why you were laid off?

You know, intelligent people often get hit with several hardware failures all at once because they haven't upgraded anything in 3yrs (the security job was not my first resort after getting laid off). I still have all the data. I have the program. It was only the key that hit the great bit bucket in the sky.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[ilyaaohell]

Roads are and should be maintained by the government, along with basic city planning. The reason for this is that roads are created by the community and for the community and are not a profitable enterprise, unless you start charging more tolls to use these roads. When every road starts to have entry fees, then the argument can easily be made that a private company needs to take over.

Education for those who couldn't otherwise afford it need NOT be provided by the government. All that they should provide is the money so that the education does become affordable. In other words, the system of financial aid that allows students to go to a high quality private college needs to be brought down to lower grade levels. Vouchers are a good start. As for those who don't qualify for financial aid, they already DO pay for their public schools in the forms of taxes. Just because you don't give the money directly to the school district supervisors doesn't mean that this isn't exactly where that money goes. The difference would be that then you WOULD know where it goes, and you'd still be paying the same amount.

Public transportation need not be provided by the government. Most major cities go into contract with private transportation companies who run city bus routes. Why is the government involved at all? They're doing nothing but skimming off the bottom line of the company as a "fee" for being given the opportunity to run their business. The airline industry isn't run by the Federal government, and has functioned well for decades (and arguably better than under a government beurocracy). Taxis are operated by private companies, why aren't you complaining that they should be taken over by the government? There is a proven track record, both on a local, national, and global scale, of private companies successfully running transportation businesses.

Water supplies are a utility. Natural gas is usually provided by private companies, as is electricity. Why is water so special that only the big, powerful government is to be trusted?

Defense and the police are needed to protect the population, and every Libertarian would tell you that this should be the ONLY service that a government should be providing. Therefore, mentioning this point is in no way an argument against Libertarianism.

I'm not a Libertarian, and I'm not an anarchist, and I don't agree with many of their principles, but common sense dictates that there's no reason why the government closes off entire lucrative markets when private companies, concerned with efficiency and customer satisfaction rather than the status quo, would deal with things more efficiently. Especially when the government is already IN COMPETITION with private industries, as is the case with public transportation, the postal system, education, and a whole host of other industries.

Governments DO supply communities with many beneficial things, including every item on your list. However, there is absolutely NO reason for why they should be doing this when there already are alternatives.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Peldor]

Brought peace? *whistling Bright Side of Life*

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Shotgun]

you'd have been equally stuffed when the 5 year license key had expired

FINALLY! Someone with a clue.

I started the drawings on a lark, just to learn how to do 3D CAD. The program was "free", and I had a lot of time on my hands. After a while, they sort of took on a life of their own. It was only later that I said, "Heh, this is a nice piece of work that I'd like to keep indefinitely."

At that point, ProEngineer changes their mind and changes the rules...which was their right under the EULA. I still have the data. Hell, I even have the program. BUT I do not have ACCESS TO THE DATA.

You've gotten my point, but I think I need to spell it out for the clueless...

IF YOU SIGN AWAY THE RIGHTS TO THE CASTLE KEYS, YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF LOCKED OUT ONE DAY. THE GOVERNMENT SHOULDN'T BE SUBJECTING THE PEOPLE'S PROPERTY TO THE WHIMS OF ANY PARTICULAR BUSINESS.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[gowen]

Federal Government is notoriously bad at spending taxpayer money wisely, either through bloated budgets, pork-barrel projects or crony capitalism.

You'll hear no argument from me on that. However, here's the original thing I do disagree with

Any time they're spending less money, you should be happy, because it's your money they're saving.

This poster cannot or will not distinguish between money wasted, and money spent. At the risk of being slightly distasteful, Federal money spent on (for example) readying the Emergency Response Teams, aiding evacuations or strengthening the New Orleans levees would not be considered wasted. We should not be happy that this money was not spent, because of the massive human cost.

That was what I meant by "knee jerk libertarianism" -- that "governments are bad, m'kay" attitude, summarised above.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[galaxyboy]

You might as well call them stupid or willfully ignorant for not knowing what machine screws are used to hold their washing machine together.

Good analogy. This is absolutely the truth. I don't think that the fact that people don't understand computers is willful ignorance. I think it is most likely a matter of time. Other people outside of the open source community (or technology related fields) simply don't have the time to RTFM. Especially given that the manual for a computer and all of its hardware and software would be about a million pages long if it were comprehensive. People just don't care how it works because all they want to do is write a book, keep track of their finances, browse the web, and write emails.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Harry Coin]

But, but, we have to stop the proliferation of WMDs. So we have to fight them there so we don't have to fight them here. Then the Iraqis will greet us as liberators. Besides, they hate our freedom, and they're driven by an ideology of hate. Anyway, you're either with us or you're against us. So, bring it on! USA! USA! USA!

Er, I mean, the Soviet Union has collapsed, China is now our favored trading partner, so we need an external enemy to justify a military budget gone out of control. We were attacked by Islamic radicals from Afghanistan, but who wants Afghanistan? Let's put some special forces in Kabul to see if they can find Bin Laden, but let's commit most of our forces to depose the dictator we assisted during the Iran / Iraq war, and had to reign in during the first Gulf War. As the country descends into chaos, we'll generate new terrorists, and give them a training ground to hone their skills against those people who pledged to defend this country. At least Iraq has oil, so gas should be plenty cheap. People love cheap gas. Now, let's spread democracy at the point of a gun across the globe! That should keep the military occupied and keep the military-industrial complex in the black well into the next century. Who cares anyway? The rapture will be here soon, so no need to worry about the future.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[sionki]

How about this. They are trying to make sure that the money they collected from you is actually spent on they thing they collected it for instead of paying for over-priced software package. It also saves you money since you won't have to but this over-priced software package also to read/work with the state documentation.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[pete6677]

I guess you missed the part about OPEN standards. Whether it's worth switching is certainly a topic for debate. The reason Mass. is switching was stated as wanting documents to be open (nevermind that PDF is proprietary). What I said was that the idea of open document formats would not have gone very far had Microsoft more effectively lobbied the state government like they have in other states. You don't hear the Washington state gov. talking about making documents available in open formats. I wonder why.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[operagost]

Would you care explaining the last sentence of your post, AC?

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[gowen]

[roads] are not a profitable enterprise, unless you start charging more tolls to use these roads

You'll find very few things are profitable enterprises until you start charging for them.

Common sense dictates that there's no reason why the government closes off entire lucrative markets when private companies, concerned with efficiency and customer satisfaction rather than the status quo, would deal with things more efficiently

There are two problems here:
i) the implicit assumption that the free market necessarily "would deal with things more efficiently."
ii) The free market is great at providing things that are not necessities. Now, you might argue that private health care is a more efficient system than state systems, in as much as it reduces the average price of a given operation. But if the human price of that is that those in poverty have a disproportionate death rate, is that a price worth paying? Would you really be proud of living in a country that allows its poor to die of curable diseases for want of enough money to pay for medical services? Similarly, if public education were abolished, are you prepared for how an uneducated underclass would affect the social fabric? Because some things can't be measured in dollars and cents.

And besides, the federal government is mandated to provide service for the common good (in the words of the US Constitution). A line is clearly to be drawn. Very few people would propose the government provide every household with a DVD player through taxation. But, it's not immediately apparent to me where this line should be drawn.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[magicchex]

I'm at Umich too and I only use RTF format, which many of my professors specifically ask for (this is what led me to use it).

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[That's Unpossible!]

Great. Pay-as-you-go policing and a subscription-only Army (haven't paid? fight your own war).

Forget for the moment that defense is one of the few things the federal government is actually charged with doing (by the Constitution).

I notice you left out ambulances/emergency services. Many ambulances, most perhaps, are commercial services, not government run.

Public education is not "free," it is paid for by taxpayers like me, and squandered by people who do not appreciate it because they don't have to work to pay for it. Those that really do appreciate it would be able to receive education through charitable organizations if people were giving less money to the government, and had more available to donate.

You have all these "underpaid" public school teachers, many of whom are not good and/or qualified for the jobs, trying to teach a bunch of kids, many of whom do everything in their power to avoid school/work. This problem has arisen because the government is running the school system. Period. No, I am definitely not happy about our "free education" system. It's fucked.

You don't think the money the federal government is spending rescuing Louisians from the roofs of their houses isn't being wisely spent?

Should we spend the money and get it done? Yes. Is it wisely spent? No. There was a mandatory evacuation in most parts. Those people should not have been there. That's why so many are dying. Maybe next time they'll heed the warnings. (Maybe we can stop subsidizing flood insurance with taxpayer money, too... let them pay for the risks they are taking by living in a flood plain.)

That being said, the two things you mentioned are two things that the federal government is SUPPOSED TO DO. Libertarians don't have a problem funding those types of gov't activities.

You, however, conveniently ignore all the money that is wasted on pork barrel spending and useless social programs, loopholes for lobbyists, etc.

Read some of the studies on this site, a non-partisan site, and tell me if you honestly still think the government is spending money wisely:

http://www.cagw.org/

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Azarael]

Gov't are pretty good at finding ways to spend money. So when they find one place where they can save money , they will probably find somewhere else to spend those savings. So it's probably more likely that the state and the taxpayers would be getting more bang for their buck than a reduction in spending.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Harry Coin]

This poster cannot or will not distinguish between money wasted, and money spent. At the risk of being slightly distasteful, Federal money spent on (for example) readying the Emergency Response Teams, aiding evacuations or strengthening the New Orleans levees would not be considered wasted. We should not be happy that this money was not spent, because of the massive human cost.

As I stated above, that is exactly the sort of areas where governments should be spending taxpayer money. According to this source (note, found from Google News, that site doesn't reflect by biases), the Army Corp of Engineers was urging previous to Katrina that the levees in NOLA be shored up because they would not withstand a storm greater than category 3, but the funding for that effort dried up, that source blames the Bush tax cuts, but I have to wonder where the city budget was being spent in the years leading up to this disaster.

If the poster you quoted has difficulty distinguishing between tax money spent and tax money wasted, it is because of the deliberate obsfucation of government spending by the politicians in office. If expenditures were more transparent, I think most people would feel better about government spending. Of course, many politicians resist this because it would put a stop to the back-room deal making that they prefer.

I live in Montgomery, Alabama, and political corruption is rampant here. Unfortunately, this has led to a knee-jerk tax-avoidance mindset in the entire population. It's a good thing that we have some of the lowest property taxes in the US, but the public school system down here is atrocious. As a result, it has become difficult to attract business into the city because of the low levels of education in the workforce. Which results in a smaller tax base, which results in worse schools, repeat ad nauseum. Of course, the mayor found it in the budget to build a baseball stadium on the riverfront, and millions of dollars in pet projects for each of the city councilmen.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[gowen]

You, however, conveniently ignore all the money that is wasted on pork barrel spending and useless social programs, loopholes

Pointing out that some government money is not wasted, does not mean that I believe no government money is ever wasted? Why do so many people fail to grasp this simple idea?

And if you seriously believe that money spent rescuing people in New Orleans is wasted, this conversation is over. I don't to people who value money over human life.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[brufleth]

I don't think their point was to demonize the government. I think the point was that if the governement CAN spend less money and continue with the same quality of service then in most cases they probably should. In this case there is a free alternative to an expensive product that the government uses. Naturally the government should try to save (tax payer) money and use the free alternative. I would guess the hold up was due to suites like OpenOffice being a lower quality offering. Apparently MA has decided OO good enough to replace MS now.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[gowen]

If expenditures were more transparent, I think most people would feel better about government spending. Of course, many politicians resist this because it would put a stop to the back-room deal making that they prefer.

Can't argue with that. And I do sympathise with you over the state of your local government.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[DaveJay]

I know how you feel; I had an original music composition -- one of my first, and still best -- stored in a non-midi, non-standard format. Years later, when I tried to open it, I couldn't, as the software used to create it no longer existed.

I finally found someone online who still had a copy of the software laying around, and who was kind enough to copy it to a midi file for me, for which I remain eternally grateful.

That's the day I converted to open formats all the time, personally, and the primary reason I'm so pro-open-source these days.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[DaveJay]

True, that the user generally sees the computer as a tool, and doesn't care about formats.

The flipside of that, of course, is that once the tool bites them in the arse, they care -a lot- about formats. It's how I came to care, and it's the "right" way anyway -- people can't be coerced into giving a dang, they need to learn on their own.

A tool-based correlary: you can happily use a specific type of screw and screwdriver for years of your life, until you discover that you've lost the screwdriver and you can no longer buy a new one, but you desperately need to remove some of your old screws. Are people stupid for not realizing this would be a problem earlier? I'd say no, because manufacturers spent copious amounts of money convincing consumers that their product is "best", will be around forever, and is a smart thing to do. What chance does common sense have against a marketing monolith?

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[ilyaaohell]

"You'll find very few things are profitable enterprises until you start charging for them."

Do you not pay taxes? You already are charged for them. Now, onto your bigger points:

There are two problems here:
i) the implicit assumption that the free market necessarily "would deal with things more efficiently."

You're saying this is wrong? Monopolies operate more efficiently than private companies who are in competition with each other to provide the most desirable service to the customer? Do you not read history? Do you know nothing of economics? While I'm sure that, if you look hard enough, you'd find some exceptions here. However, I seriously doubt that this is true for the vast majority of cases. Competition is good for the consumer.

ii) The free market is great at providing things that are not necessities. Now, you might argue that private health care is a more efficient system than state systems, in as much as it reduces the average price of a given operation. But if the human price of that is that those in poverty have a disproportionate death rate, is that a price worth paying? Would you really be proud of living in a country that allows its poor to die of curable diseases for want of enough money to pay for medical services? Similarly, if public education were abolished, are you prepared for how an uneducated underclass would affect the social fabric? Because some things can't be measured in dollars and cents.

First, on the topic of disproportionate education... this already happens with public schools. The school systems in rich communities with high property taxes are almost always better than school systems in the ghettos of a large city. At least the difference would be that, given schools that COMPETE with each other instead of simply BEING there, there's a higher probability that the quality of schools in poorer areas would improve. If they did not, at least some percentage of the parents would pull their children out and send them to a rich school (such action is usually not possible with public schools because of student zoning). Having the constant threat of students ("customers") going off to the competing school would make the schools want to improve themselves. Public schools have no such incentive. And admission price would not be a factor, as I've already mentioned, if the government were to institute a system of school vouchers, some form of financial aid, or any other monetary assistance to all who are in need.

As for your point on private medicine... The point isn't that it doesn't work as well as public/free healthcare. The point you're trying to make has to do with HEALTH INSURANCE, not the quality of the doctors or facilities. If the government were to provide health insurance to those in need, instead of actually operating the "business" of hospitals, then it would be in accordance with my argument and be a better system overall. At least I think so.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Varun Soundararajan]

wasnt BillG invited as special guest? Very bad Very bad ;) -- Mod this Troll , no worries.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Analogy Man]

And as we are finding out from the tax cuts & Iraq war versus FIMA funding, some cost benefit analysis misses major "intangibles" such as dead and displaced people, lawlessness, rampant 3rd world disease outbreaks etc...

How much is transparency in government and an open forum worth? I think open standards for public documents is a no brainer regardless of any bean counter fiscal analysis.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[The Bungi]

You should have used Free Software to draw up your airplane. Maybe GNU/CAD.

Oh, wait. there's nothing like that.

Maybe the reality is that right now - in some product niches - you can have either quality software or open formats. It's up to you to make a decision as to wich one you prefer.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Anonymous Coward]

The mandate specifies open formats, not open source programs. There is a big difference here, the government mandating that the programs used be able to create documents in a standard that is open, so that people are not locked to a specific program when the want to read/write government documents, they make no mention of what program people are actually allowed to use. Microsoft Office can save in open formats as well as the usual Microsoft proprietary formats, so that really doesn't nessicarily do anything for cost savings, only for acessability. And for the record, I live in Michigan, our economy's shitty state is our own damn fault after years of complacency and greed watching the foreign automakers whomp on us in terms of: durability, quality, desirability, ingenueity, and anything else the buying public deems importent when shopping for a new automobile. Government here works much the way it does in most other states, slowly, inefficiently, and without any kind of forward thinking whatsoever, the only real problem is our industrial sector has gone to shit due to the reasons mentioned previously.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[SpaceLifeForm]

In other words, it sucks to be intelligent because the majority of the population is not.

Hell, it doesn't just suck, it's depressing.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[roostahman]

It doesn't dump Office, per se, but it does keep Microsoft honest. The draft policy letter states that 'Proprietary extensions to XML' are to be avoided. So if MS screws with that standard the way they mess with every other standard they get their hands on, bye bye Office.

At least, that's the theory.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[rcamera]

1) subscription-only army might be a good thing. those who support war can pay for it. how is this bad?

2) i find it amusing that you consider public education to be 'free'. this statement tells me you pay no property tax. when you decide to move out of your parent's basement, you might be surprised how much this 'free' education actually costs.

3) individuals with a public high school education are already a massive underclass. most 2/4 year college graduates fall within this same category. try living a comfortable lifestyle with the income provided by a job right out of high school.

4) governments (at least in the US) do not spend money wisely. please note that this does not mean that all money is spent unwisely. have you checked out the federal budget for 2006 (summary? we will have a 49.0% increase in discretionary military spending, 9.6% DECREASE in agriculture, 11.5% DECREASE in housing and urban develpoment, 5.5% DECREASE in justice spending, and 2% DECREASE in energy spending. do you think it is wise to cut spending of programs which directly affect the quality of life of americans so that the money can be spent decreasing the quality of life of individuals overseas?

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[mcrbids]

But its more for their own bottom line than for the tax payers.

Since when does improving the bottom line of a government NOT benefit its tax-payers?

(ahem)

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[IconBasedIdea]

Yes, but as an addendum, don't forget that deficit spending isn't necessarily covered by the tax payers, but rather by the tax payers' children.

States like Massachusetts cannot, by their own constitution, run a yearly budget deficit.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[fitten]

How about this. They are trying to make sure that the money they collected from you is actually spent on they thing they collected it for instead of paying for over-priced software package. It also saves you money since you won't have to but this over-priced software package also to read/work with the state documentation.

You base your argument on your beliefs. You believe that software should cost no money but this is purely opinion. The government IS spending money on things they collect it for. If they pay for software, they use that software to communicate and/or perform tasks (hopefully) more efficiently than they can without it. Whether it is "over priced" or not is not so clear. If a $10000 piece of software speeds up a process so that it only takes 1 hour to perform it instead of 1,000 hours that it requires without the software, is it overpriced? It depends... How much is having your results in an hour instead of six months from now worth to you? How much is it worth having to pay for one person one hour to perform a task instead of paying for 1000 hours of work?

In short... Even IF equivalent software is $0 (and equivalent is much more than just performing a task... it also includes interoperability with everyone else, etc.), that does not mean that the software is "over priced". OSS is great in that people have gathered together to give their services for free and to give their products away for free. That is their right and it's nice that they do it. However, because someone donates their time/money does not devalue anything else. Many doctors donate time/effort, especially in crisis situations because their specializations are needed and not everyone has the knowledge. Does this mean that all medical expenses are "over priced"? I could probably find someone, somewhere to do YOUR job for free (donating their time). Does that mean that you are overpriced?

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[mobiGeek]

This problem has arisen because the government is running the school system. Period. No, I am definitely not happy about our "free education" system.

So you would hail to the mighty capitalistic system to bail out the ailing US education system?

Maybe by privatizing it you would end up with something as transparent, safe and clean as the US meat industry? Something as efficient as the US auto industry?

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[starnix]

"Should we spend the money and get it done? Yes. Is it wisely spent? No. There was a mandatory evacuation in most parts. Those people should not have been there. That's why so many are dying. Maybe next time they'll heed the warnings."

You must be the most ignorant fuck I've ever seen. Just because YOU have a means to get 400 miles away from your home (which would be the minimum safe distance to move from Katrina) doesn't mean everyone does. Are you saying that people with no cars should have walked? What about the elderly? Or people in the hospital? Don't say they should have jumped a bus because most buses and planes were either shut down or full. Not to mention that the only freeways out were completely gridlocked.

Stupid fuck

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[bigpat]

That's right. Because we all know that government's never do anything beneficial to the community: like roads, education for those who couldn't otherwise afford it, public transportation, water supplies, defense, the police...

"to" the community?

Remember "that government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth"?

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[man_of_mr_e]

Except that the phrase "propritary extensions to XML" is meaningless. How exactly do you (or anyone) plan for XML to be extended? Microsoft has certainly made no effort to do so.

Now, they *MIGHT* have meant "Propritary DTD's or Schema's" but that's something entirely different than extending XML itself.

Still, MS has mde it's formats open, and licensed under a royalty free and non-discriminatory license similar to licenses that are approved by other standards bodies such as OASIS, ISO, and the ECMA.

They may not be "open enough" for strict "Free Software" pundits, but it's certainly not "proprietary".

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[exKingZog]

Have to agree, ASP.NET is good stuff. I like SQL Server, but then I haven't used Postgres so that might well be better. SQL Server 2005 supposedly allows you to write .NET code within Sprocs, if that's your idea of a good time...

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[akhomerun]

Michigan could do with a move like this. We're running a deficit and our economy's not getting any better. The Republican-controlled legislature is pushing tax cut after tax cut, without much in the way of spending cuts. Something like this could save some real dollars.

wait a minute, so switching to open source word processing after your state already purchased MSOffice is not only going to save money, but it's going to wipe out the deficit? assuming that it costs nothing to install the software (Which it doesn't), you can't get rid of a state's budget deficit by switching to open source software. wow, we just saved $500, whoop-de-freaking-doo

not to mention the cost to get 10 IT guys to come in to the government office and install/configure the software for the workers. it's not like they can get a refund from MS for switching to OpenOffice!

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[That's Unpossible!]

So you would hail to the mighty capitalistic system to bail out the ailing US education system?

Yes, absolutely. I already have, I'm saving for my kids' private education.

Maybe by privatizing it you would end up with something as transparent, safe and clean as the US meat industry? Something as efficient as the US auto industry?

What is your point exactly? Do you want to trade reports of where corporations have screwed up and where government has screwed up? I bet I have more examples.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[mcrbids]

Maybe it's YOUR knee that should be restrained.

That's right. Because we all know that government's never do anything beneficial to the community: like roads, education for those who couldn't otherwise afford it, public transportation, water supplies, defense, the police...

And where, in his post, did he imply otherwise? All he said is that money for the state is taken by force, and that when the govt saves money, it saves YOU money. If you aren't sure about "taken by force" bit, just don't pay your income taxes for a few years.

When the agents are towing your car and boat, and walking out of your bank with your mortgage papers, you'll perhaps get an appreciation for what "taken by force" means.

How does this imply "Libertarianism"? GP poster could easily have been a ultra-left commie, that still doesn't change the truth of his/her statements.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[That's Unpossible!]

Pointing out that some government money is not wasted, does not mean that I believe no government money is ever wasted? Why do so many people fail to grasp this simple idea?

Look who's talking. You latched onto the fact that someone was upset at the government waste (in general), and then tried to counter that by giving exactly two instances where it is probably not being wasted, and asking, "What, you think that's a waste???" As if those two things make up for the wasteful spending in many other areas.

And if you seriously believe that money spent rescuing people in New Orleans is wasted, this conversation is over. I don't to people who value money over human life.

Umm, whatever. I donated to the red cross. I stated in my very first fucking sentence that they are doing the right thing by trying to help the people that decided to ignore the evacuation orders. On the flipside, you have people who do not listen to reason, who live in a flood plain, are ordered to evacuate to avoid a CATEGORY 5 HURRICANE, and stay anyway.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[n.yusef]

You sir, are an idiot. If you were to stop public schools, that would divide the nation SO much. People who didn't have much money won't be able to get ANY opportunity to make it. I grew up very poor, but I'm gonna finish law school this year, and I have an internship at a law firm paying $75K/year, where I can only go up. Without public schools, this would nock out 100% of my chance to have ever got into my current position. Saying, you're too poor to deserve an education is bullshit. You also said that parents should teach stuff to their kids as an alternative to public schools. My mom was home just long enough to sleep for the night when I was growing up, and my dad hasn't ever been part of my life, you expect my mom to quit her jobs? "Is it preparing them for good, high-quality jobs?" Who gets a good job fresh out of highschool anyway? You have to go to college, for multiple degrees now-a-days to make good money, so why do you expect anyone to get good jobs from highschol. Public schools are not so great in terms of quality, but they are DEFINATELY neccesery, ESPECIALLY in areas where people are less wealthy.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[falconwolf]

You don't think the money the federal government is spending rescuing Louisians from the roofs of their houses isn't being wisely spent?

What a great way to spend money, spend it building up a region that suffers from natural disasters then spend funds to warn people about a disaster that's heading thier way, spend more to rescue them when they don't heed the warnings issued previuously, and then spend more to rebuild. That's a great way to spend money. NOT!!!

Though I no longer live there, I grew up in Florida and friends of mine and I had this saying that you could tell the difference between a true Floridian and a transplant. When a hurricane comes along a Floridian says "it tyme to batten down the hatchs" while transplants throw up their hands and scream "let's get out of here!"

Falcon

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[makomk]

According to the docs, said filter requires Pro/E running on a SGI workstation with Irix - which is slightly unfortunate. Also, ProDesktop has a slightly different file format than ProEngineer, though I think they can open each others' files.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Short Circuit]

A new version of Office comes out every two or three years, and it would help if the next upgrade cycle didn't cost $400/seat for an entire state government.

And those 10 IT guys will get paid for their time whether they're installing Office Vista or OpenOffice.org.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[swv3752]

Where is FSF located? While I have no proof, I suspect that it was as much a lobbying effort of FSF as a failure on Microsoft's.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[ProfFalcon]

I think it is surprising how little people care about open formats.

Why are you surprised that little people care about open formats? Are they supposed to prefer closed formats?

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[DanTheLewis]

I think the poster was talking about saving money by doing essentially the same thing via a cheaper method, not about saving money by spending less on the government. I for one welcome our new cost-cutting overlords.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[mobiGeek]

What is your point exactly?

My point was to show that your original point:

This problem has arisen because the government is running the school system. Period.

is full of bullocks. There is the possibility (and reality ) of mis-use, corruption, incompetence, mis-guidedness, etc... wherever human beings are involved. The thing is, though you may have more stories about government mess-ups and corruption, I would argue this is because the gov't is inherently more transparent (whether it likes it or not).

Every system I have watched go from a public system to being "saved" by the private sector either results in immediate over-spending/-charging or long-term degradation well below the levels of where the public system had once been.

When it comes to education, the failure of the system has little to do with who is running it vs. those who are attending it. You can blame the system on those who "couldn't afford it", but if you send your kids off to some place "better" now, what does their environment look like when your grandkids are growing up. Suburbia cannot protect you from a failing social net...one that is failing because people with the attitude to "pay for something better" are pulling out, they aren't participating.

Or are you not a member of this society? "Wrong side of the tracks" and all that?

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[daveo0331]

They can't run a deficit, but they can issue long term bonds to pay for stuff, which is basically the same thing. That's what Arnold has been doing here in California to "balance" the budget ever since he won the recall election.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[falconwolf]

Now, you might argue that private health care is a more efficient system than state systems, in as much as it reduces the average price of a given operation. But if the human price of that is that those in poverty have a disproportionate death rate, is that a price worth paying?

And a public healthcare system is good? While under private health insurance those who can't afford it don't have coverage government control of healthcare leads to rationing. The only country that I know, admittedly I don't know how well others are, of where medicine is socialized yet still has good healthcare is Cuba, Cuba's maternity system is one of the best in the world. However healthcare and medicine is one area Castro pushs hard for and Cuba has a number of medical schools.

And besides, the federal government is mandated to provide service for the common good (in the words of the US Constitution). A line is clearly to be drawn.

The line is clearly drawn in the Constitution and Amendment 9. What the constitution does not specifically authorize the federal government to do is left to the states and citizens to do. The constitution isn't a list of what goverment should do it's a restriction on what the government can do, what powers it has.

Falcon

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[shywolf9982]

Yeah... but it's like cars, you know. I know people that reasons in the same way you said about software, then they complain, yell and almost assault physically the guy that sold them their new car because the onboard comp went kaputt, and the only ones able to repair it are the car's manifacturer guys (and not the mechanic down the road) and because they charged him $1000 for a job that the mech down the road would have done for far less than half. The job was: take a $500 new onboard comp, replace it with the old comp. I can even do that, it's pretty simple. Thay charged $500 for the new comp and $500 for man work (yeah right). And if you ask them to just sell you the new part without replacing it? They refuse.

What I'm trying to say with this confused tale is that the same people that gets so angry to the point of almost physically attacking someone when this guy plainly extorts them $500, doesn't see why open formats are important. And if I try to explain that to them they dismiss me saying "it's too complex". then, out of curiosity, I asked them what do they think the cause of their "misfortune" was.

The reply was: the goddamned electronics that's everywhere these days

What can i say... i sometimes think they deserve to be dominated

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[killjoe]

People are sheep. They will eat whatever you cram down their throats, they will drink whatever the sexy model is holding in her hands, they will wear whatever bit of cloth is labled with a celebirties name on it.

Coke and Pepsi spend billions of dollars a year because they know they can make people pay for sugared water if they put up a picture of a sports star holding a bottle.

People are stupid consumers, get a picture of bono or paris hilton using linux and every body will buy it and like it. It has nothing to do with quality, ease of use, or anything else. The sheeple will make themselves love it if they think it makes them attractive to the opposite sex.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[killjoe]

75% of all businesses fail and leave their customers, vendors and creditors up shit's creek. If business ran education 75% of all schools would fail. 75% of all roads would close.

You get the picture. Businesses have no qualms about screwing their customers, vendors, and the public at large.

Let me put it another way. To a busiess person the ideal environment is one where slavery is legal and there are no safety or environmental laws. That way they can make their slaves work all day for bread and water, dump their waste in the river and maximize profits for the shareholders (which in most cases is a handful of people).

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[BorderlineThreat]

You don't see the problems inherent with one private entity owning an essential infrasructure like the water supply? Give me a break. This blind libertarian ideology nonsense has gone too far.

Given that the free market, especially in utilities service, inherently results in consolidation - one business buys another out, profits more as a result, and a whole market eventually comes under its sway - and that the cost barrier to entry into the water distribution market is obviously absurbdly high, what's to keep the controller of the water supply from charging whatever it wants? What are you going to do if you don't want to, or can't, pay your local monopoly? Collect rainwater? And what if you live in a rural or destitute region, where the ROI isn't going to be enough for a corporation to justify providing you service?

Privatisation is a hell of a way to push a community into the third world, while reaping a profit, that is.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Aranth Brainfire]

I think you may have missed the point (or someone did further down the line- I didn't check your parent post). They're saving money and doing the same exact thing. They're not saving money by deciding that their residents don't actually NEED roads after all, or cutting back on anything else.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[ilyaaohell]

You don't see the problems inherent with one private entity owning an essential infrasructure like the water supply?

You don't see the problems inherent with a government owning an essential infrastructure like the water supply?

Read: http://www.cleanwateraction.org/

This blind libertarian ideology nonsense has gone too far.

The same can be said about people like you who, for whatever reason, think that their government can do no wrong. As for me, while I don't think that government is inherently evil or out to screw me over (the common consesus of Libertarians... and I am NOT a Libertarian), I do not think that the people who choose to manage government-run BUSINESSES (because that's what they are, they're businesses) are that much different from the people who work in the private sector. They don't have kinder hearts, they don't have more compassion for people. They are the same, except the fact that they run a monopoly and therefore don't need to worry about pesky customer complaints or investing money to improve their service.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[markdavis]

Technically, PDF is *NOT* proprietary, as pete6677 states. The file format is known and open. And you don't have to use ANY Adobe software to view such files if you don't want to. I have at least three non-Adobe pdf viewers that came, stock, in my Linux distro (Mandriva 10.2).

Now, unfortunately, you can add some non-standard EXTENTIONS to pdf, like DRM and encryption and certain other things that are not universally supported. But that is not typical for most "regular" texts, manuals, and forms.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Thing 1]

Why don't the people who review the reports look at the dates on the receipts? Fucking government.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[man_of_mr_e]

You don't appear to know what you're talking about. DRM is a feature that is optional, and is, by its very nature proprietary. You don't like it, don't use it. There won't be any DRM tags in your XML.

Problem solved.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[gowen]

You're saying this is wrong? Monopolies operate more efficiently than private companies who are in competition with each other to provide the most desirable service to the customer?

I'm saying its not axiomatically true, yes. It's certainly nowhere near as clear cut as you seem to think, no matter what libertarian economists tell you. If you think that economics is a science like physics, with clearly developed and verified "truths", you're fooling yourself.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Elemenope]

Let me put it another way. To a busiess person the ideal environment is one where slavery is legal and there are no safety or environmental laws. That way they can make their slaves work all day for bread and water, dump their waste in the river and maximize profits for the shareholders (which in most cases is a handful of people).

No, actually you decribed a nightmare for most business people. Businesses must sell products to consumers; in order to do that, consumers must have money (and since the vast majority of consumers aren't wealthy by legacy or investment) and so must have jobs to provide that money. Healthy customers who have disposable income make happy companies, and these conditions are only generated by a somewhat resonable wage market.

Hey, I dislike Capitalism as much as the next guy (hey, wait...) but let's not be stupid about it.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[gowen]

The constitution isn't a list of what goverment should do it's a restriction on what the government can do, what powers it has.

That's simply untrue, and demonstrates a monstrously superficial understanding of civics. Lay off the Libertarian Kool-Aid for a minute and read this:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States

Still "promoting the general welfare" is left for states and citizens. It's pretty clear that that is not a delimitation of Federal power.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[xtracto]

ok ok.
Imagine this, you are in your house in lets say, 20 years. You have your PhD thesis in one of these old gizmos that people used to call CD... relying on optic technology.

Now, you manage to get one of those old disc readers (or CD-ROM drive as they used to call them) and you are presented with a bunch of .sxw files, each one with one of your chapters... now you KNOW they contain your thesis and you KNOW they are compressed with the LZW algorithm... unfortunatley, you do not know the algortihm or the exact method of decompressing it... someway you know that all that garbage contains the information of your thesis... information that you may need for something.

Now imagine if instead of that you had a bunch of .tex files which you could read with whatever text editor you had or even use one of those age old ink printers, of course you will end up with a lot of \begin{} \end{} \newcommand garbage but, you would be able to read your information.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[roostahman]

If a fee must be paid, it isn't open. If changes are made to the standard, it isn't to standard anymore.

If either of these things occur, it isn't acceptable under the draft policy of the Commonwealth. So, if MS want's Office to continue to be used, they will have to adhere to the open standards specified...No Fees, No changes.

Unfortunately this isn't a done deal yet, and the business of politics is a MF. Still, MS has a history of messing with standards, and this is a clear attempt to nip that in the bud before it occurs.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[man_of_mr_e]

That's just plain stupid. First, the law says nothing about "standards" It says "Open" formats. Not "standard" ones. Second, MS isn't charging any fee, and the license they are issuing them under is perpetual.

Why don't you just stop making things up. You won't sound so ridiculous.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[falconwolf]

That's simply untrue, and demonstrates a monstrously superficial understanding of civics. Lay off the Libertarian Kool-Aid for a minute and read this:

And this is what the 10th Amendment says:

Amendment X - Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Let's see what Thomas Jefferson the author of the Declaration of Independence and signer of the Constitution of the USA says:

"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:320

"We are a people capable of self-government, and worthy of it." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac Weaver, Jr., 1807. ME 11:220

"[The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1813. ME 19:197

In his first Inaugural Address he says:

Still one thing more, fellow-citizens--a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

Thomas Paine, who worked with Thomas Jefferson on the DOI, even goes further:

"Government even in its best state is a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one..."

How about when James Madison specifically states congressional power is limited:

"[Congressional jurisdiction of power] is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any." - James Madison, Federalist 14

If congressional power isn't limited by the constitution then how is it limited? OR when he says:

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined . . . to be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce."

Or:

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." - James Madison, 1792

Regarding "general welfare" here's a webpage with more quotes from Founding Fathers, Is Welfare Unconstitutional?

Yeap I guess these people were real stupid and imbibed in "Libertarin Kool-Aid.

Falcon

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[killjoe]

"No, actually you decribed a nightmare for most business people. "

Really? Then why don't you provide a link to web site where the chamber of commerce is FOR higher wages and FOR environmental regulation. Really don't bother they are never for those things. Ever. They fight tooth and nail against every single safety and environment regulation and against every benefit and wage increase.

"Businesses must sell products to consumers; in order to do that, consumers must have money (and since the vast majority of consumers aren't wealthy by legacy or investment) and so must have jobs to provide that money."

You will find that most business are against the middle class. They are for having the masses be slaves to the few rich. That's why today businesses employ prison labor (in the US and in china) and why they chase the lowest wages possible all over the world. THey would rather pay a vietnamese girl 50 cents to work 13 hours.

"Healthy customers who have disposable income make happy companies, and these conditions are only generated by a somewhat resonable wage market."

That must happen in La La land. IT doesn't happen on earth where businesses always chase the lowest wages possible even if it means moving manufacturing to countries where people live in slavery and near slavery.

"Hey, I dislike Capitalism as much as the next guy (hey, wait...) but let's not be stupid about it."

By the same token let's not let those rose colored glasses distort what is actually happening all around us.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[ilyaaohell]

Are you the guy who defends Microsoft's monopoly in every Slashdot thread? You are, aren't you! I'm invoking Microsoft because this is, after all, Slashdot.

Question: What's the difference between Microsoft's monopoly and the way it deals with it's competitors, and the government's monopoly and the way it deals with it's competitors?

Answer: NONE

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[Bert64]

The government should benefit it's taxpayers as much as possible, and not waste their money on expensive items when cheaper (or free) ones will do the same..
Governments should support local businesses and local labour as much as possible, afterall some of the wages they pay them will come back as tax anyway, if they pay money to a business from far away they won't get any of it back.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[fantom2000]

Excuse me? The Airlines have functioned fine? Absolutely laughable. How many companies have declared bankruptcy, or arranged deals with the government to bail them out of monsterous debt? True it's not "run" by the federal government, but when they start paying the check like that, I'm sure they get a few things done their way. The airline industry is a poor choice for an example. Lax security for years, and now long waits at the airport because they are unprepared, unwilling, and unable to transition to this new model efficiently. People NEED to fly in this day and age. If the airlines don't listen to cusotmers, there really isn't much else to turn to. Tell me, what is fine about a company that doesnt NEED to listen to it's customers? Sounds like cable and telephone providers... and we all know how good they are.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[roostahman]

There is no law, there is a draft recommendation.

You spoke about XML...that is a standard, is it not? On second thought, never mind. You don't see a problem with MS 'licensing' the XML format for Office 12, so I suspect you will double-talk your way around that being a standard MS shouldn't change to their own benefit (as they are wont to do).

As far as the Commonwealth's requirements go, let me make it as plain as I can: If you have to take out a license on something (free or not), that thing is not open. The terms of the license is immaterial. Therefore, if microsoft requires a license AT ALL, they are not meeting the requirements the Commonwealth has laid out. Simple, no?

Given recent events, it appears the Commonwealth will not be using MS Office after 2007.

Re:As a Massachusetts Resident

[roostahman]

Oh, and FYI, OpenDocument IS a standard. http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis_news_05_23_05 .php

Whilst I applaud this move ...

[hattig]

Maybe if the documents were better designed structurally, things like "Export to text" and "Export to HTML" would be enough.

Of course, HTML Export is not exactly Word's crowning achievement ...

Re:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[hcdejong]

For many documents, some formatting is essential to make the document readable, so .txt wouldn't do.

HTML is a bit better, but still only usable as an output format for online documents (HTML has no concept of pagination, for example).

With OO, you've got a format that can be used not only as the final output, but as the source format of your document. This simplifies exchanging documents during production.

Re:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those viewers work on MacOS X, Linux, *BSD, Syllable, AmigaOS, OS/2 & every other OS someone might be running, right?

Microsoft can garuantee that in 20 years time they will make available software that can still read documents produced with Microsoft Office today, right?

What do you mean "They're only available for Microsoft Windows."? What use is that? What about the .mi tax payers who don't use Windows? Your answer is "Make them pay even more money to view the documents" is it?

Open document formats are the only fair way to do it. It should have happened over a decade ago, and we certainly should not be perpetuating the problem.

Re:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[Nutshell_TA]

but not surprising... from the downloading page: "Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000 Service Pack 4; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP" so, only citizens using windows will be able to view their city's documents?

Re:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[JohnFluxx]

Not true, CSS has pagination rules.

Re:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[Ihlosi]

How about the fact that there are free viewers available for any Microsoft format?

... which happen to run only under those OSes that MS wants them to, and can only be ported to any future platform by MS.

No thanks.

These viewers are neither free (beer, since you need a MS OS to actually run them), nor free (speech).

Re:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[Eccles]

Others have commented on other platforms not being supported; I just helped someone using Windows 98 last weekend and they also don't get a viewer from Microsoft. Heck, MS even removed the Word97 viewer that would have worked for them.

Re:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[smitty42]

no, i think that the OASIS-Format will become a very good alternative to the doc-Format _and_html etc as well. OASIS is great, and i hope that even Microsoft will juse it in the future. so let's see what will happen - not every change s bad :-) cu! Smitty

Re:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[mcphail]

wine wdviewer.exe
Error! Newer windows version needed

Re:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[lucas_picador]

things like "Export to text" and "Export to HTML" would be enough.

No, they wouldn't. Thousands of documents are sitting around in formats that can't be read by anything running on an OS anyone currently uses. This may some day be Word's fate. Unless someone goes to the trouble to "convert to text" today (and I can guarantee you they won't), these documents will some day be the equivalent of boxes of punch-cards.

Re:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[edwdig]

Yeah, but IE and Gecko don't support most of them, so they're pretty useless. I found they both will let you force a page break at a certain point, but will ignore any other attempts at controlling where the page breaks go.

Re:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[mysticgoat]

RTFM-- this isn't about free beer, it is about free speech. And doing what is needed to protect free speech of future citizens.

About 25 years ago branches of many governments adopted policies for using only acid free paper on official publications. The intent was to assure that citizens of the future would have useable archives when they needed to research old history. These policies were adopted quietly because the advantages were self-evident.

Massachusetts is now extending that basic concept to assure that electronic archives will be useable 50 years or more into the future, long after today's Microsoft's proprietary formats have no more relevance than 6502 Assembly code.

Re:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[hattig]

Good points. A truly open document format that is documented will have a much longer lifespan than a proprietary format that is constantly altered and modified (partially to hinder attempts at compatability).

Of course, I would categorise .txt, .rtf and .html as open formats, but not ideal matches for documents per se, as they lack essential stuff.

I suppose I'd be more likely to read a document that is nicely laid out than something a bit plain as well. So looks are important too.

Re:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[hcdejong]

Does it allow you to specify headers and footers? Page margins? Page numbers?

I love it, but...

[AltGrendel]

...how long will it last? Any bets that Microsoft will be there, trying to get this reversed?

Re:I love it, but...

[ScouseMouse]

Yes however, I personally suspect there will be a ODF plugin for MS office before the end of the week available to "Selected OEMs"

Re:I love it, but...

[deviantphil]

I am sure they are sending one of there most attractive sales reps. to the policy makers as we speak.

Re:I love it, but...

[canuck57]

...how long will it last? Any bets that Microsoft will be there, trying to get this reversed?

Insightful. Microsoft will dip into it's billion dollar war chest and with the MS-FUD team put pressure to reverse this.

My guess is there not that serious, why wait until 2007? Why not Jan 1st 2006? Why not every new PC purchased from this day forward?

The politicians know Microsoft will give them a 70% discount to stay borg and then they can spend that money to buy votes. Taiwan got even a better deal than anyone else in the US does. In fact, next time your overseas in the orient look at Genuine Microsoft prices. We get ripped off.

Re:I love it, but...

[jc42]

Any bets that Microsoft will be there, trying to get this reversed?

Well, of course. They're presumably already hard at work.

But in the long run, this is a rather good idea for the state. Remember that state agencies send out a lot of things that are legal notices, and there are consequences to ignoring them.

Consider a scenario:

1. Citizen C gets notice N from state agency A. It's in a format that doesn't display properly on C's computer, or displays in a garbled form that is easily misunderstood.

2. C doesn't do what N requires, because C can't read N.

3. A files suit against C for noncompliance.

4. C demonstrates in court that he/she couldn't read N because it was in a proprietary format not readable on C's computer.

5. The court decides for C and orders A to pay court costs.

6. On appeal, the court orders A to also provide C with a Windows machine so that C can read future notices.

Microsoft is now in a good situation to sell a lot of machines in the state. However, every citizen is now filing for a state reimbursement on the price fo their computer. The courts uphold these reimbursements on the grounds that the machines are necessary to read state notices.

Wonderful for Microsoft. Not wonderful for the state.

Anyone with a grain of sense would want a law to the effect that state notices be readable by the recipient without purchasing any specialized equipment. Sensible government admins would already require this of their employees. This doesn't prevent computerized documents; it only requires that documents be in formats that all computers can display properly. Plain text, HTML and PDF all work fine.

Re:I love it, but...

[_xeno_]

It's worth pointing out that Massachusetts was one of the last states (the last?) to drop the anti-trust suit against Microsoft. There's very little love lost between Massachusetts and Microsoft at this point.

I'm sure Microsoft will try and pull something, but I'm not as sure that the state will actually fall for it. They've gone against Microsoft before, and I expect they're willing to do it again.

Besides, they've already transitioned the Massachusetts government website from IIS to Netscape Enterprise Server. Doesn't really have anything to do with this, really, but some part of the state government's done it before. (The site appears to be written using Java servlet and Java Server Page technology, which is arguably an open standard and has an open source solution available, so there's that, too.)

Re:I love it, but...

[Ibix]

My guess is there not that serious, why wait until 2007? Why not Jan 1st 2006? Why not every new PC purchased from this day forward?

Page 18 of the PDF:

Agencies will need to develop phased migration plans with a target implementation date of January 1, 2007. In the interim, agencies may continue to use the office applications they have currently licensed. Any acquisition of new office applications must support the OpenDocument standard.[Emphasis added]

...so Jan 2007 is when existing apps must be replaced. Newly bought stuff will have to be compliant from now (more or less), as you suggest. A year and a quarter for the complete migration of a state government bureacracy isn't unreasonable...

I

Re:I love it, but...

[iabervon]

I'd actually expect them to offer a version of Office that saves your files in OpenDocument format and loses any formatting that they didn't determine how to save. Lots of FUD about how difficult to use anything other than Office is, and claims about how good their OpenDocument support is, and most agencies will probably go for sticking with Office (which will require an upgrade of Office and probably Windows as well). Microsoft probably won't be too much against anything that forces a lot of people to quit using the versions of things they're currently using, since the biggest drag on their sales is people satisfied with their current Microsoft software.

Re:I love it, but...

[Jason Earl]

That would actually be counterproductive for Microsoft. Let's imagine for a moment that you are a private company that does a great deal of business with Massachusetts and you have to send documents to Massachusetts government employees using Oasis OpenDoc formats. So you fire up MS Word (your company standard) and you create an important document that you are sending to your important government contact. At the last moment you remember that it needs to be in OpenDoc format and so you choose "Save As" before sending the document. Your government contact opens the file, it looks like crap, and so he gives the contract to some other company. Your boss finds out why you lost the contract and you get fired.

If Microsoft decides to create filters so that it can read and write Oasis formats then those filters better be at least as good as what's available for free in OO.org. Otherwise people will be forced to use OO.org and it will be Microsoft that is on the wrong side of the format wars.

Re:I love it, but...

[iabervon]

If the MA government generally switches to OO, sure. But if they can be convinced that Word is the only word processor worth using, and that their legislature forces them to have ugly documents, then the government contact in your story won't be surprised by a getting a crappy document from a Word user, because even documents produced by other software look bad on Word.

Now, if the MA government switches to non-Microsoft software in addition to non-Microsoft formats, and gets to use software that handles those formats well, then Microsoft wants to have good support, but Microsoft would probably first rely on package deals, inertia, and familiarity to make the switch unlikely.

In the grand tradition...

[Altima(BoB)]

...Hopefully they did it all while wearing festive penguin suits, or for the politically correct Bostonians, Spheniscidae American suits.

Format Specifications (Reference)

[LiquidCoooled]

PDF

and

Open Office XML

Strangely, both say you need Adobe reader to read them ;)

Re:Format Specifications (Reference)

[B2382F29]

There is NOTHING on the website or in the document which says you need Adobe reader. (The Open Office XML). How did you get your information?

So, which will MS Office support?

[TheRaven64]

Currently, Microsoft office can't read or write either of these formats[1]. So which is Microsoft going to add? They could relatively easily add PDF output as an export-only option, similar to the OpenOffice implementation, and treat it like printing. This would potentially have the effect of reducing the number of people using .doc as an interchange format, reducing lock in. The other alternative, supporting OpenOffice formats seems much less likely - if MS Office could read and write these formats it would be a lot easier for people to migrate away from it.

[1] Yes, I know it can with third party products, some of which are Free.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[roberto0]

Actually, MS Office (at least the version I'm running--Office X on Apple)--already does support printing to pdf documents.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[ThaFooz]

It doesn't matter, MS won't have to add anything. The article says every state document must be in PDF or using Open Office formats' starting in 2007, it does NOT say state documents cannont be in .doc form. More than likely, this just means that public information will be available in multiple formats, one of which must be free.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Rude Turnip]

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.

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:So, which will MS Office support?

[hanshotfirst]

That would likely kill sales of Acrobat (the full program), wouldn't it?

I don't think Adobe would take that lying down.

Having never used Acrobat to create PDF's, what DOES it add that "print to PDF" tools do not?

Discuss.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Quarters]

What do you mean "either of these formats"? The mandate is for PDF or for open formats, not specifically the OpenOffice format.

There are plenty of choices inside of Microsoft Office that fit the bill: TXT, RTF, HTML, or even install PDF creator from Sourceforge.net and print to PDF files.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[TheRaven64]

Print to PDF is a pretty horrible way of creating PDFs. It strips out anything that can't be displayed on a printer, and often loses a lot more. For example, text is often printed as graphics, so rather than having a copy of the font embedded and pointers to each character, you have a series of bezier curves for each character, making the whole thing bigger. You lose all hyperlink information - no clicking on links in a page of contents and certainly no copy of the table of contents in the bookmarks meta-data section of the PDF.

I haven't used Acrobat either - I usually generate PDFs from LaTeX using pdflatex. I get much smaller PDFs than printing to PDF creates, and using the hyperref package, I get ecternal hyperlinks wherever I create them, internal hyperlinks from the table of contents/figures and index, and a copy of the table of contents in the bookmarks section for quick navigation.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[doublem]

MS HAD to offer that in Apple for the MAC. It's an OS level feature on the MAC, and refusing to support i would have pissed a lot of people off.

You can emulate this on the PC by installing PDFCreator or Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional. The PDF creator is added as a printer in Windows.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[doublem]

They will support the format just enough that they can tick the box on the list of features, but not enough that it will be reliably compatible with any other implementation

What do you think their XML format is all about?

The data is still an obfuscated binary, it's just crammed into pseudo XML to bloat the file a bit more.

They get to check off "XML" support, and yet it's completely useless unless you're using Microsoft development tools for anything outside of Office itself.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Gropo]

Print to PDF is a pretty horrible way of creating PDFs. It strips out anything that can't be displayed on a printer, and often loses a lot more. For example, text is often printed as graphics, so rather than having a copy of the font embedded and pointers to each character, you have a series of bezier curves for each character, making the whole thing bigger.

I'm not sure about other systems and implementations of the pdf output standard, but this is certainly not the way OS X "print to PDF" works by default, and naturally professional Adobe applications allow you to control text and editability output at a very finite level. For instance, just to confirm my belief, I "printed" this entire thread out of Safari, and was able to copy entire posts in Preview as text strings.

There's nothing to suggest that Microsoft couldn't write an output engine that offered similar functionality to Apple's.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[youta]

You know MS will not do it if they aren't going to convert customers... plus any competing 3rd party formats they read presently, you can't write to them in the same format.

So if having this is of real value, wouldn't it be logical that OpenOffice should create a small downloadable MS-Office plugin that will create the functionality? After all Adobe installs a plugin to produce PDF's from MS Office...

I just think a lot of people focus on MS not supporting a rival formats when they should be asking why OpenOffice doesn't make it their own responsibility. It would help their cause immensely.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[DrXym]

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.

I think much more likely is that eventuallythey might support .odt (etc.) as an import / export format but still default to their own format. They could easily pull a few tricks to make sure that .odt is inferior to their own while they were at it, such as not shipping it in the bundled / home editions of MS Office, or by only supporting certain features, or by generating broken content or content infested with their own proprietary markup.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[HairyNips(*)(*)]

Yes it does. The vesion of Office I am using on Windows XP has this functionality.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[richlv]

yes, but you cannot save documents in opendocument format with msoffice. so which one is more dangerous to ms (assuming that their marketing army doesn't overrun this state) - more people using oo.org or adding opendocument format to mso ?

supposedly it is od support, but if you make that support crappy...

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[bentcd]

Actually, the box they are trying to check off is "open format". MS is working overtime to convince the world that any format that is based on XML is an open format. Of course, that makes about as much sense as claiming that any binary format that uses ASN.1 is open also, something which is clearly not the case. In the future, expect to see "open" formats from MS - look elsewhere for formats that actually _are_ open.
Reminds me a bit of a product I must have seen in a sci fi movie once: "Real" "Butter" (TM) - which is clearly neither real nor actual butter :-)

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Total_Wimp]

I think Microsoft is realising that locking up Office document formats isn't going to work for much longer...

Hasn't stopped them from keeping Windows Media formats, the Xbox, and Instant Messaging protocols locked up.

Microsoft doesn't mind a fight if they think they think lock-up will make them money and they believe they have a shot at winning.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[hritcu]

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 you've got the facts right. First, OASIS standardized a variant of the XML format used internally by OpenOffice (and KOffice now), not the other way around. Second, Microsoft didn't want to get involved in the standardization of OpenDocument, and they are not a sponsor of the OpenDocument TC.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Eil]

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

If I know Microsoft, they'll probably cave to government demands by releasing an Office suite with support for an open document format. BUT, it will only be just enough to convince the government not to dump Microsoft Office. They actually could do this but still not come even close to our definition of "open."

Microsoft releases a Government Edition of the next Office suite. This Government Edition is capable of both reading and writing some "open" format (which can't be selected as the default), while all the other editions would be capable of only reading this format. They could even release free (closed-source) document readers for all version of Windows and Mac and provide an open-source utility that converts documents in the "open" format to PDF. But ultimately, the format would be poorly designed, inefficient, and lacking in features. Microsoft's implementation doubly so.

The "open" format specification itself would be posted in some obscure corner of the MSDN site and would occasionally disappear entirely. Because the format is technically "open," OSS developers could hack support for it into OpenOffice and even figure out ways to fix parts of it. But, Microsoft's implementation will always be broken so whatever you fix will only wind up breaking compatibility with MS Office.

Mark my words. Mark my words...

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[richlv]

it might be interesting to read what gary edwards (a member of oasis opendocument commitee) thinks about microsoft xml and opendocument.
http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/000743.htm l

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[ak3ldama]

The "Adobe PDF Port" is a local port option when creating a printer in Windows XP. So yea, Windows Office does indeed offer printing capabilities to PDF.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[lowe0]

Hmm? Office 2003's XML is not some massive encoded binary dumped inside a single tag, like some have feared. It's fairly parseable, and the schemas are available from MS.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Rude Turnip]

We're talking about the OS X version...same file format, but completely different binaries with different features.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Malc]

NO NO NO. Word does not need to support PDF. Either buy some proprietary software from Adobe, or use the free PDFCreator. Either will give Word or any other Windows app that prints PDF support.

This is /. - whatever happened to the UNIX philosophy of small specialised modules?

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Rude Turnip]

I just tried this out with XP Pro...there definitely is not an Adobe PDF Port in a standard install of Windows XP Pro. The only "special ports" I have are local, standard TCP/IP, Microsoft Document Imaging Writer Monitor and eCopy Desktop Port. The next to last is part of Office and only lets me save images in a proprietary MS format (MDI) or TIFF. The last item mentioned is the prepress software we use at work to author PDFs.

If you have an option for Adobe PDF Port, then it is an Adobe product that was separately purchased.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Doctor Faustus]

You get that option when you install Acrobat (not the reader).

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[ak3ldama]

In Add Printer Wizard:
Local printer. Next.
Create a new port. Adobe PDF Port.

You are saying you don't have that?

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[truthsearch]

The schemas must be licensed from MS. In a way they're proprietary because they're not open for everyone's free (as in speech) use.

Ability to parse and permission to parse are two different things.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[belarm314]

from the Financial Times article:

However, the new formats, due to be used in the next version of Office, which is expected to come out late next year, would still include some proprietary elements, and are specifically excluded from the Massachusetts proposal.

that could be interpreted as disallowing DOC altogether...in any case, it would make much more sense to use OO.o and simply create DOC versions of the documents from it. Several people in my department use OO.o exclusively, and have never had any complaints from office users about their word documents.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[wpmegee]

I agree with the parent poster, they're philosophy has always been embrace, extend, and extinguish. They already nearly destroyed Java this way, why not XML? As long as it interoperates with other versions of Office/XP/Vista, why should they give a damn?

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Jason Earl]

The bit that you are missing is that this is inevitably going to put either StarOffice or OpenOffice.org on MA government desktops. In fact, it is very likely that the new Oasis document formats are going to become the lingua franca of MA government work. The real blow to Microsoft will be that people wanting to do business with MA government employees are going to either A) send documents in PDF form that can't be editted, or B) download OpenOffice.org. All of us have dealt with government employees at one time or another, and one thing is as certain as the sunrise. If the government employees that you have to deal with are using OO.org as their office suite then you'd be a fool to send them documents in any other format. Sure, the government workers might have a copy of MS Office lying around somewhere, but it's far more likely that they will simply try and open the document using OO.org's MS Office document filters, and if this makes your document look like someone hit it with a Mack truck then that's not their problem.

This puts the whole document compatibility shoe on the other foot. The state of Massachusetts is big enough that it can essentially force people to adopt its standards. Once the Oasis document formats (and OO.org) become ubiquitous then the ability to read MS Office document formats becomes a lot less critical.

The fact of the matter is that no one really wants to pay for MS Office. If OO.org gains any sort of critical mass then it's going to be that much harder for Microsoft to sell upgrades of MS Office.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[lowe0]

No argument about having to license the (patented?) schemas.

However, the grandparent specifically said that the format is still obfuscated binary. It's not. The only binary contents are Base64-encoded embedded items such as images.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Jason Earl]

Those sorts of tricks have worked fine for Microsoft in the past because the de-facto standard was Microsoft's Office formats. However, now the target has shifted. If you want to communicate with Massachusetts government employees then you will have to assume that they are using OO.org. If documents created in MS Office don't look at least as good when exported to the Oasis formats as they would if they were created in OO.org then people that have to deal with the Massachusetts government are likely to simply use OO.org.

You'd be a fool to expect government employees to go out of their way to use your document formats when the obvious solution is for you to download a free program. If Microsoft's import and export of Oasis document formats isn't flawless then a lot of folks in Massachusetts are going to be forced to use OO.org.

This is a big deal to Microsoft because lots of people in Massachusetts deal with the government, and it is very likely that the Oasis document formats will become ubiquitous. If that becomes the case then Microsoft's ace in the hole, Microsoft Office document compatibility, flies right out the window. All of a sudden Microsoft will have the office suite with compatibility problems.

When push comes to shove most people use MS Office not because they need its added functionality, but rather because they want to be able to share documents with other people. If Oasis document formats become popular then Microsoft is likely to have a lot of trouble selling people new versions of MS Office.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Jason Earl]

So you believe that Microsoft will compete with a fully functional OO.org that is available for Free, and comes with source code, by crippling MS Office.

Somehow I doubt it.

This is especially the case since Microsoft's new XML format was specifically denied "open" status because it isn't a truly open standard. You'll notice that Microsoft's new XML format didn't make the approved list (PDF and XHTML did). Massachusetts has basically told Microsoft that it is big enough to force everyone that deals with the Massachusetts state government to use a truly open document format. Microsoft can either play ball, or they can sell their office suite to someone else.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[LetterRip]

They could support both extremely badly, thereby complying with the letter of the law, while eliminating the possibility of people using them.

LetterRip

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Bert64]

Well, the word export to html function creates very broken html that doesn't follow the standards... TEXT (yes it's spelt with an E) is just that, purely text, and i`m not so sure about rtf but i do believe it's a rather limited format, somewhere between text and html in terms of capabilities..

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Bert64]

Printing to pdf can be done natively on any unix, print to a file (which will create a postscript file) and then convert to pdf using pstopdf..
The problem here, is that things like hyperlinks get lost, since the postscript format has no support for such things (afterall, its a printing format.. you cant put hyperlinks on paper)..
If you try the latest openoffice.org 2.0 beta, you can create a "tagged pdf" which will keep any hyperlinks that you had in your original document, this means that your table of contents can be clickable and links to websites can be clicked on in your pdf reader, and will open up an appropriate web browser.. very usefull

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Bert64]

Depends how you do it..
The unix (and by extension macosx) way of printing creates postscript as an intermediate output, which has support for most of the graphical features of pdf (embedded fonts for instance) whereas i believe windows prints very differently...
postscript can embed adobe type 1 fonts (commonly used by unix systems) whereas pdf can embed truetype fonts aswell (as used on windows) so it's likely that when trying to print a document using truetype fonts the text will be converted to bezier curves as you describe.. truetype is designed for screen-fonts while the adobe fonts are designed to be printed.
But admittedly, printing to pdf is a generally bad idea, and should only be done as a last resort when using software with no native export to pdf option...
The pdf export function in openoffice 2.0 actually works really well however, and creates hyperlinks and tables of contents correctly..

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[killjoe]

I remember a while back all the MS shills and astro turfers were bitching about how MS will never support OASIS because it sucked as a standard. I would not bet on MS supporting any standard anytime soon.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[killjoe]

I tried to open up the sample PPT files provided by MS office in open office. I could not because of DRM.

MS lies when they say they support open formats. XML is useless when the document refuses to be opened up by any softare except powerpoint.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[DrXym]

Even if Microsoft produced an absolutely perfect filter, who says they have to ship it with MS Word? They could for example stick it in their Professional / Enterprise products and not in their bundled editions. Or make it a download that people have to explicitly get. Then the simple fact is that the latest .doc still rules supreme.

But that even assumes their support was perfect. OASIS is horrific specification running to something like 700 pages. I'm sure there is plenty of scope for doing things differently, exploiting bugs in OO, extending parts or any other trickery that they felt like.

Re:So, which will MS Office support?

[Jason Earl]

Any tricks that Microsoft plays with the Oasis document format are only going to rebound against loyal MS Office users. The only reason for Microsoft to include support for the format at all is so that they have some chance of keeping Massachusetts government workers (and those that have to communicate with them) from jumping ship en masse. Microsoft can try and change this decision, but if the Oasis document formats become the playing field then Microsoft had better play nice. After all, the last thing that you want when you send that important document to a government employee is for the document to crash their office suite (or look bad). If Microsoft Office is difficult to use in an environment that has standardized on the Oasis formats then Microsoft Office will get the boot.

Microsoft has been able to get away with tricks for years because they controlled the de-facto document format. In fact, Microsoft uses inconsistencies in the way documents are formatted as one of the primary ways to get people to upgrade to newer versions. Among Massachusetts government workers that's no longer going to be the case. The standard is almost certainly going to be OO.org. Officially the standard will be anything that can read/write the Oasis document formats, but you can bet that any application that doesn't play well with OO.org and StarOffice won't be welcomed, even if it does supposedly adhere to the standard.

Massachusetts can do that because they are big enough to force standards down everyone else's throats. If enough other organizations follow this lead then Microsoft is going to have a very very hard time getting people to buy new copies of MS Office.

Re:PDF?

[MBtronics]

Why? Everybody can view a PDF-file, only those who pay for MS-office can read their files (if you have the correct version)!

Re:PDF?

[rob_squared]

At least the file format has been publicly released:
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/acrobat /sdk/index.html And you can use it reliably on more than just devices that can handle office formats.
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/Xpdf-4153 .shtml

Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[sfontain]

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. For all anybody knows, in 5 years, all of these formats could be dead as new formats emerge. And guess, what--When that happens, there will be conversion tools for the next mainstream formats, too.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[ozmanjusri]

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.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[Ihlosi]

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.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[Anonymous Coward]

An open format cannot die, as anybody can read the open standard and produce an implementation.

Also, using something like open office lowers the barrier to entry for those wishing to read the documents. If a user can use cheap hardware with free software then a larger proportion of the population can access the data.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[I confirm I'm not a]

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 is open and non-proprietary, and PDF is an open, published spec with many non-proprietary implementations. MS Office isn't open, and any implementations have been largely reverse-engineered.

...but, I suspect you're right. This is a nice step to take, but it won't make much difference in the real world - MS Office is a de facto standard, which we call *all* access (even if we choose not to run Windows). For my part I'd rather fire up AbiWord to open an MS Word document than have to endure yet another PDF.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[gkuz]

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.

So it should be no problem for you to read my EBCDIC-encoded data on 7-track 800-bpi tape reels?

Let's not assume so quickly that anything other than paper will be easily readable in 25 years.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[dchallender]

Given that openoffice is essentially zipped xml.... I doubt unzip utilities will vanish in 5 years. Once unzipped, the XML is human readable and its trivial to use a bit of XSL(T) to export it to teh format you like (again I doubt XSL(T) transformation technology will vanish in 5 years). That would be my preference over PDF which is far more effort to port to a human readable state using "standard" tools.
--
Regards Dave
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[digidave]

Medium and format are different things. Now that the medium is not a physical object like a tape or disk, most of that problem has been removed.

OOo and PDF formats are well-documented and at any time in the future it will be possible to write a program to read them. OOo is just zipped XML that can be read with a text editor and PDF is just a subset of postscript.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[sfontain]

...but, I suspect you're right. This is a nice step to take, but it won't make much difference in the real world - MS Office is a de facto standard, which we call *all* access (even if we choose not to run Windows). For my part I'd rather fire up AbiWord to open an MS Word document than have to endure yet another PDF.

Exactly my point. In fact, personally, I would rather fire up Word to endure MS Word docs, if it meant I didn't have to keep this bloated piece of crap that Acrobat (Reader) has become.

MS Word may not be everyone's ideal office suite software, but it is software that I actually use, as opposed to Adobe's reader software that I can't use to do anything.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[digidave]

"I'd rather fire up AbiWord to open an MS Word document than have to endure yet another PDF"

PDFs started being tolerable for me when I began using KPDF and xPDF instead of Adobe's horrible Acrobat Reader. Since KPDF loads quicker than any word processor, I prefer documents in PDF format. The only real problem with PDFs are that there is no decent way to edit them or convert them into a word processor format. That is the fatal flaw with PDFs.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[Jane_Dozey]

Im sure if you transferred the data off of those reels and posted them on the internet or another (modern) media GP could find something to read those EBCDIC-encoded files just fine. Heck, GP could even do the conversion here

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[Dan Ost]

And is it available for non-windows users?

Now you see the problem.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[szo]

and it run's on..? hmm... windows. Only.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[jeffvoigt]

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.

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 .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.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[Decaff]

Let's not assume so quickly that anything other than paper will be easily readable in 25 years.

One of the design considerations for XML (which is the format that Open Office uses) is that documents which are in this format should be human-readable, specifically to avoid the problem of future data loss.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[MrTaz65]

I hope you're not a doctor.

I don't like the idea of something with a "fatal flaw" that "started being tolerable".

Shouldn't a fatal flaw mean it isn't tolerable? Have our expectations gone down that much?

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[jc42]

... Microsoft Word Viewer. It's a free app put out by Microsoft for people to be able to view MS Word docs without having MS Word.

So where can I get a version that runs on my linux or OSX machine? That page just downloads a .exe file that only runs on Windows.

The whole point here is that government documents should be readable by citizens on whatever kind of computer they have. We shouldn't have to pay for a MS-Windows machine to read a government notice.

One thing that probably triggered this story is that here in Massachusetts, there has been a real push for putting much of the government online. We are now unsubtly encouraged to use the Net, via either email or the Web, by such things as cheaper license renewals if we do it electronically.

But the downside of this is a strong tendency to require that every citizen (or at least every household) pay for a MS-Windows machine in order to communicate with government agencies.

This is especially embarrassing in Massachusetts, which is of course one of the main centers of the computer industry. Why would our own state government require that we pay for machines that were designed and built somewhere else? Are they intentionally trying to undermine the local computer industry?

Not that there are many computer manufacturers here any more, but still ...

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[richlv]

oh. there have been so many talks about speeding up acroread, about faster version - 7th, about alternative pdf readers. just look up this same article, there are plenty of suggestions for those who dislike acroread. i am using kpdf, so probably my example will not fit you, but there are a lot of windows users who have shared tjeir solutions.

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[digidave]

Many people have fatal heart conditions that are tolerable with a pacemaker :)

Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future?

[jim_v2000]

"But the downside of this is a strong tendency to require that every citizen (or at least every household) pay for a MS-Windows machine in order to communicate with government agencies."

Or require you to pay for the internet connect you need to get to the governement site. Or pay for a non-MS-Windows machine. I don't know of very many free Linux boxes out there...

If the person doesn't have MS Word, and they're using Linux or Windows...OpenOffice still opens the .doc format. Plus there's always libraries too.

Why doesn't microsoft offer the option...

[ChrisF79]

I understand that Microsoft wants to keep the files that Office creates in a closed format. But, in order to prevent this sort of thing from happening, why not offer an open format as an option in the "Save As" dialog box? That way, users such as the Massachusetts government could be satisfied and still use Office, and everyone else could continue using the closed format. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I really think 99% of the users would still just click the save button as usual, because I doubt the average Office user is aware or even cares that they are not saving in an open format.

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

[LiquidCoooled]

Office does offer saving in many open formats, however these formats lose some of the formatting that word uses.

For instance, you can choose to use soimething like .txt for all your documents.
You can get the data out in a sharable manner, but it will look like shite to people at the other end ;)

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

[Prospero's Grue]

You mean like ASCII text? Or HTML, perhaps?

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

[Hakubi_Washu]

You point out the problem yourself: Normal users don't think about the format they save in.

The "Massachusetts government" is not one entity, but a lot of pretty normal users. Why should these be capable of thinking to save "right", when millions of exactly as normal users can't?
MS could add an option to set the preferred format, so that admins could take care of the problem beforehand, but that's the point where simply switching software becomes effective anyway, from an administration (not necessarily admin) point of view...

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

[Coryoth]

The "Massachusetts government" is not one entity, but a lot of pretty normal users. Why should these be capable of thinking to save "right", when millions of exactly as normal users can't?

Because they've been told that, in fact, formats do matter, and having been made aware of it they will start to care? People didn't used to think that formats didn't matter back when there were a variety of formats used widely. It's a matter of laziness and the fact that one set of formats has become so dominant. Once people start thinking about formats again (because, for instance, their boss has told them to) they may find that options other than what they normally use actually look rather attractive.

Jedidiah.

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

[ShieldW0lf]

How many web developers out there have been called upon to make their servers spit out Word and Excel documents? Did you just automate Office on the server despite being warned repeatedly to the contrary? Did you decouple it from the web server using COM+ and MSMQ like you're supposed to so the server doesn't crash when 3 people hit it at once? Was anyone actually fool enough to pay you to spend the time to try and write to Offices so-called XML format?

Please make Office work with OO.o XML Bill, the web is where it's at, and your ugly-ass document format is so shitty to work with on the server it makes me want to tear out my hair when they inevitably ask me to do so.

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

[BaudKarma]

I think the key phrase there is "if you knew". Most individuals don't use OO now because they're simply not aware of it. Businesses don't use it because they're not aware of it or because they don't understand how a piece of software can rival Office for power and ease of use, and cost nothing. They figure there's got to be some kind of catch in there somewhere.

MS making Office compatible with OO is not going to suddenly make OO pop up on everyones radar. Nor is it going to cause businesses to suddenly trust and embrace open source and free software.

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

[Reverend528]

MS could do what they always do and make a broken half-implementation of OO.o support. Then they can publicise that they're supporting open formats, when in reality they're trying to make them look bad.

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

[YrWrstNtmr]

I understand that Microsoft wants to keep the files that Office creates in a closed format. But, in order to prevent this sort of thing from happening, why not offer an open format as an option in the "Save As" dialog box?

Apparently, you haven't looked at the 'Save' function in Word, lately. Or ever.

doc - Word default. binary
htm - human readable, well documented. In Word2003, the "Save as Web Page" is right under the Save As menu selection. Of course, Words html implementation is less than stellar, but it IS readable.
doc - previous versions of Word
rtf - human readable, well documented
txt - plain ascii text
xml - bastardised xml, but human readable

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

[ChrisF79]

I apologize. I didn't realize I would have to spell this out. What we were talking about is switching to a good substitute for Office formats. So of those choices, which is a good substitute? My vote goes to none. I think people will want a file format that is going to keep their documents looking exactly the same way. If you've used the Word HTML, you'll see that your document is almost never similar as to how it would be if you just printed the .doc closed format. rtf, txt, and xml I don't have to mention because clearly those would not be acceptable substitutes.

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

[DataCannibal]

Anybody who stupid enough to spend hundreds of dollars on Office deserves to have their documents locked up in a proprietary format.

Peer pressure and the fear that "everybody else uses it" is enough to make people pay for Office, but no-one pays full-price for it, do they?

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

[BVis]

Disclaimer: I was at one time employed at a state agency. Not as a state worker, but as a contractor.

Because they've been told that, in fact, formats do matter, and having been made aware of it they will start to care?

State workers care about two things: jack and shit. Doubly so when you're talking about computers.

True story: at the agency I worked at, the "lifers" had union protection from being forced to be computer literate, and the state could not list computer literacy in any job postings. Theory was, that if they made computer literacy a condition of employment, they'd have sufficient justification to replace the older, more-highly-paid workers with people they didn't have to pay so much. That, or the lifers would have to actually *gasp* LEARN something. Can't have that.

It's a matter of laziness

NOW you're on track.

Once people start thinking

Again, state workers, thinking doesn't apply.

their boss has told them to

See above. If their boss tells them they have to do/learn something about their computer, the union gets involved.

And you thought YOU had difficult users.

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

[endoplasmicMessenger]

Massachusettes wants the OASIS format to be the default, so that you don't have to "Save As" to get the open format.

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

[ShieldW0lf]

Mmm... try passing an excel spreadsheet full of macros back and forth between OO.o Calc and MS Excel. Not to be dismissive of the work OO.o has done, but there is a lot of room for improvement where interoperability is concerned.

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

[Wile_E_Peyote]

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

I think you over stated that. You can already share documents between Word and OO; also many companies have processes and custom bits of code that only run on Office right now and they have a comfort level with the suite and Microsoft.

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

[eealex]

Even better, this will cause some people to switch to Linux if they are locked by MS Office (yes I know you can use wine to run MS Office).

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

[bushidocoder]

Actually, all indications are that Microsoft is embracing open document formats - just open formats they invented, not from OASIS. The Office 2003 formats are freely available on MSDN as, are the future formats for Office 12.

Honestly, I don't think Microsoft is too worried about people downloading OO for free and switching just because of the document format. Consider that a copy of Office sold is a copy of Office that Microsoft won't directly make money off of in the future.

Microsoft needs to make money three ways - If your organization uses Office, as your organization grows, you'll need new copies of Office. Small firms with high growth rates might find it advantageous to switch to OO for this reason, and that's why Microsoft is getting very aggressive with their Small Business liscensing costs. Larger firms with huge numbers of Office installations will find the cost of switching everyone significantly more than the cost of buying new liscense for growth, especially considering these organizations are often partners with preferred pricing plans.

Microsoft also makes money selling Office server, and I have to be honest, Office Server frickin' rocks. There's nothing like it in the OO world. If you don't need it, that's fine, but it carries substantial value to a large number of firms, and for many companies is a selling point for Windows and MS Office by itself.

Lastly, Microsoft makes money selling Office upgrades - this is the hard sell for them. They have to add enough value into future versions of their product to make it attractive to people who have already invested in a MS Office liscenses for their enterprise. The thing is, these groups aren't very likely to switch to OO. They already have an Office suite that works and is bought and paid for. Now, OO could present a problem to Microsoft in this area in several years as the quality of OO begins to offer significant value over their existing products, and then they might switch. You can see this right now in the companies that were running Office 98 beginning to consider OO seriously. That said, obviously Microsoft isn't going to make any more money off that crowd anyway.

The last problem Microsoft has is governments who DO care about open standards. For that reason, Microsoft has opened its formats. Only time will tell if that strategy will work for them.

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

[poot_rootbeer]

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

I can do that know, if I use OO.o's "Save As..." features.

Sure, the MS Office document formats don't work EXACTLY like natively-created ones, but that true even of natively-created ones. It works well enough for basic information exchange.

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

[eleknader]

How many web developers out there have been called upon to make their servers spit out Word and Excel documents? Did you just automate Office on the server despite being warned repeatedly to the contrary?

At my previous work we did this the ugly way: sended header application/msword and spitted the HTML out. Word opens and reads the HTML like any other document.

Eleknader

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

[ShieldW0lf]

Yeah, I do that too when I can, but it doesn't help much when you're dealing with Excel spreadsheets full of lookups and macros, nor when you need the bookmarks, text form fields, embedded objects etc in Word.

I solved the Word problem last time by making a COM+ component that listens on MSMQ, and when it recieves a message, it copies a template word doc to a temporary folder, opens it, does a search/replace for a series of keywords, saves to the network share, updates the database, and optionally emails the new file to whoever asked for its creation.

Ugly, but keeps the server from being brought to its knees by a dozen running instances of Word, and when there's a problem, the messages sit in the queue until you get it fixed rather than just being lost.

Nice thing about this is that when they want their documents changed around they can just replace the template with a new one and as long as the keywords are properly done and no new ones are necessary, I don't need to be involved.

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

[Jason Earl]

In 2007 those few lifers that do use computers will have computers that are set up to use the Oasis document formats by default. Heck, it will probably happen even sooner than that for most Massachusetts state employees. That means that if you are forced to deal with a state employee you'd better download a copy of OO.org, because the government employee receiving your file is looking for a reason to send it to /dev/null.

Nobody in their right mind tries to explain why they sent a non-standard document format to a government worker.

OO.org is likely to become very popular in Massachusetts.

Groklaw coverage

[stevey]

This was also covered on groklaw, yesterday.

Re:Groklaw coverage

[AtillaTheMagyar]

Of course, they could just use the RTF format which works with OOo, Word, and just about every other text editor on the market today.

I know how they feel

[bgfay]

For years I used WordPerfect and liked it a whole lot. However, I didn't like the price of it, the upgrades (I know, I didn't HAVE to upgrade), and the fact that the Linux version sucked while the Mac version was discontinued. So I switched to OpenOffice.

Only when 2.0 comes out will I have easy access to all those WP documents.

I use OpenOffice for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I think I have a good chance of being able to open my documents for a long time.

That said, I think that this is all a PR thing to get MS to lower their price. I don't believe that a government bureaucracy will make this step for real. Next thing you'll tell me that they've decided to run Linux.

There needs to be a new name for this sort of thing where groups say "I'm switching!" in order to get the real price from MS. Let's call it the Boy Who Cried Linux or BWCL for short.

Re:I know how they feel

[Jeff DeMaagd]

There needs to be a new name for this sort of thing where groups say "I'm switching!" in order to get the real price from MS. Let's call it the Boy Who Cried Linux or BWCL for short.

I wonder when Microsoft is going to quit caving. I don't think they can afford any big success stories, but so many cities and businesses are resorting to this to try to get a fair price for the product and support that I don't think any of them are truly prepared for such a transition.

Re:I know how they feel

[bgfay]

MS is a pretty smart group of business people. They have likely built in plenty of wiggle room to counteract any effects of having to lower the price to beat a Linux/OpenSource bid.

Re:I know how they feel

[SpaghettiPattern]

Let's call it the Boy Who Cried Linux or BWCL for short.
Wow, catchy!! ;)

Re:I know how they feel

[Shotgun]

That said, I think that this is all a PR thing to get MS to lower their price. I don't believe that a government bureaucracy will make this step for real. Next thing you'll tell me that they've decided to run Linux.

Maybe so, but consider the long term effects. Mass. has now brought attention to the issue. Microsoft, like mildew, doesn't like to much light shined on them.

This time it is open file formats. Next time it will be code transparencies (to check for backdoors). The time after that will be a demand not to be forced into an upgrade. And just wait till all the other municipalities see it working and jump on the bandwagon, too. MS stock begins to slip, making stock option bonuses less attractive, causing MS to lose some of their top talent and emptying the coffers they use to buy other's technology and maintain their monopoly. The MS technology starts to slip, takes longer to deliver, Linux/Max/BSD/etc begin to look more attractive.

Look at it as an exponentially slippery slope, or a feedback loop. Microsoft is basically a one horse show, and the age of that horse is starting to show.

Re:I know how they feel

[bluGill]

Do they dare? FreeBSD +KDE already does everything I need. Linux + GNOME/KDE + OpenOffice.org + WINE (if needed) is enough for 99% of the people out there. If Microsoft quits caving they will find that it isn't a bluff, and then they loose customers.

Now you might argue that Microsoft Windows is better. That might be true (depending on what you do), but is it worth the cost. For most people the differences are not significant, but they are used to Microsoft. Is sticking with what you know worth the cost? Every company and government should be counting the cost - if it is close you can threaten Microsoft, knowing that get a better deal.

Don't forget that this isn't all or nothing. You can switch some people but not others. Cutting your Microsoft Office fees in half can be big.

Re:I know how they feel

[snitmo]

There's nothing wrong with MA making this move to get a bargain deal from MS.

For one thing it would save tax money. But more importantly, as this move gets proven to work, more organizations will follow. MS will need to keep giving great deals to every one of them.

Eventually, it will drive down the price of Office so much that it doesn't make sense to keep the .doc format proprietary. They'll comply with the open standard, or they'll just drop Office product and move on. Either way, users win.

Re:I know how they feel

[Mad Marlin]

I am pretty sure that Microsoft Office will import WordPerfect documents, and WordStar documents too (which I actually have a lot of around somewhere). I think we will be able to open up Microsoft Word documents for decades to come, just because of the sheer number of them, even if Microsoft were to collapse tomorrow, just like we can still access our old WordPerfect documents from 10 years ago and WordStar documents from 20 years ago.

What is more the problem is other, less used formats. For example, I have a lot of documents for PC-Outline, a piece of outlining software that was bundled with WordStar 6.0. The problem is, as far as I can tell nobody even makes outlining software anymore, much less converters from 20-year-old programs for it. I am sure there are other examples like this, where specialized formats just disappear completely. Does anybody know what happened to PC-Outline anyway? And are there actually any outlining programs still out there?

Re:I know how they feel

[Bert64]

They can quite easily cave in everywhere, the development costs of their products have been recouped a thousand times over, they could sell windows and office for $5 and still make a profit.

Re:I know how they feel

[Bert64]

microsoft publisher - nothing opens the files from that as far as i can tell...
visio - nothing to open these files with either...
you can only open word files because the format is so common that people have spent man-years worth of time reverse engineering the format, if it came down to it.. could you pay someone to implement a conversion tool for one of these programs? how much would it cost you?
On the other hand, if the format is open, a conversion tool would be much easier to write.. xml can easily be reformatted with a valid XSLT stylesheet, there would be much less work involved and a much greater chance of someone else having already done the necessary work.

Re:I know how they feel

[killjoe]

I think it's wonderful. It saves taxpayers money, it hurts the MS botton line and profitability (a little). What's wrong with that? I wish every corporation, state, city, country in the world did the same thing. It would be such a happy day if MS reported a loss one quarter.

"Your fly is open" formats.

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.""

It's also a "boost" for PDF too. But let's not draw too much attention to that fact. Seriously "open formats" aren't the exclusive province of Open Source.

Re:"Your fly is open" formats.

[TheRaven64]

Open Office isn't exactly created by volunteer programmers either. It was written by paid programmers from Star Division. It was then bought by Sun and open sourced[1]. 75% of the contributors work full time for Sun, and are paid to work on Open Office. The majority of the rest work for Novell and are paid to work on Open Office.

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.

Re:"Your fly is open" formats.

[Stevyn]

Yeah, but the key difference is since it's open source if Sun stopped paying people to work on it, others could fork it and keep improving it.

It may not be a perfect system, but it's better than one entity controlling the future of it.

Re:"Your fly is open" formats.

[digidave]

"Of course, this didn't really happen, because we all know Sun are evil and out to destroy all open source software."

I know you're being sarcastic, but Sun deserves the flak it gets from the OSS community. Scott McNealy has spoken out against OSS on numerous occasions, which is weird for a company that supports OSS in several different ways.

Re:"Your fly is open" formats.

[maxwell demon]

Yeah, but the key difference is since it's open source if Sun stopped paying people to work on it, others could fork it and keep improving it.

But again, those others don't need to be volunteers, but can es well be professionals payed by another company to do so.

The fact that it is open source and therefore not strictly bound to one entity is completely othogonal to the question if it is volunteer efford. Volunteers can create closed source software (e.g. Freeware [not to confuse with Free Software] or shareware), and companies can produce open source software. Indeed, the same project can move back and forth between volunteer and company (though for cloed source projects it's quite unlikely to move from company to volunteer), and independently, a project can move from closed source to open source (but it can go back only in a very limited way, since generally the open source licenses cannot be revoked).

Re:"Your fly is open" formats.

[LnxAddct]

Don't forget that Red Hat did all the work on getting OO.o to run natively. All of the many java components they got compiling with GCJ, another project coded by Red Hat.I believe they also helped getting OO.o to use native interfaces, but your point is still valid, most work is done by paid programmers. The truth is that office suites aren't that interesting to work on, paying people is the best way sometimes.
Regards.
Steve

Ironic

[Golygydd Max]

The delicious irony of this is that the original Boston Tea Party was to protest against imported cheap tea and supported the right of American tea companies to charge higher prices. Now, which side would an 18th century Microsoft have been on?

Re:Ironic

[Red Flayer]

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.

Re:Ironic

[bigpat]

"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."

I'm guessing the American tea traders saw it different.

Whatever historical movement you are talking about , being Open Software or American Independence, there are many actors with their own motivations. You are correct to point out the overarching issues that emerged and were probably intended by quite a few people. But to dismiss minority or individual motivations is to ignore the richness of history. Certainly John Hancock was involved because he was made an outlaw by the Townshend acts.

There are many convergent reasons to switch from MS, to discount any of them is to dismiss any number of people's motivations. Sure one motivation or another may not have swayed the final decision making at a higher or aggregate level, but likely did persuade some of those supporters that made the final decision easier to make.

Some reasons for massachusetts may include:
- Massachusetts has a lot of universities and those students and faculty are embracing open source for cost and intelectual reasons
- Sun has a larger presence in Massachusetts than MS
- MS is a bully and people don't like to be told what to do.
- people don't like to be constrained by their tools
- proprietary and incompatible document formats among MS Office versions.
- OpenOffice has become a mature product with many good features and is free.
- Many people are stuck with older versions of MS Office or bootlegged versions that they can't afford to upgrade.

Re:Ironic

[Alsee]

Actually, [9/11] was held to incite the [United States] into open action against the [fundamentalist] minority in the [arab world]. In effect, the [fundamentalists] wanted to increase the divide between [United States] and the [arab world] so that the [arab world] who preferred amity and compromise would come to their side.

The 9/11 attack almost backfired. The United States receiving overwheling support for the invasion of Afghanistan, even widespread support among the arab community. Of course the United States then invaded Iraq as part of the "War on Terror". On that day the 9/11 failure was turned into a 9/11 success. The United States did exactly what bin Laden wanted it to do, the United States went on a rampage attacking and killing arabs who had ABSOLUTELY NO CONNECTION to the 9/11 attack. The United States provoked outrage and hatred and drove moderate peaceful arabs right into the arms of the terrorists. The United States swelled the ranks of the terrorists, exactly as bin Laden wanted. The United States player right into bin Laden's plans. The United States and gave bin Laden exactly what he wanted.

-

Re:Ironic

[Red Flayer]

Whatever the varied motivations of the individuals who participated in the BTP (of which there were few), it should be noted that the boycott of East India Tea company was largely successful even before the BTP.

The Sons of Liberty, the perpetrators of the BTP, were acting in an incendiary fashion, intending to incite a response.

I'm not disagreeing that the nature of the resistances to the Townshend Acts, the Stamp Act, and the Tea Act were varied. I do believe, however, that the motivations of the Sons of Liberty, particularly its leaders, were pretty uniform regarding the BTP.

AéîLsJ?

[loggia]

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AéîLsJ?

Re:AéîLsJ?

[Demerara]

from the comment:

Ê KáÓÝ "%abIpOEYÙ%zè-"z ða*×ÇØ~)Ä"E,...E,? eûK tj--(TM)¼x2YK©~z ÃbÉ3R ý^£è "ÅÃdíYMC9CMY ÑsO¼

Good point, well made.

But consider %oidjowKE%OokssoSeok @o~oOKEN#(SIojNS.

Re:AéîLsJ?

[Rude Turnip]

"zU?öKï- YYí "úq...ÈÁcò BK)0î Bäà¾À£Bh6Ïá"

Well of course! Any trained monkey would know this.

"Ðí!=ý P Ð+8Oä[&÷&"iH"tEFè (±e*½ [ Q õ #z%''+-À"%oeÄ@!¦z-'z6ýùL... cÊf"ó
Ü xØÏ7`AV¾ôAËÚ1f> @N"

I think the Slashdot community at large would tend to disagree with that statement.

"f/íl"!Í¥"(TM)Ü&$íÓ aÐ`Kl0~?Ù F HÛi^ÒXúîwÉný"

Oh come on, now you're just trolling!

Re:AéîLsJ?

[StopSayingYouSir]

Ah, good to see that the lameness filter is doing its job!

Re:AéîLsJ?

[morgan_greywolf]

PK ä'/á¥19 mimetypeapplication/vnd.sun.xml.writer


See the 'PK'? That stands for 'Phil Katz' as in PKWARE, Inc. As in ZIP.

Next time try unzipping it first.

Re:AéîLsJ?

[cyberfunk2]

Perhaps I'm just retarded.. but for me.. I copy-pasted it into a text file and then unzipped it only to get an error "missing end signature--probably not a zip file".

What're you all doing to "unzip" this?

Re:AéîLsJ?

[barzok]

What!? My mother was a saint!

Re:AéîLsJ?

[Bert64]

Why not try the unix "file" command on an openoffice document, it will reveal that the document is infact a zipfile.. Yes that's right, just because a filename doesnt end with ".zip" doesn't mean it's not a zipfile..
JAR (java archive) files are the same, a zipped up collection of files..
if your on windows, you can rename an openoffice document so it ends with .zip and unzip it using any tool such as winzip, then you can manually edit the xml inside, or view/edit the images (they will be stored as seperate files in whatever format they were originally, such as jpeg or png)
If your on unix, you can just unzip the file, unix programs don't care about such trivial user-controlled information like the filename.

Re:AéîLsJ?

[ProfFalcon]

I copy-pasted it into a text file and then unzipped it only to get an error "missing end signature--probably not a zip file".

Unfortunately, when the original poster pasted it into the web form, the non-printable characters weren't included. You'll have to get a .SXW file from another source (get OO.o, you'll like) and try the experiment.

Re:AéîLsJ?

[cyberfunk2]

So basically.. you cant decode his message at all? How could I possibly get the file from another source ?

Re:PDF?

[hattig]

In terms of platform support it is!

Windows: Adobe Acrobat
Apple: Preview, Adobe Acrobat,
X11 (Basically everything else): xpdf and myriad other applications
AmigaOS: apdf

The big news isn't that it is PDF however, but that it will be also be OpenOffice.org's file format (presumably the 1.2 OpenDocument format, to be specific). PDF will allow slower migrations for some departments that don't want to jump onto OO.o so soon. Nice that OO.o just happens to support PDF output too.

Re:PDFs?

[TheRaven64]

Well, the format specification is here. If you don't like their implementation then write your own. There are no license constraints on the format - you are free to do whatever you want with the specification.

Re:PDF?

[bigman2003]

Loading the PDF viewer is SLOW. I am constantly reminded that I need to 'update' something. In fact, the viewer on two of my computers is stuck in an update loop- where it thinks I need to update something that has already been updated.

Once a large PDF is loaded, it is still SLOW to scroll pages. And when I hit a page with some pictures, I need to wait a few seconds for them to load.

PDF files are more difficult for me to modify.

All around, PDF is a poor choice for me.

Anyone with IE on Windows can view .doc files without any additional software.

Personally, I hate either file, especially on the web. But I actually prefer .doc by a slight margin- because they take less time to load, they don't bog my computer down, and they are more easily edited.

Re:I don't buy it

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Nah, Microsoft Office was "dumped in the proverbial ocean" because Teddy was driving.

Taxachusetts

[feelyoda]

How funny that the site once used to protest a 3% tax is now a tax nightmare.

Maybe these people should be protesting the high income tax, or property tax, or sales tax, or high usage fees, or excessive regulation.

Microsoft is the least of their worries.

Re:Taxachusetts

[Maagma]

I don't believe it was the 3% that upset the people in Boston. If my memory of History class serves me right, it was the "Taxation without representation" part that got their panties in a bunch.

Re:Taxachusetts

[Enry]

Taxawhaaaa?

My taxes (property, income, and sales) are lower than when I lived in NY.

Re:Taxachusetts

[AmosOtis]

You know, after four consecutive Republican governors common misperceptions tend to change. In fact, just because a state generates a lot of tax revenue doesn't mean it has high taxes - after all, Massachusetts is a federal tax exporter (it's federal tax revenue ends up subsidizing other (red) states, yes, even after the Big Dig!). So-called "Taxachusetts" is right in the middle of state income taxes in the country - 5% - the smaller states tend to have much higher income taxes. Kentucky has 6% on everything above $8k, Idaho has 7% above $7K, even a "big" state like Georgia has a 7% rate - they can't generate as much revenue, because median incomes aren't nearly as high.

Re:Taxachusetts

[HangingChad]

How funny that the site once used to protest a 3% tax is now a tax nightmare.

What's even funnier is people parroting right wing propoganda. Observe the top ten states for taxing their residents as documented by CNN/Money:

1. Maine 13.00%
2. New York 12.00%
3. Hawaii 11.50%
4. Rhode Island 11.40%
5. Wisconsin 11.40%
6. Vermont 11.10%
7. Ohio 11.00%
8. Nebraska 10.90%
9. Utah 10.90%
10. Minnesota

And where does Massachusetts rank? Way down the list. Tied with the liberal sewer pits of Georgia and South Carolina:

30 Illinois 9.80%
31 Georgia 9.80%
32 Massachusetts 9.80%
33 South Carolina 9.70%
34 Virginia 9.70%

Source: http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/taxesbystat e2005/

But why let facts intrude on your right wing talking points?

Re:Taxachusetts

[derF024]

Maybe these people should be protesting the high income tax,
MA pays 5.3% income tax total, PA (where you live) pays 4% combined state and local. Not a huge difference

or sales tax

Sales tax is 5% in MA, 6% in PA.

or high usage fees, or excessive regulation.

Overall, MA and PA residents pay about the same in taxes (MA 9.8%, PA 9.7%.)

Compared to other near by states (New York and New England), only New Hampshire residents pay less in taxes.

If anyone should be protesting high taxes, it should be New York residents under Republican Governer George Pataki.

Re:Taxachusetts

[argoff]

That's a red herring. They charge less in sales because they charge more in other areas. When you rank states by ALL regulations and taxes, Massachusetts ranks in the worst 10 every time.

http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/entrep/2004 /econ_freedom/freedom.html

http://heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=15303

Notice how the liberal states have economic environments that are the most likely to screw poor people out of higer wages and opportunity. So it seems to me the sales tax rankings were selectively chosen to promote an dishonest liberal bias ... well, what else is old?

Re:Taxachusetts

[Tachikoma]

And where does Massachusetts rank? Way down the list. Tied with the liberal sewer pits of Georgia and South Carolina:

In your post you listed Illinois as 9.8, Georgia 9.8, Mass. 9.8 and SC at 9.7
So technically, by your own numbers Mass. is tied with Illinois and Georgia, yet you failed to insult Illinois. They are a state too, and deserve to be spit on by all other states too.

In the future, please always remember to insult Illinois.

Re:Taxachusetts

[at_slashdot]

I'm sure that's not the only tax that Massachusetts residents pay. (for example if you own a house and a car you pay tax for those).

(I'm not supporting any left or right wing ideas in this discussion, I am just wondering if that 9.8% and the 30th place say all the truth about taxes in MA)

Re:Taxachusetts

[shadow_slicer]

Uh...That listing was ranked by ALL taxes, no just sales.
If you look at the site it says "State/Local taxes as % of per capita income", which to me implies that they took all the taxes into account.

As for your links, they do nothing to prove your points. Both your links reference the "economic freedom" rankings created by Pacific Research. Unfortunately I could find no information to describe exactly how they calculated these rankings. In addition rankings are a poor measure to go by because they obscure the actual differences between adjacent ranks.

Given the two data sets, I find the Tax Foundation's data (from the CNN link) infinitely more meaningful than that of Pacific Research.

If you could provide some actual data on how "liberal states have economic environments that are the most likely to screw poor people out of higher wages and opportunity", I'd love to read about it. Especially since my experience seems the other way around...

But as for it being biased, I don't quite see where you're getting that from.

Re:Taxachusetts

[HairyNips(*)(*)]

Red Herring? Wow you take the cake.

First, let's start with you calling them "sales tax rankings". The CNN article clearly states "estimated the average taxpayer's total state and local tax burden for 2005 in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia".

Then, let's move on to what the discussion was about: taxes. Not taxes lumped together with regulations and preferred social policies (like the stance on public vs. private education) which is what constitutes the derived "Economic Freedom Index".

Dishonest, huh? Look at the pot calling the kettle black.

Go back to parroting those Talking Points. At least those are well-rehearsed lies.

Re:Taxachusetts

[zstlaw]

You might want to factor in that Massachussetts residents pay more in national taxes per service rendered by the government. Sofor every dollar of taxes paid we get 0.75 dollar worth of services. This is pretty common to "Blue states" as we do not have the support of the current administration.

Adding one third of national taxes to this score does infact make Massachussetts one of the worst tax places. But this is not due to their state policies, but due to Washington politics.

Here is a good page on all of MA taxes and how it compares nationally. Overall I agree that MA does a pretty good job.

(http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/35.ht ml)

Re:Taxachusetts

[HangingChad]

In the future, please always remember to insult Illinois.

My apology for the oversight, I hereby spit on Illinois.

And for spelling propaganda with an "o"...because I'm always thinking about it as poopooganda.

Re:Taxachusetts

[Darby]

My apology for the oversight, I hereby spit on Illinois.

Damn, dude. Keep that shit downstate. Leave Chicago out of it ;-)

Re:Taxachusetts

[feelyoda]

Taxes being high elsewhere doesn't mean they aren't high in MA. [note, I live there, not PA]

Revenue is also high because MA is rich.

Ideally, schools, firemen, law making & enforcement bodies could be funded with a single low property tax, which shouldn't be tax deductible on a federal level.

There are huge, unneeded program currently. I don't think I'm much of a nazi for saying that, but I forgot that this was slashdot.

Re:Taxachusetts

[Alsee]

In the future, please always remember to insult Illinois.

So, "You forgot Poland!" is now "You forgot Illinois!"?

-

Re:Taxachusetts

[jaycagey]

Those figures CNN cites came from the Tax Foundation. Check out their website (http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/460.htm l) and see the full graph for Massachusetts.

When you combine the State Tax burden (where Massachusetts ranks #32) with the Federal Tax burden (where MA ranks #2 !) you get the total tax burden. Result: Massachusetts has the 4th highest tax burden in the US.

I imagine the Federal Tax burden differs from state to state depending on the cost of living and the amount of money people need to make to maintain equivalent living standards. For example, someone making $50,000 in Salt Lake City would have to make $89,000 to maintain their lifestyle in Boston. The MA resident would have the same standard of living as the UT resident, but is in a higher federal tax bracket and has to shell out a lot more $$ to Uncle Sam.

Re:Taxachusetts

[Alsee]

This is pretty common to "Blue states" as we do not have the support of the current administration.

The fundamental fact is true, but the reasoning is not.

You'll find that Red state vs Blue state breaks down almost exactly by population density. Things like roads and bridges and other services are going to be much more expensive-per-capita in low population density areas. There is also the fact that low population states have wildly dissproportionate representation in the Senate. A half billion dollars in pork barrel to a low population state is huge in per-capita-dollars while a half billion in pork barrel to a high pop state is very small in per-capita dollars. Perhaps you read about the Alaskan transportation pork barrel project to build a 223 million dollar bridge for an island with a population of less than 50, about four and a half million dollars per person. Oh, and we also give enormous federal subsidies to farmers.

I hate Bush, but to be fair he doesn't rate blame on this particular point. Sucking massive tax dollars out of Blue states and pouring it into Red state subsidies is a standing fact from long before Bush. It does of course still make it comical when Red staters scream about self sufficency and blaming Blue for some sort of tax unfairness.

-

Re:Taxachusetts

[falconx7]

Sorry, you fail.

"In creating its rankings, the Tax Foundation measures as a percentage of per capita income what residents pay in income, property, sales and other personal taxes levied at the state and local levels. It also factors in the portion of business taxes passed along to state residents through higher prices, lower wages or lower profits."

Quite a bit of information that helps you understand how they came to their rankings right off the "Behind the rankings" link. It seems like a fairly credible report based on a lot of hard numbers. They cover everything in your list, and probably the more you didn't have time to list.

The "Economic Freedom Index" report seems like it would more appropiately be titled "Freedom Index". Plenty of its data is barely economic in nature. I'm not sure how "strictness of gun laws," ties into economic freedom. Sure, this index probably includes more overall numbers, but plenty of those numbers I don't care as much about.

"For example, data set 1 had 51 fiscal-sector variables. A state's fiscal-sector score for data set 1 was calculated by ranking each fiscal variable from 1 to 50 and then calculating an average ranking from these 51-variable rankings."

That seems like a horrible way to calculate statistics. The tax foundation gives a final per capita % value for the states, and THEN ranks the states. This report ranks them on a ton of categories, and then averages those ranks. All the proportional differences between each state get lost. I'm sure someone more versed in statistics might know the technical term for this, but it is a very flawed way of representing data.

Yes, Massachusetts probably does have regulation and taxes on more things than other states, but the overall tax burden per capita is lower.

Re:PDF?

[hattig]

OOo can read Word documents with a varying degree of success. It'll be interesting to see how 1.2's support has progressed.

Well thought through...

[Conor Turton]

So I guess they're not going to be using .doc etc extensions then? I wonder how many of their citizens actually have software that supports OOo extensions?

Oh but you can get it for free!!! Very good, asuming that a)The person wants to give up their paid for/bundled MS Office app that works as they want and has worldwide compatilibility or b) They have the know how to download a file, unzip the contents to a folder, find the setup executable and run it, or c) They're on dialup so it takes them 2 days to download an application to open a single document.

Re:Well thought through...

[Anita Coney]

"has worldwide compatilibility"

Since when does Microsoft give a rat's ass about compatibility? Each version of Office creates incompatibilities with the earlier versions. And because it's proprietary, Microsoft can close the door anytime it wants.

Under the open source model, the end user CAN view it and will ALWAYS be able to view it. Under the proprietary model, the user MIGHT be able to view it, but that is completely under Microsoft's discretion.

Re:Well thought through...

[gandell]

Oh but you can get it for free!!!

Interesting point. I dislike MS as much as the next guy, but they provide a free MSWORD reader as well.

So what's the difference?

Re:Well thought through...

[Maagma]

The difference being that the Microsoft Word reader only runs in WINDOWS, so someone using a different OS may not have access to it.

Re:Well thought through...

[vidarh]

You mean assuming a) the person wouldn't mind installing another office suite, and keep using MS Office when they want to, as installing OpenOffice doesn't magically make MS Office disappear, and b) they are able to follow simple instructions, or c) they figure $5-$15 to order a CD instead of downloading it is an acceptable tradeoff compared to the ridiculous amounts charged for MS Office.

Besides, the point of this is not for the software to be free, but to guarantee that the documents are available in a format that isn't under the control of a company that can do as it pleases with it.

Re:Well thought through...

[gandell]

True enough, but Open Office will also read docs. And beta2 of Oo reads them quite well.

Re:Well thought through...

[Maagma]

It's still not an open format though. If I want to create program to read some sort of desktop publishing document on a new OS then I would have to hack at the MS DOC format to get it to work on my new OS, whereas if I use an open format I have the specification right in front of me.

Re:Well thought through...

[gandell]

Very true as well.

I guess my only frustration is that the format people are embracing is pdf, which (unless you use a "export to pdf" feature) is a format that requires yet another expensive program to create.

And you can forget editing someone's pdf unless you have the appropriate software. Open standards are great, but does it have to be pdf?

Re:Well thought through...

[TheRaven64]

[pdf] is a format that requires yet another expensive program to create

Does it? Wow. I'd better go and delete all of those PDFs I've created using pdelatex (free and Free) and OmniGraffle (cheap and non-Free). Or edited using PDFPen (cheap, non-Free).

The PDF specification is available for free, unencumbered, download, so if you are unhappy with the tools you have for creating them then you an always write your own. Personally, I find the quality of PDFs created with pdflatex to be far better than anything I've seen created with the assistance of Adobe.

Re:Well thought through...

[gandell]

Does it? Wow. I'd better go and delete all of those PDFs I've created using pdelatex (free and Free) and OmniGraffle (cheap and non-Free). Or edited using PDFPen (cheap, non-Free).

There's no need to be snide about it. :-)

Obviously, I didn't know about these apps. Thanks very much for the info, as I may use these in the future.

Re:Well thought through...

[elgaard]

>Oh but you can get it for free!!!

Good point

>Very good, asuming that
>a)The person wants to give up their paid for/bundled MS Office app that works as they want and has worldwide compatilibility or b)

The person does not have to give anything up. The person can install both office apps. I do not mind receiving OASIS docs even if I prefer to write in LaTeX. (unless it a simple email that should be simple text).
The person can even open documents in OO, save as .doc and open and edit in MSWORD.

Besides I can use OO on linux and read and write both OASIS and doc formats. MSOffice users should just demand that MS makes Word read OASIS.

>They have the know how to download a file, unzip the contents to a folder, find the setup executable and run it,

I did install OO on a windows computer on a friends computer last year. I just clicked on the link. Then Winzip opened, I pressed "install" (or something like that") and OO was installed.

> or c) They're on dialup so it takes them 2 days to download an
> application to open a single document.

If they are on dialup they do not want to receive MSWord documents anyway. PDF would also be better.
But they can just get an OO CD: http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/

Re:Well thought through...

[js3]

This reminds me of when I took a unix course in college. The teacher put all the course materials in openoffice format, which was great.. except anyone wanting to read them had to download an 80meg file installer first. If you're on dialup at home well.. you're screwed. Eventually she had to change them to msword format.

Re:Well thought through...

[Feneric]

Quite a few local sites have already been switching over; this isn't something that just happened. See the TAHG project for just one example.

Re:Well thought through...

[tepples]

The difference being that the Microsoft Word reader only runs in WINDOWS, so someone using a different OS

...can just reinstall the Windows disc that came bundled with her PC.

Re:Well thought through...

[mpost4]

..can just reinstall the Windows disc that came bundled with her PC.

I tried to find the "Windows" disc that came with my PC, but I could only find one that said "OS X." Please tell me where I could find this Windows disc...

Re:Well thought through...

[tepples]

In the case of Macintosh computers, can't whatever word processor software was bundled with your machine import most Microsoft Word .doc files?

Re:Well thought through...

[mam_bach]

Wow! you obviously built your own PC.
I can say this with confidence, since many, perhaps most, large consumer electronix retailers don't supply you with any software discs at all. Your PC crashes, you just send the box back (and pay the extortionate maintainance costs)

On that note, do all purchasers who work for government departments have IT qualifications? If not, and they use Local Big Electronics Shop (tm), aren't they going to get MS Office packaged in by default - meaning it 'just creates hassle' to remove it (like you ever can cleanly) and replace with Open Office or similar.

It's not the cost of retraining the IT staff thats the problem, it's the cost of retraining Purchasing!

The point is...

[kukickface]

that when the space aliens land in 2008 they won't have to wait for Microsoft to release Office IG (inter-galactic). All they have to do is learn our primitive language and they can at least view the documents in XML. Seriously though, any citizen could read the docs to some extent because the open formats don't use a binary encoding. Sure they'd have to wade through a lot of formatting, but atleast they could do it in notepad.

Re:The point is...

[wraith0x29a]

Notepad can't read the current binary .doc files created by the current MS Word but if a new MS Word file is in XML format it could simply be a plain text file with a .doc (or whatever) extension.
(I'm guessing though as I have not seen the format specs).

Although notepad and wordpad are not available for all other Operating Systems some sort of editor that can handle plain text will almost certainly be available.

Re:PDFs?

[perdu]

Adobe's implementation..is slow as molassess

Even something slow as molassess can have quite an impact, see The Bostom Molassess Disaster!

Re:PDFs?

[davandhol]

What version have you been using? Adobe 7 is very quick (even the professional version) in opening up PDFs. Heck, I don't even notice sometimes that my PDF is already open, it's so fast. Even with 6, you could move the plugins to a different folder so that Adobe wouldn't load them all up at the same time.

Did I miss your point? I don't know how else you could mean what you said.

Re:PDFs?

[gowen]

You open-source guys should write an open-source reader for Windows (and Linux?).

There are several for Linux already, mostly based on Ghostscript (because PDF and PostScript share many characteristics). I can't imagine there isn't a free postscript viewer for Windows that doesn't handle PDFs.

Re:PDF?

[miscz]

Adobe Acrobat is not the only program that can open PDF. At least on Linux there is vast choice of PDF readers, all of them are much faster than Acrobat, I guess it applies to Windows too.

Re:PDF?

[hattig]

Quite possibly the government doesn't want you editing their stuff!

PDF is really quick for me however. Then again, I'm on a Mac. I don't have Office, and therefore Word would be an absolutely terrible choice for me.

Notice how PDF is a minor irritant for you but will still work, whereas .doc stops me viewing it?

offset costs

[jrm228]

I hope they do some actualized ROI analysis. It'd be really interesting to find out what percentage of the money they save in software licensing is offset by the paid-time of implementation, user training, and dealing with interoperability issues with other organizations/individuals/citizens.

I paid a lot less taxes in NH than I do in MA, and despite this development, I'm not optimistic that it will result in any significant changes from my perspective.

Re:offset costs

[vidarh]

You miss the point: It's not about saving money. It's about openness and guaranteeing access to information for all citizens.

Re:offset costs

[Musteval]

I paid a lot less taxes in NH than I do in MA, I live in New Hampshire, and believe me, it's worth it.

Re:offset costs

[Coryoth]

I hope they do some actualized ROI analysis. It'd be really interesting to find out what percentage of the money they save in software licensing is offset by the paid-time of implementation, user training, and dealing with interoperability issues with other organizations/individuals/citizens.

And they also better factor in future upgrade costs, costs of any retraining required after upgrades, future document conversion costs, potential virus costs, the potential costs should they ever switch to a different platform, the costs of ...

ROI/TCO calculations are mostly just so much garbage because it's merely a matter of choosing what "costs" and "benefits" you choose to see and include, and which you choose to ignore. It can give you a vague ballpark, but I wouldn't count on it to be all that useful. Besides, this is about something other than saving costs.

The gain is that they will have all their public documents in open formats which can thus be read by anyone. Given that all their work is being paid for by taxpayers, it only seems fair that the product of that labour should be readable by said taxpayers, regardless of whether they own MS Office or not. Instead of having to go through individual conversions for each and every request they can simply keep everything open to begin with. Are you suggesting that greater transparency in government is a bad thing?

Jedidiah.

Re:offset costs

[Shotgun]

I can guarantee that the ROI will be $0.

Governments are not businesses. They do not produce a product for sale. ROI (RETURN on investment) presupposes a return. Government has none that can be reliable measured in dollars.

If municipalities have to spend a few extra dollars today to insure that the data will be available two years form now, it will be money well spent (especially considering that they won't have to pay again to upgrade later).

I spent about 200hrs drawing my airplane in ProEngineer's "free" 3D CAD program, ProDesktop. Then they quit giving away the "free" version, and left me with a key that would keep the program working for 5-years. It was very kind of them, but I've lost the key and now I have several megs of very detailed and very useless CAD files.

At least now I can look forward to redrawing the design in an open format.

Re:PDF?

[pickup22]

Are there any non-Adobe PDF readers for Windows? I can't stand Acrobat.

Acrobat Reader? Ugh...

[old_skul]

It's bloatware, and they're setting aside one evil format and taking up another (PDF). I'm all for open software, but it's a mistake to use Adobe's format. At the company I work for, we use it, and it's a terrible piece of software in both its feature set and its software footprint on each system. Add to that the fact that if anyone wants to generate content, they have to either get Acrobat (a $400 license), use Adobe Distiller (a $5000 server product!) or some third-party tool to convert to PDF.

Personally, I'd wait for the MS Word XML format to become a reality.

Re:Acrobat Reader? Ugh...

[ssj_195]

PDF is a completely open format with a large number of implementations (many of which are open source); for example, xpdf runs on my YOPY. Also, OO.o can export to PDF natively, although the 1.x.y series does not include hyperlinks except via a 3rd party plug-in. LaTeX can create nice PDFs too, if you're feeling hardcore ;)

Re:Acrobat Reader? Ugh...

[Alioth]

PDF is an open, documented format, and anyone can implement it.

In particular:
- On Linux, ggv will open PDF documents quickly and very happily, and they didn't need to reverse engineer anything or infringe patents to do it. It's free.
- On Windows, there are viewers that aren't Acrobat.
- OpenOffice on all plaforms can output PDF. No $400 license needed to generate the PDF.
- Scripting tools: GhostScript can be used for the batch generation or batch printing of PDF files. GhostScript is free. Our customers regularly send us thousands of print jobs - usually as PDF, which we run through gs, which is available for many platforms including Windows and Linux.
- There are lots of automatic tools for generating PDF on the fly, such as HTMLdoc (a GPLed tool, which is available for Windows, Linux, Mac etc. and includes a GUI).
- The Macintosh by default can create output from ANY program as PDF, because you can print to PDF. There are similar print drivers for Windows.

You don't need to pay Adobe any money to read, generate or manipulate PDF files. It's an open format. Many programs can do it. It's only those who know of nothing outside of a Microsoft catalogue who think it's different.

Re:Acrobat Reader? Ugh...

[jma05]

Do you know any free PDF *EDITORS*?

Re:Acrobat Reader? Ugh...

[TheRaven64]

Add to that the fact that if anyone wants to generate content, they have to either get Acrobat (a $400 license), use Adobe Distiller (a $5000 server product!) or some third-party tool to convert to PDF.

Sorry, your argument is that people who want to create PDFs have to buy an expensive tool or not buy an expensive tool? That seems a bit odd to me...

For the record, I routinely create PDFs including hyperlinks (internal and external) and a table of contents embedded in the bookmarks section. I do this using pdflatex, which is free and Free (GPLv2). I also create diagrams in PDF format using OmniGraffle ($70, cheaper for the upgrade) and edit / annotate them using PDFPen ($50). Oh, and of course any app which can print can also output PDF, although not with as much meta-data as those that natively support PDF.

Re:Acrobat Reader? Ugh...

[vidarh]

PDF isn't meant to be an editable format. It is a presentation format. If you need to be able to edit a document, you shouldn't be putting it in a PDF at all. PDF is for the final product, and that is exactly one of the things that appeals to a lot of it's users.

Re:Acrobat Reader? Ugh...

[xMilkmanDanx]

No, but I do know of several free PDF creators. Like another poster said, PDF is not meant for documents that need further editing.

Note, the above links are not endorsements or recommendations

Re:Acrobat Reader? Ugh...

[zanderredux]

I think the point is that you may or not may pay Adobe to read or generated PDF files.

Which is a lot different than having no alternatives at all when it comes to generating MS Office documents.

If someone wants to pay, given that they have a choice to use free software, that's OK, then.

Re:Acrobat Reader? Ugh...

[jma05]

I am aware of PDF's intent (actually I think of it more as portability). I read a lot of scietific literature that comes as PDF. I frequently want to annote with my own notes but feel locked out. I could do this with the full version of Adobe Acrobat but there is no free tools that I am aware of that lets me do this.

Re:Acrobat Reader? Ugh...

[mhollis]

Additionally, an Apple Macintosh, running OS X can "print to a PDF" from any application running in OS X. I suppose if you wanted to annotate a PDF, you could cut and paste it as a graphic into another application, then print the resultant PDF.

Tiger (OS X 10.4.x) allows even more PDF editing. This is not the same thing as purchasing Acrobat Distiller but it could be helpful.

Time for a new world map

[toQDuj]

I think it would be about time to have a world map colored green and red wherever governments/officials have respectively adopted or not adopted open document formats.

Who is in? I thought China, some states in the US and some Scandinavian countries, parts of Germany ...

Who created it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"created by volunteer programmers"

Actually, it was created by a bunch of paid programmers in Germany. It has been maintained, enhanced, and extended by volunteer programmers.

And I love it!

Re:Who created it?

[TheRaven64]

Actually, it's still maintained, enhanced, and extended by paid employees. Most of the work is done by Sun employees. Much of the rest is done by Novell employees. Only a very small amount (significantly under 5%) is done by volunteers.

Funny, but....

[Noksagt]

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.

Re:Funny, but....

[loggia]

[i]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.[/q]
That's what it looks like to the most PC users, the majority of whom can't understand why they can't open their MP3 files in Word.

Re:Funny, but....

[loggia]

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.

That's what it looks like to most PC users, the majority of whom can't understand why they can't open their MP3 files in Word.

Re:Funny, but....

[MosesJones]

They are also XML files, which can be understandable in plaintext.

This is the single biggest myth about XML, the idea that its "understandable" in vi. XML documents can be insanely complicated beasts, try looking at a BPEL document for a great example. XML documents can also have binary in them (for instance images) and of course if you don't have the schema to go with the document then you don't know the constraints on the structure and order of elements. MS could use (and I think does) XML to describe their documents, if however they keep the schema secret, use binary imports or just create massively complex multi-namespace documents then it will still be as closed as ever.

Re:Funny, but....

[maxwell demon]

Why rename it? A good unzipper should be able to unzip it independent from the name of the thing. You just have to open it directly with the unzipping program (if you don't have OOo, you also could tell your OS to give .swx to your unzipper when trying to open it).

Re:Funny, but....

[tepples]

Those users would understand the unzipped XML?

Users who don't understand XML but do know how to drag it to notepad would be able to recover at least some semblance of text from the unzipped XML files.

Microsoft Office Open XML Formats

[n0cturne]

All this means is that they will upgrade to the next version of Microsoft Office. The file format will be XML files in a ZIP container.

Check it out: Microsoft Office Open XML Formats:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/fileovervi ew.mspx

http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Opens_Of fice_File_Formats/1117692086

Re:Microsoft Office Open XML Formats

[Anonymous Coward]

All this means is that they will upgrade to the next version of Microsoft Office. The file format will be XML files in a ZIP container.

And encumbered with a patent to protect their "intellectual property" and make it illegal for you to implement your own viewer and view your own documents. Once MS decide to stop supporting their format with the only viewer in the world that is allowed to view them, you are still screwed. You are still stuck at MS's whimsical mercy, but legally rather than technically.

Re:Microsoft Office Open XML Formats

[MrArmyAnt]

Looks like they are finally catching up to OOP (not object oriented programming, but OpenOffice Project.) Its a nice feature, seems to save space too.

Several Benefits

[blastard]

I applaud the move as I file documents in the commonwealth from time to time. A benefit of Open Office files is that they are generally smaller files that MS files. And, more importantly, being able to file .pdfs helps eliminate one of the great threats inherent in .doc files. That is the hidden parts of the document. The stuff that was once part of the document, but was removed in editing. I have opened many a .doc file in a simple text or hex editor and found some very interesting revisions or other information. One file mysteriously had a persons application for benefits in it. This included SS#. It is hard to be certain that you've eliminated these dregs when using Word. Hopefully this will lead to a more secure America. Another benefit of the .pdf is What You Sent Is What They Get. WYSIWTG. You can never be sure that all your pretty formatting will survive when your .doc file is opened on the other side.

Re:Several Benefits

[NotoriousQ]

And, more importantly, being able to file .pdfs helps eliminate one of the great threats inherent in .doc files. That is the hidden parts of the document.

No, they won't.

Office Viewers

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, anyone has been able to open office documents for free for a long time now. Microsoft has had viewers available for most of their office formats, free to download, for years.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=95e24c87-8732-48d5-8689-ab826e7b8fdf&Displa yLang=en

Hell the viewer is faster than opening acrobat by a long shot too.

Re:Office Viewers

[sedman]

Anyone? I followed the link and did not find the Linux version of this software.

Even if there was one, we would still be depending on Microsoft not changing its mind and removing it. Let them open their format if they want to be used this way.

Microsoft's Engineered incompatibility

[Tontoman]

It seems amazing that a government entity hasn't done this long ago.

MS Office formats are incompatible even between different versions of MS Office. The Microsoft competitive model is to lock out competition using undocumented binary file formats.

In the past, they gain a foothold with one or two in an organization using a "new" Office format, and this forces dozens of upgrades. And also ensures that competitor's compatibility features can't keep up with Microsoft.

These same anti-competitive tactics also make it difficult for different government agencies to communicate. Or even read their own archived documents.

Re:Microsoft's Engineered incompatibility

[AaronLawrence]

To tell the truth though, I am working with Office 2000 while my colleagues use XP or 2003 on the same docs. We haven't noticed any real problems ... admittedly our documents are not that complex.

Re:PDF?

[ratsg]

Loading the PDF viewer is SLOW. I am constantly reminded that I need to 'update' something. In fact, the viewer on two of my computers is stuck in an update loop- where it thinks I need to update something that has already been updated.

Once a large PDF is loaded, it is still SLOW to scroll pages. And when I hit a page with some pictures, I need to wait a few seconds for them to load.

If your pdf viewer is slow, I would guess that you are still using Acrobat reader version 5.x or 6.x. Acrobat reader 7.x is much faster, at least for me either on Solaris or Mac OS X.

Also, the pdf file format is an open one. If you don't like Adobe's pdf reader or creator, there are others available, both commercial or FOSS.

Re:PDFs?

[SenorCitizen]

Know why? Adobe Reader 7 (and I'd guess Acrobat 7 too) start a speed launch app at system startup... of course, the downside is slower system startup and a couple of megs of lost RAM. Which isn't all that much if you consider that Logitech's latest mouse drivers take up to ten...

MS Office Open XML File Formats

[Anonymous Coward]

Has no one noticed that MS themselves have recognised that open file formats are the way forward? Office 12, currently in Alpha, switches the default file format for Word, Powerpoint and Excel to a royalty free published XML format. Let the flamewar begin...

Re:MS Office Open XML File Formats

[blastard]

This is good news for them. If they do this, their software will meet the Massachusetts requirement, and everyone can be happy. I can continue to use OpenOffice.org without having to convert to MS to send to people. Microsoft can continue to sell their products to people who want the features it has to offer. The end result is that those consumers will be able to choose the office suite of their choice.

Re:MS Office Open XML File Formats

[NatasRevol]

Step one of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Re:MS Office Open XML File Formats

[edxwelch]

Unfortunately, the previous attempt at "open formats" in Office 2003 has left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.
In Office 2003, only the core format was documented, the auxiliary formats were in binary format as before. Also, there was problems with patents, resulting that no third party product tried to implement any Office 2003 format.
So, once bitten, twice shy

Re:PDF?

[QMO]

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.

Re:PDF?

[Rude Turnip]

If you use Adobe's reader, you can hold onto either shift or control (I forget, so I just press both) and the reader opens up in a second with no plugins.

The format isn't made for heavy editing of files, it is meant to be an archival format for finished documents. The big thing now in the business world are these high speed, networked scanner/copier/printers that can save the scans in PDF. In fact, "PDF" is quickly becoming a verb.

To navigate through the document faster, just use the thumbnail mode...it's just like using a microfilm reader, without the film.

Re:PDF?

[holy zarquon's singi]

On my mac, I am totally dependent on pdfs to help me deal with the research literature wot I have got. I use Adobe Acrobat to do detailed annotations of documents, take notes and link to my bibliographic database. Sometimes this gets slow as molasses due to poor software engineering by either parties hand.

On the other hand, when I want to have a quick squizz at a pdf to see if there's anything relevant there, I use the super fast and efficient Preview application. If Preview had better annotatin facilities [hint hint], I wou'dn't use Acrobat at all.

Earlier today, I needed a powerpoint thingamy transferred from a windows machine to machine to a mac (without office). It would have been a lot less painful if W$$do$s had native PDF support.

Microsoft made their monopoly and their money by taking the personal computer, removing value from it, and then selling that removed value back to the consumer at high cost. I wish more people understood this.

Good! However--!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a damn good reason for doing things that way! From Apple to Linux to even BEOS, I have yet to see a platform or operating system that -doesn't- support PDF documents.

Another good thing about PDFs: They're write only unless you can figure out a way to decrypt and hack into the file itself [which, to hackers credit, is -still- easy to do].

Personally, I see society as a whole moving towards PDFs one of these days. It's already starting. Just look around at eBooks: what format would they be in if they had graphics? PDF.

Lastly, PDFs are the only broad-based solution that I know of right now that -doesn't- change format when you switch the document from computer to computer [operating system to operating system]

That's a -big- headache to things like government documents [because you know people like official documents to be easy-to-read and professional] because, currently, in order to cater to the outlying operating systems [besides hiring people that even -know- some of the outlyers so that formatting goodness could be ensured] you would have to save the file in [i think] four to nine different types of format, that statistic being a gradation of common file formats to insured readability and compatability.

The only drawback I see at the moment is publishing a PDF with a version of Acrobat that was just released. I don't like upgrading Adobe too often and I'm sure many othere geeks don't [it's a waste of time if you ask me]. Therefore, users who do not have access to the newest version of Adobe would be cut out of the loop. [Honestly, would you -dare- reading a PDF made by one of the military branches? Every seperate part of the document would require a new version of Adobe ]

Additionally, for those that simply cannot install Adobe, for whatever reason: Think of the US Constitution. The 'ultimately public document [tm]' right? What if the Constitution was a PDF? If the Constitution were a PDF I could bet you a hundred bucks that unless you had Adobe Acrobat or an Adobe Acrobat plug-in of some sort in another program, you wouldn't be able to view the constitution. Some nutcase would get pissed, call it a conspiracy, and make a loud voice on Capital Hill yell back.

Not that it's necessarily a bad switch, I endorse it, but, [just for shits and giggles] compare the following:

'We published this document in a .txt format for you to read, which is available to Microsoft, and a .pdf format, which is available to everyone else, as well as supplemental packages for specific operating systems [in .zips, .rars, etc.]'

To

'This document was created in Adobe Acrobat. In order for you to read this document, 'The US Constitution,' you must first install Adobe Acrobat or an Adobe Acrobat plug-in. Otherwise, you will be unable to read this PDF document.'

The second sounds kinda 'communist russia' doesn't it? Well, that's my point in a nutshell. The switch might make a few people uneasy and wondering as to the purpose behind that switch.

Lastly, what -about- Microsoft? I believe that this news is going to slam into their offices this morning and piss off some of the higher staffs. [piss off being the equivalent of saying 'oh, by the way, your car sucks and the government has declared it suck and then announced to the US that your car sucks.'] And, though I think this -could- get off the ground, let's be honest to ourselves and our congressmen, judges, and whatnot:

Microsoft is the biggest lobbiest ever. They have more money than any other lobbiest, period. They can blackmail whomever they like and get away with it. Period. Finally, they could spend a billion dollars on creating a counter to this statement and shrug it off.

This switch is a good thing, yes. However, whoever said that life was fair and that the average citizen will say, "Hey! I'm outraged that my .PDF government files are now .DOCs! Gr

Not the last government nonsense

[Donny Smith]

It's good that stupidities like this make it to the news, so that we can be sure that no matter what software they use, they're always gonna remain stupid, lazy ass, money wasting bozos that they've always been.

1) MS Office can produce PDF docs
Yes, they need either a commercial or free (doc2pdf.sourceforge.net) add on, but that's trivial to implement (and even buy) compared to the useless overhaul proposed.

2) MS Office docs can be viewed and printed using the free Microsoft Viewer software.
And OpenOffice can read Microsoft Office docs, can't it?

3) Probably the simplest solution is to Save As... RTF.

All in all, yet another stupid government move that makes me sick.
Even more puzzling is why did this make it to /.? While sensational, it is technically idiotic approach which as such only deserves trashing.

Re:Not the last government nonsense

[Noksagt]

1) MS Office can produce PDF docs

And a lot of people will probably produce PDFs in just this way.

2) MS Office docs can be viewed and printed using the free Microsoft Viewer software.

"Free" meaning gratis & available only on windows & only from the same company that makes the writer. Open formats are important for data (re)use.

And OpenOffice can read Microsoft Office docs, can't it?

Fairly well, but only through reverse engineering. It doesn't read/write the same way MS Office, as the format & the way MS Word reads/writes them isn't documented.

3) Probably the simplest solution is to Save As... RTF.

There is a "human readable" description of the RTF format. But there is still a lot that isn't documented. There are both hidden features and quirks. It is NOT open.

The libre is more important than the gratis

[stlhawkeye]

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 is nice for our bottom line, since all of the money our government pisses away is OUR money. However, I'd be willing to pay EVEN MORE than Microsoft charges to have open formats. And although I am supportive of both commercial and open source software initiatives, and have contributed to the open source community as a programmer, I honestly don't give a crap what our government thinks about it. This is a move in the right direction. I suspect it's motivated by money, however, and not a benevolent government desiring to increase the freedom of information.

Re:The libre is more important than the gratis

[freeradica1]

The government's decisions is motivated by economic interests--that's the whole point! The open source community has realized that it's never going to dig into Microsoft's market share if it relies on people desire to "Increase the freedom of information". Most of the freeware-using population doesn't even understand the different between "open source" and "free"

This means absolutly nothing...

[DoktorTomoe]

every state document must be in PDF or using Open Office formats' starting in 2007.

Giving up one proprietary format for another is stupid - the end of this will be lots of licences bought in Adobe Acrobat software, with little or no effect for open source.

Just because PDF can be read by virtually everyone, it is not an "open" file format. In fact, PDF is "protected" by several patents and some options are a well-kept secret of Adobe.

Re:This means absolutly nothing...

[mopslik]

Giving up one proprietary format for another is stupid - the end of this will be lots of licences bought in Adobe Acrobat software, with little or no effect for open source.

Well, given that Adobe Reader is free (and there are other free PDF viewers for Windows/Mac/*nix), AND there are about a bazillion "create PDF using a printer driver" freeware applications out there right now, I don't see why anyone needs to spend piles of money on PDF reading/writing software. Remember: PDF is a "finished" format, intended for final copies of documents, barring small revisions.

Just because PDF can be read by virtually everyone, it is not an "open" file format. In fact, PDF is "protected" by several patents and some options are a well-kept secret of Adobe.

Presumably, if you're using the afore-mentioned readers/writers, you simply won't use those features. Out of curiosity, can you name any? And if so, can you give some examples where such features would be deliberately included in a document by the State, resulting in unreadable documents?

Re:This means absolutly nothing...

[DoktorTomoe]

Out of curiosity, can you name any?

Given my memory serves me right: Formular generation and entry. And yes, I see lots of uses for stuff like that in government documents.

Re:PDF?

[Trigun]

Hmm, an executable? Will it work on any of the unices out there?

Cross platform and unencumbered? No.

Noone noticed this?

[coolGuyZak]

Microsoft is clearly worried. A lot of people live in Massachusetts and that is a big thumbs up for open sauce.

Open sauce? Damn, guy. Next time read the results after you spellcheck ;)

Re:Noone noticed this?

[belg4mit]

Bostonians don't pronounce Rs.

I pahked the cah in Havahd yahd.

Re:Noone noticed this?

[maxwell demon]

Butt if the spelt chequer fined know miss takes, chow cold their bee any?

Teriyaki? or Barbecue?

[Old VMS Junkie]

Microsoft is clearly worried. A lot of people live in Massachusetts and that is a big thumbs up for open sauce.

The Inquirer needs a proof reader. Or at least an in-house chef.

Re:Teriyaki? or Barbecue?

[night_flyer]

isnt open sauce Ted's problem?

Re:PDF?

[rly2000]

It's possible to get a free viewer for all the MSOffice apps from Microsoft's web site, just like what Acrobat provides for their PDF files.

Re:PDF?

[digidave]

"Anyone with IE on Windows can view .doc files without any additional software."

Well, that's the definition of vendor lock-in now, isn't it? Even MS fanboys can usually see that this is a bad thing. MS can abandon its old formats... and they will, eventually.

I think xPDF is available for Windows for free. It opens in about one second on Linux.

Re:PDF?

[Cthefuture]

Hmmm, the parent is not totally trolling here. I don't mind PDF but you have to keep in mind that it is generally a read-only format. Sure, you can edit it with the right tools but those tools are mostly proprietary or don't work very well in the case of the free tools.

Even the tools that can edit PDF are not usually very powerful. They're just for touchup type work. Most of your formatting and layout still needs to be done in a real editor and those output PDF OK, they don't read PDF.

Before reading the whole article...

[Teechur007]

...I imagined going to the beach and finding an Office CD washed up on shore.

I'd put it on a spare machine, at least...

The option they might offer....

[gr8_phk]

The MS response would be to IMPORT OpenOffice.org documents but not export. This way users can just click on the document and have it open in Word and when they save it, it will end up in .doc format. All without any effort on the part of the user. This follows the traditional MS way of interoperation - we'll read your stuff but not write it. This causes documents to naturally migrate to MS formats.

Re:PDFs?

[m50d]

KDE now has a very nice and efficient implementation (kpdf), which will be available for all major platforms eventually.

Re:PDFs?

[Noksagt]

I think the concept itself it good, but Adobe's implementation (which is by far the most widespread) is slow as molassess, up hill, IN THE WINTER.

MS Word, which they were using, is often painfully slow too.

As other readers noted, 7 isn't that bad & 5 & pre-5 version on windows weren't that bad (acroread on Linux was garbage until 7). If you don't like the application, you do have choices. No reason to complain about the format

I still use xpdf (open source) on my desktop.

You can also carry Foxit (free, as in beer, for win32) on a USB flash drive so you don't have to put up with the slowness on other people's machines.

Neither

[doublem]

MS will offer the state some discounts on Microsoft Office. If they're desperate they'll push RTF as a document format instead.

As we've seen far too many times in the past, government bodies tend to use moves like this as a way to force a better deal out of the existing vendor.

This isn't about using Open Source to build a better solution. It's about leveraging Open Source to get a better deal on the existing solution

Re:PDF?

[jejones]

Loading the PDF viewer is SLOW.

Have you tried evince?

Why all the opposition?

[Gargamell]

I do not understand why there seems to be so much complaining in the discussion?

Is this not what we want? Just getting such a thing in the spotlight for a week in the US should be considered a milestone!

It has to start somewhere.

I would rather see people complain about the politics when their own state switches to OO standards. I live in Boston, and I pay more in rent than most people pay for their mortgage! There is certainly a lot to complain about, but perhaps this would be an opportunity to appreciate the efforts of a lot of socially conscious people (probably not Ted Kennedy).

*Just trying to look on the bright side*

~tim

Re:This will just confuse people

[digidave]

That's just plain idiotic and counter to what is needed.

First and foremost is that these documents must not be lost when their format is abandoned. Open specs ensure that won't happen.

Second, many computers don't come with MS Office, such as all Macs and most cheaper brand PCs, including many Dells and HPs.

Third, Acrobat Reader is not the only nor the best PDF reader on the market. xPDF is another free one and it's very fast.

Fourth, a PDF can be created from nearly any program through a PDF printer (many free ones available). Just because docs may be common doesn't mean that all documents are going to be word processor documents. What about maps? Blueprints? Flyers? Magazines? Spreadsheets? Presentations? I see at least three non-doc formats there that can easily be exported to PDFs.

Ugh PDF

[Greyfox]

I love PostScript, don't get me wrong, but changing PDF documents is a pain in the ass! Managers love that quality about them but if you ever have to change the document, you're boned! It can be done, but it's not what I'd call "fun."

On the other hand, I think returning at least one potential employer's PDF file with my changes in it got me an interview recently. I'm pretty sure they switched over to PDF to slow the flood of IT applicants somewhat, but by using the techniques described in this article I simply filled out their PDF and e-mailed it back to their recruiter a few minutes later. It was an awkward process, but it worked.

Open Formats

[doublem]

Yeah, because supporting an Open Format really killed Winzip. They haven't been heard from in AGES.

Re:Open Formats

[vidarh]

Actually, they were just sold to an investment group that specialises in buying and turning around badly performing companies (such as Corel and Real Networks...). So if it didn't kill them, they haven't exactly demonstrated an ability to make much money from their product.

Re:Open Formats

[Komarosu]

You picked a bad day to say that.

Re:Open Formats

[doublem]

No I didn't. My timing was perfect.

I was trying to use sarcasm to point out that using open formats is NOT a death knell for a company or product, and can actually be a massive benefit.

PKWare used to be the ZIP King, until Winzip came out. PKWare has fallen by the wayside, and Winzip continues despite there being a massive number of free competitors.

Re:PDF?

[BeanThere]

Loading the PDF viewer is SLOW.

"the" PDF viewer? I don't know what you're referring to, PDFs load very quickly for me when I open into "the" PDF viewer on my Mac, or in "the" PDF viewer on Linux.

There are dozens of PDF viewers, even on Windows. Tthere is no such thing as "the" PDF viewer.

So, how is it proprietary?

[Noksagt]

Looks open to me. See Foxit, xpdf, ghostscript, KOffice, and others for examples of 3rd party applications which can read them. MANY more can write to it too.

Re:This will just confuse people

[RetiredMidn]

Unfortunately, the best way to make documents widely accessible is to use MS Word.

Yes and no.

It's the "best" way because, as you point out, it happens to "just work" for a majority users.

It's a horrible way to distribute documents for a whole bunch of reasons:

• The documents are modifiable by the reader, which means anyone can content and re-distribute it. (Yes, there are ways to prevent or inhibit this, but we're talking about the casual-use case.)
• In most cases, the reader sees the clutter of red and green markup where Microsoft disapproves of the spelling (usually of correctly spelled proper names) or grammar of the author.
• Across different OS's, versions of the OS, versions of Word, and installed font sets, Word often re-formats the document in subtle ways that have non-subtle effects, mangling a document that looks fine on the author's machine, or on similarly configured machines in the author's workgroup. (This effect is even more pronounced when a non-savvy user uses "incorrect", but depressingly common, formatting techniques, like using space characters to position text.)

For all of its very real problems, PDF avoids these pitfalls.

What is really needed is an intuitive way for users of applications to differentiate between documents-for-authoring and document-for-distribution-and-consumption. (In the old days, these were the disk-file and printed product, respectively.) Apple takes a small step in the right direction with its ubiquitous print-to-PDF, but that still requires extra steps and user management of separate representations of the same document. Better application and system support is needed; this is an opportunity for someone (OOo?) to step forward and innovate and differentiate, rather than chase Microsoft's shadow.

</vent>

Adobe PDF References are available...

[Otto]

Giving up one proprietary format for another is stupid - the end of this will be lots of licences bought in Adobe Acrobat software, with little or no effect for open source.

Just because PDF can be read by virtually everyone, it is not an "open" file format. In fact, PDF is "protected" by several patents and some options are a well-kept secret of Adobe.

While you are correct that Adobe controls the PDF spec and it is not open in that sense, it is free as in beer, and anybody can use/implement the specification without Adobe's permission. They give their explicit permission to do so in the PDF references: http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/ind ex_reference.html

As for some options being "well-kept secrets", please clarify what you're talking about, as the PDF spec is offical, given out by Adobe themselves, and pretty damned comprehensive.

The OpenOffice format is definitely open source, so I assume you were not referring to it in any way.

Note..

[omega9]

It's worth pointing out that Microsoft has always made free viewers available for their Office products:

Word 2003 Viewer
Excel 2003 Viewer
"Microsoft Office Converters and Viewers" homepage

So, you don't have to own Office in order to read documents produced by it.

Re:Note..

[Packet Pusher]

You do however, need to own Windows.

Re:Note..

[Ihlosi]

So, you don't have to own Office in order to read documents produced by it.

How about not owning a legal copy of the OSes MS provides these readers for ?

Re:Note..

[Zey]

Word 2003 Viewer Excel 2003 Viewer

All well and good. However, that's not going to be a lot of use in 2212 when the binaries are long-forgotten and the proprietory file format's a mystery. What using an open format means is the specifications will be available to open those files at any time in the future, whether Microsoft's around as a company or not.

Future tech support call

[t_allardyce]

A: Hi im trying to read these documents but they wont open on my computer?

B: Well sir you see we here at the Massachusetts IT office have been leading the way to ensure that your tax dollars go to open formats as opposed to restrictive and expensive formats such as those offered by Microsoft.

A: Right... well im using a Windows PC, can I open these?

B: Yes of course, being open and well supported formats you can read them on almost any platform, unlike closed formats that are owned and maintained by companies who will not release tools to view them on alternative systems such as Linux.

A: Ok.. so.. how do I do that?

B: Let me refer you to this website where you can download OpenOffice entirely free of charge sir.

A: Erm right, I really just wanted to open and print these, is this going to take long?

B: Not at all, as long as you have a broadband connection you can download OpenOffice in a few minutes.

A: Isn't there an easier way? Is there no way to open them in Office Vista 2006?

B: Im not sure you are quite following me - these documents are in an open format, they don't work with Microsoft products, you could always download our PDF versions.

A: PDF?

B: Or even our plain-text files, those are missing some tables and diagrams however.

A: Erm I need the tables and diagrams, Is there no way you could 'make' some Office format versions if you have lots of versions anyway?

B: Absolutely not sir, the state of Massachusetts has a strict policy regarding the use of closed-source software and formats.

A: Hm maybe i'll move to Texas..

Re:Future tech support call

[bersl2]

A: Erm right, I really just wanted to open and print these, is this going to take long?

B: Not at all, as long as you have a broadband connection you can download OpenOffice in a few minutes.

Idea: take a page from MS, and make viewer programs. Except unlike theirs, ours would be cross-platform.

Re:Future tech support call

[t_allardyce]

Im sure in reality they would have an automatic HTML-publishing system. but you can so tell there will be confused people trying to open OpenOffice documents in Word and not understanding why it wont work, and I can't really blame them. There should be a policy to use OO docs internally but always have systems to convert easily for those that want other formats.

Re:Future tech support call

[t_allardyce]

Most browsers use Adobe Acrobat to display PDF's, its just luck that you have it installed. But the case where other people want to _edit_ documents poses a problem, other people might be from other states or departments etc that don't use OpenOffice.
Saying you will only use open formats is one thing, but you absolutely must make sure you have a fully functional way to convert documents between most popular formats and then back again without sacrificing anything.

From the Microsoft Bloglines...

[turchinc]

Microsoft is already blowing their bloghorn about this as well:

http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/08/ 31/458879.aspx

(and that reactions has been resyndicated by the Scobelizer himself already:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/09/01.html#a 11011)

From the post:
"I'm a bit stunned by the overall proposal that was brought forward to the State though as it seems to be a bit short sighted and unnecessarily exclusive."

"unnecessarily exclusive"? Someone at Microsoft is claiming that someone else's decision to use an open alternative is unnecessarily exclusive? That does seem like grasping for the last straw doesn't it...

MSFT Response to MA and their new XML formats...

[cthrall]

Check it out...note the comment that points to this EWeek article that says the license for the new formats is incompatible with the GPL...

Re:PDF?

[richlv]

umm. for linux ? or is there a requirement to buy windows ?

Re:PDF?

[metarox]

You can try this out ** BEWARE ** Page causes Deer Park 2 to crash so maybe you want to use something else to open it http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11041 I keep only the EH32.api and Search.api, all the rest is shoved out. Acrobat loads in a snap after that.

Good vs. bad PDF generators

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Having never used Acrobat to create PDF's, what DOES it add that "print to PDF" tools do not?

Well, the differences between good PDF generators (which I'll assume Acrobat is, though it's not my personal choice) and bad ones (like many print-to-PDF hacks) include:

• size of output file (particularly where unusual fonts are concerned, as noted by another poster)
• quality of output file (I've had poor quality PDF output rejected by a professional printing bureau since they couldn't read them due to bugs in the generator tool creating an incorrect document)
• meta features like bookmarks and TOCs, hyperlinks and preview images working vs. being completely ignored.

What about Communicating with Massachusetts?

[bogaboga]

Are they to also insist that those who wish to communicate (read do business) with Massachusetts also do it in Open formats? How will this be handled?

Re:PDF?

[richlv]

yes, but this support for .doc is reverse engineered. it is not a normal situation.

with 1.2 you probably meant 2.0 (as there will be no 1.2) - actually, you can test that for yourself ;)

just a couple of days ago a new developers build was released (1.9m125, aka beta2), so you can easily download that and test on documents that you have.

from my experience, compatibility has improved further, though there are also a couple of small regressions

Re:PDF?

[Fallus Shempus]

For Linux? Actual Microsoft viewers, from Microsoft?

a big thumbs up for open sauce

[curtisk]

Nothing to add, other than this subject line is IN the article. Some jokes write themselves.

Do you really want microsoft to implement them?

[Anonymous Coward]

i read a lot of comments on how microsoft should implement pdf/open office format... do you really want that?
look at the great job they did with html, another open standard... why don't sites look the same on IE compared to other browsers? what's going to stop microsoft from pulling the same tricks all over again?

Great maybe m$ can layoff more programmers

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh* how well do any of the folks who contribute to open office live? What does anyone in the developer industry gain by provider their trade for free. I sure how Mass. tax payers see a BIG break because of this transition other wise someone else pockets got fatter for the quasi-noble reason of an open document platform.

Re:PDF?

[richlv]

yep, so that's where opendocument steps in (even though in articles it is refferred to as "open office format", i believe it will be od) - so you get pdfs for read-only stuff (reports, laws and other things citizens would not neet to edit normally ;) ) and odt/ods etc for things that could be edited (some forms that must be filled and other things like that)

Federal Waste

[Flamesplash]

Eh, just get the federal Governmnet to pay for it like the Big Dig

Re:Always explaining

[maxwell demon]

Well, isn't it obvious? It's the language your VCR programming OSD menu is set to.

Re:I don't buy it

[EvilNebby]

Seriously... How the hell does he keep getting elected?

Re:PDF?

[log0n]

Since the change is going to be ~ 2007, I'd expect the OpenDocument format (XML based) is what they are choosing - and why they are choosing it.

Someone explain WP vs. MS Word

[bazorg]

Hi

Could anyone explain what kind of agreement has to be made so that MS Word can read Wordperfect files and vice versa, but OO.org cannot?

Re:Someone explain WP vs. MS Word

[gradix]

OpenOffice.org 2.0 includes a WordPerfect filter. See http://wp.openoffice.org/filter.html

xpdf on win32

[Noksagt]

I think xPDF is available for Windows for free. It opens in about one second on Linux.

Kind of. You can use pdftops, pdftotext, pdfimages, pdfinfo, and pdffonts. The GUI that you use in linux is motif-based. You can run it under cygwin. Last time I checked, though, cygwin's X11 performance left a lot to be desired.

Long In The Making

[Feneric]

This event has been long in the making. Massachusetts established an "Open Source Public Trough" over a year ago, and many of its more prominent regional web sites had been using and/or advocating open source since before then (see this recommendation or Guide to Free Software for just a couple of examples from my home town) and of course Massachusetts was the only state not to cave in regarding the court case against Microsoft.

For locals, this isn't surprising. What's more surprising is that it took so long.

Re:Is this really about open standards?

[Ihlosi]

BS. What Adobe really offers is the documentation on how the format works. Microsoft doesn't do that for their formats.

New Headline would read...

[doublem]

MA GOV Cries LINUX. MS discounts expected ASAP.

good idea not just because it goes "open"

[yagu]

In the posts here I see a lot of back-and-forth with some holding fast to the notion staying with MS Office is the prudent thing to do for various reasons including:

• MS Office can produce PDF docs
• MS Office docs can be viewed and printed using the free Microsoft Viewer software
• Probably the simplest solution is to Save As... RTF.

(bullets borrowed from Donny Smith(567043))

From personal experience I think the most important factor is getting out of MS' talons and whimsical changes to their own formats. I've posted about this before.

I've actually been in business meetings which couldn't not get started on time because attendees had to sort out getting copies of the agenda or memos which they'd actually received beforehand but were in formats incompatible with their version of MS Office! This, ostensibly at one company using tools to help conduct business. Were this a one-time anecdote would be one thing, but I encountered this scenario many times. (There are grooves in my eye-sockets from so many eyerolls waiting for business to proceed.)

OpenOffice may not offer the perfect solution, but any move away from unpredictable and untouchable formats brings hope to eventually working with technology that improves our productivity. (I shudder to mention the car analogy, but it's so fun: can you imagine a car industry with such an approach (or maybe it's the highway infrastructure)? Every year or so you find out some cars can't be driven on the highways because of some change it their design, blah, blah, blah.)

Free PDF printing from any Windows app

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

The irony is that my Apple fanboyishness led me to this PDF printer driver in the quest for "My Mac does it, why can't my soggy Windows work laptop do it?"

Works pretty decently and the only "cost" is a popup ad.

Not as nice as OS X's integrated PDF output (nor is there as remotely elegant a PDF reader on Windows as Preview.app on OS X), but does the job quite well from any Windows app.

I also believe Office intends to save to a compressed XML format natively, based on whatever press releases they have put out recently.

Strangely relevant is that I'm currently (finally) reading The Cathedral & the Bazaar which, as many readers of this site are probably aware (no really, not trying to karma-whore here!), has a lot of things to say about the consequences of keeping your code and standards private.

I really don't get why Microsoft even bothered to keep their file format closed to begin with. There could have been a whole cottage industry set up by now to manipulate the data in those difficult-to-decipher closed binary file formats... the economy of which surely would have (ultimately) added to MS's bottom line, because they would have (in theory) produced the best tools.

The book is actually free

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

How foolish of me... I linked to a dead-tree copy of the book instead of the online free version. My bad!

Re:MSFT Response to MA and their new XML formats..

[ReelOddeeo]

FUD.

The EWeek article is talking about Microsoft Office xml formats, not OpenOffice.org xml formats. This, even though the first sentence confusingly uses the term "Office Open XML Formats".

The royalty-free license under which Microsoft plans to make its upcoming new Office Open XML Formats widely available is incompatible with the GNU General Public License and will thus prevent many free and open-source software projects from using the formats, community officials say.

Someone would have you believe that the EWeek article is talking about OpenOffice.org's Open Document format.

The MSDN Blog article, merely extols the virtues of Microsoft's open XML format for MS-Office. It says how great it would be for everyone to have a royalty-free open standard for office documents. What the blog, written by the MS Office program manager, ignores is that royalty-free is not good enough. The license for the format needs to be not only royalty-free, but must be able to be sub-licensed by anyone to anyone. That is, if I write a GPL program that reads/writes Monopoly Open XML Office formats, then YOU should not have to execute a "royalty-free" license with Microsoft before you can use my GPL software.

Re:Word Viewer

[catherder_finleyd]

You can freely download Word Viewer from Microsoft's web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=95e24c87-8732-48d5-8689-ab826e7b8fdf&Displa yLang=en

I'll take that bet!

[btarval]

" ...how long will it last? Any bets that Microsoft will be there, trying to get this reversed?"

Sure. I'll take that bet, IF I can bet on Microsoft being there to get this reversed. I'd even bet on Microsoft being successful, by giving the State a huge discount on their Office products, along with intense bribes (excuse me, lobbying) to the local politicians.

You know, the Standard Operating Procedure these days.

Followed by a huge Press Release saying that the State is dropping OSS in favor of Microsoft. Which in turn will alert even more states that they can get MS software for a huge discount just by issuing a Press Release.

Now, if the State was REALLY smart, they'd include a clause that any Word documents which couldn't be read via the current Word technology 5-10 years in the future would require Microsoft to pay a fine of, say, $100 per document. To cover the States' cost in converting it so that it could be read again.

Re:I'll take that bet!

[zootm]

Now, if the State was REALLY smart, they'd include a clause that any Word documents which couldn't be read via the current Word technology 5-10 years in the future would require Microsoft to pay a fine of, say, $100 per document. To cover the States' cost in converting it so that it could be read again.

To be fair, the new versions of Office use open XML formats. Too long coming, yes, but this clause would probably just be too late.

Re:I'll take that bet!

[bradbeattie]

So what I'm hearing here is that the increasing popularity of OpenOffice will indirectly lower the price of Microsoft Office? Sounds about right to me.

Re:I'll take that bet!

[vidarh]

XML doesn't in any way guarantee compatibility, so such a clause would certainly be worthwhile.

Re:I'll take that bet!

[zootm]

Open formats, however, guarantee at least as much compatibility as the competitor's brand, so restricting such a clause to Microsoft would be unfair, was what I was trying to say.

Re:I'll take that bet!

[DrIdiot]

What you're forgetting is that no discount Microsoft can give will ever beat the price of OSS software.

That is, $0.

Re:I'll take that bet!

[sillybilly]

they'd include a clause that any Word documents which couldn't be read via the current Word technology 5-10 years in the future would require Microsoft to pay a fine of, say, $100 per document

Currently the future doesn't matter. Incorporation means that funds paid to employees is safe, it's not at risk. Basically the Corporation pays out all its value it accumulates in the next 5 years in dividends and payroll, then it goes belly up, and any injunction against them is unrecoverable. Then the money the dividend recievers got will let them to start up a new corporation, and go at it all over again. It's the same entity, different name, different face. Anything relevant to the future is so easy to avoid. Allowing incorporating is the price we pay for free enterprise, to promote risk-taking, but sometimes we pay dearly for it with our future, because of lack of accountability.

We also have statute of limitations, but at least there is no statute of limitations on murder.

Basically, don't read too much into any sentence that contains accountability and responsibility 5 or 10 years later.

Re:I'll take that bet!

[Mishura]

No, but they can pay them to use it.

Silly Tax Payers

[Zebra_X]

It doesn't say anything about WHAT format - just that it has to be open. You don't honestly think that MSFT will just say "Word Format or the highway?" do you? They can easily have a "save as" format that complies with the standard. 2007 is a long time from now.

Re:PDF?

[bhtooefr]

Have you tried Foxit Reader, by chance?

I no longer cringe at "http://somesite.com/reallyinterestingarticle.pdf" , due to Foxit's speed.

Increasing the use of Linux in the workplace?

[heffel]

This looks like a step in the right direction towards increasing the use of Linux workstations in the workplace?

Not reverse, "Embraced & Extended"

[dsginter]

...how long will it last? Any bets that Microsoft will be there, trying to get this reversed?

Microsoft will simply allow people to open OO.org formats but then silently save the documents as their own proprietary XML. In this respect, users won't know that they are screwing themselves over (as they never do), and everyone will still require Microsoft Office.

Re:PDF?

[xs650]

Bill, we already knew that.

Slashdot Expert opinions

[erroneus]

Okay, I do have a level of respect for the opinions expressed here. I generally read over the ones that most stand out, sample a few trolls and extrapolate a kind of mean of the opinions and balance that against my own thoughts as well.

What I have read the most of is that people are skeptical as to the sincerity of this directive. People are saying that they are only doing this to get a healthy Microsoft discount. I'd like to know, if anyone cares to respond, how people can make the determination between pulling a stunt for discounts and a sincere effort to move into open formats?

While it has been shown that some businesses and government bodies have backed down on their intent to migrate to open standards or open source, some have not. So the threat is very real, in this respect. But how can we tell the difference, if in fact, some of these threats are really just a ruse to get substantial discounts from Microsoft?

And if it is a ruse, I hope Microsoft calls the bluff a fwe times -- I'd be interested to see what would happen. (I have a guess and I strong hope)

Readability/Openness of XML

[Noksagt]

They are also XML files, which can be understandable in plaintext.

This is the single biggest myth about XML,

I was referring, explicitly, to the OO.o format. I agree that MS and others have shown both that you can obfuscate XML with binary/encrypted/encoded enclosures & that patents can make even what can be decyphered unusable (and non-open).

the idea that its "understandable" in vi.

Unzip an OO.o file & look in content.xml.

XML documents can also have binary in them (for instance images)

OO.o stores these in an 'Pictures' directory. Filenames are obfuscated, but extensions arent & you can open them in an external program.

and of course if you don't have the schema to go with the document then you don't know the constraints on the structure and order of elements.

For OO.o, it is.

MS could use (and I think does) XML to describe their documents, if however they keep the schema secret, use binary imports or just create massively complex multi-namespace documents then it will still be as closed as ever.

I agree & yes, they do this (though not in doc, which is their primary format).

There are others with bad implementations of XML, so that even though they don't obfuscate or patent-encumber them, interoperability is painful.

But OO.o XML is fine.

Where do I send COMMENTS on the proposal?

[dpbsmith]

It say it's a proposal and it's open for public comment. But neither TFA nor the Financial Times article gives the address to which the public can send comments.

Anyone have it?

Re:PDF?

[ajs318]

Thank you. Now please show me a link to the source code, in order that I can subject it to independent scrutiny before compiling it for one of my own machines; or at the very least, show me a suitable bootstrap loader which I can burn, along with Word documents I wish to view, to a CD-RW and be able to launch the application on one of my AMD-based machines {it should be safe to run unaudited software with no hard disk and no network connection}.

Screenshots would be nice too.

Mod me down, I'm stating the obvious

[lokedhs]

But the best thing to come otu of this will most likely by that MS Office will finally support a real open format.

Open format reader

[Yankel]

Like the PDF reader -- it could already exist for Windows (haven't checked SourceForge lately). In fact, I know some of the PDF readers for Linux can already read the OASIS format.

Who says that a small downloadable app couldn't be developed for Windows as well?

Like everyone's been saying, having an open format leaves your options open. You don't need to download an entire application, and even if you did, you'd have a choice of which application.

2007 is still over a year away....

[fitten]

Plenty of time for Microsoft to add any number of open formats to the MSOffice suite (not like there aren't already some in there... pure text, for example, or csv, etc.)

However, I agree that all public government documents should be stored in open formats, regardless of the software used to generate the them.

A4

[taobill]

Now all we need is for some bright state to mandate that all state documents must be on standard A4 paper (like the rest of the world uses) instead of that ridiculous Letter size paper.

In the long run it should save a lot of money and, more importantly, resource.

Acrobat isn't so bad...but inside the browser?

[Karl Cocknozzle]

f your pdf viewer is slow, I would guess that you are still using Acrobat reader version 5.x or 6.x. Acrobat reader 7.x is much faster, at least for me either on Solaris or Mac OS X.

Yeah, well, the Windows version is not as much of an improvement. And although acrobat reader is a slow loader, the REAL chore is when you make the mistake of clicking on a PDF on a web-page and its trying to display through your browser--ug. Just agonizing. Painfully slow. I almost always just kill the process, go back, and save the file to my desktop.

Re:Acrobat isn't so bad...but inside the browser?

[ratsg]

Yeah, well, the Windows version is not as much of an improvement. And although acrobat reader is a slow loader, the REAL chore is when you make the mistake of clicking on a PDF on a web-page and its trying to display through your browser--ug. Just agonizing. Painfully slow. I almost always just kill the process, go back, and save the file to my desktop.

Sorry to hear that you are having problems with Acrobat reader 7 on windows. Why I haven't used any ms products myself in over 10 years, I had formed the opinion from reading other post that Acrobat Reader had improved in the windows environment also. Obviously not for everyone.

I know in the unix/unix clone environment there are several other alternative products for working with pdf's. And there is certainly no shortage in the Mac OS X environment.

Are there not any non-Adobe Acrobat pdf utilities in the windows environment?

Come on now ...

[Kozz]

... you know that any official/legal notice will be sent by US mail, certified mail, or delivered by hand.

I can't recall the first or last time any government agency gave me an official document ONLY in an electronic format.

Re:Come on now ...

[jc42]

... 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.

Perhaps..

[MaGGuN]

this was the spur, as proposed in the comments then.

For the same reason it has always been...

[gosand]

I understand that Microsoft wants to keep the files that Office creates in a closed format. But, in order to prevent this sort of thing from happening, why not offer an open format as an option in the "Save As" dialog box?

For the same reason they didn't offer open formats in the first place.

How do they prevent it from happening? Strongarm or shady business practices. Just like always.

Home User Access?

[Tharian]

Given Microsoft's stance of how many pirated copies of Office are floating out in the world, will any of those home users actually be able to open and read the OO.o formats?

Yes, they'll be able to read the PDF files fine, but most home users will not want to have to deal with having to unzip an .sxw extension and may not even realize that's how they could view the file anyway (all this assuming they do not have OO.o already).

Re:PDF?

[Cthefuture]

I was thinking more along of the lines of someone using MS Office then outputting it to PDF in order to be compliant (maybe this comes from an out-of-state agency like the federal government). So although they would be compliant, no one could edit or otherwise revise that document in the future without MS Office.

Now for the rest of them:

[callipygian-showsyst]

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."

Now it's time to replace all government suppliers with people who would work for free! Why pay money for stop signs and lines on the roads? Just give high school students a paintbrush and a can of paint! They can paint their own lines and make signs.

And why waste money paying policemen? Find a local militia group that would be happy to control your town, free of charge?

And schoolteachers are so expensive and whine a lot about being underpaid! Fire them all, and get volunteers to teach the kids, or better yet, tell everyone to homeschool.

Re:Now for the rest of them:

[bunratty]

Now it's time to replace all government suppliers with people who would work for free!

Most of the programmers who work on OpenOffice don't work for free. They're full-time Sun and Novell employees who are paid to work on OpenOffice as part of their jobs. The author of the article was incorrect in assuming that free software means software made by people who work for free.

Non Issue

[suitepotato]

The majority of PC users use Windows, those who don't have the ability to read most MS Office documents, and MS Office products have had the ability to save in earlier well documented formats not to mention RTF, CSV, etc. forever now.

If there's a semi-mythical complaint in desktop support for me, it has to be that "I can't open this proprietary document format" complaint. In over ten years I haven't gotten that once. The last time was a WordPerfect file in 1994 and the file was generated four years earlier.

Next thing you know, we'll hear whining and moaning aimed at Adobe for any nonstandard tchotchkes put into their PDF files. Why does it have to be up to the software vendors to correct the mistakes of those saving the files when they screw up by not saving in the most widely compatible format in the first place which they should have known to do since their very first PC using position?!

Re:PDF?

[Joehonkie]

PDF suppots fillable forms... But it would be lousy for internal documents that need to be changed, so I agree with you.

OpenDocument or OpenOffice?

[tapo]

Any idea if "OpenOffice Formats" relates to the OpenOffice (.sxw, etc) filetype used in the 1.x series, or if they'll be using the OpenDocument standard that becomes OpenOffice's default format in the 2.x series?

Re:OpenDocument or OpenOffice?

[gradix]

OpenDocument KOffice and all the others will be ok too.

Re:Not quite

[vidarh]

RTFA. They are proposing to mandate OpenDocument and PDF. Reading/writing html or RTF wouldn't help. So unless Microsoft adds OpenDocument and PDF support they are tossing out MS.

Of course, until 2007 is more than enough time for MS to add OpenDocument support if they'd risk losing too much.

Re:PDF?

[richlv]

that would be pretty stupid :)
i assume that od explicitly would be used for cases when user is supposed to edit the document afterwards.

overall, if such a decision stands, it would be really good precedent. given the importance of information today, it is saddening that this is not a common practice.

Free CDs?

[makomk]

I wonder if they'll do something similar to my local library. It has a CD-ROM with OpenOffice on that you can borrow (for free) and install on your home computer - presumably for people without broadband.

Re:PDF?

[Johnny Mnemonic]

If Preview had better annotatin facilities

Not knowing exactly what you mean by "better", but preview in 10.4 now allows you to add "stickies" to a pdf, as well as to circle selections in red. Both persist through a save/open.

I haven't used Acrobat's annotate tools enough to know how they're better--I'm sure they are, but perhaps Preview's are now sufficient. It's much faster, and I think has a faster search too.

party like you're in Massachusetts

[se7en11]

Did anyone read the title and hope Massachusetts had just come up with new office party ideas?

Dunking the boss in old beer is starting to get a little stale.

The bookstore failed.

[tepples]

This reminds me of when I took a unix course in college. The teacher put all the course materials in openoffice format, which was great.. except anyone wanting to read them had to download an 80meg file installer first.

So why wasn't the school bookstore distributing copies of OOo on CD-R for $10 a piece?

Office 2003 Supports XML Just Fine

[DavidD_CA]

Why is this State wasting so much taxpayers' money by investing in the cost to change systems? Granted, they'll save about $200 per station by not buying an Office license, but that's hardly offset by the cost of training their staff on new software and the temporary drop of productivity.

Instead, why not just pick any of the following options:

1) Use HTML as a standard, and use the tools they've already paid for to create HTML documents (Word, FrontPage) which require no new learning. You may say Word/FP suck, but we're not talking any fancy documents here.

2) Use XML as a standard, which like #1 is already supported fully but Office 2003 (Word, Excel, and the others can read/write XML just fine).

3) Use RTF as a standard. It may not be pretty, but it's open and cheap and darned quick.

4) If all else fails, buy the $20 add-on program so you can save your Office documents as a PDF file.

The State of California publishes everything in HTML or PDF format, and I don't hear anyone complaining about inabilities to open documents.

Re:Office 2003 Supports XML Just Fine

[srobert]

"Why is this State wasting so much taxpayers' money by investing in the cost to change systems?"

The articles cited here seem to be confused about what Massachusetts is really requiring. So alook at the state's own website reveals this:
http://www.mass.gov/portal/index.jsp?pageID=itdter minal&L=3&L0=Home&L1=Policies%2C+Standards+%26+Leg al&L2=Drafts+for+Review&sid=Aitd&b=terminalcontent &f=policies_standards_ETRM_v3dot5draft_information &csid=Aitd
If I read it correctly they are only requiring that state documents be available in standardized open formats, thus avoiding proprietary vendor lock for both offices of the state and for the citizens of the state who desire to view such documents. This is in the long term a money saver for Massachusetts' taxpayers. I would hope that other state and local governments follow suit. Actually, they are following somewhat what you outlined in your post regarding XML and PDF formats. Microsoft Office will still be usable for state employees. But Microsoft will have to compete on a level playing field with other software providers. The move will also assure that state data will not be lost, in the event that proprietary formats change without backward compatibility.
The state positioning itself to have vendors compete to provide the software will more than offset the training costs or temporary loss in productivity. These costs are no more when switching from Microsoft Office to Star Office or Open Office, than when upgrading to newer versions of Microsoft Office.

Re:Office 2003 Supports XML Just Fine

[Just Some Guy]

1) Use HTML as a standard

Which version? How do you embed formulas? How do you embed graphics? What archive format will you use to pack the whole mess up for distribution?

2) Use XML as a standard

Opendocument is a standardized XML representation, so I guess Mass. agrees with you completely.

3) Use RTF as a standard.

Does RTF support everything that Mass. may wish to embed in a document?

4) If all else fails, buy the $20 add-on program so you can save your Office documents as a PDF file.

Sounds good! Now you just need to make free PDF editors available to all your citizenry so that they can return completed forms to you.

I forget; what was your point again?

Re:Office 2003 Supports XML Just Fine

[MenTaLguY]

Use XML as a standard, which like [HTML] is already supported fully but Office 2003 (Word, Excel, and the others can read/write XML just fine).

I suspect you misunderstand what XML is. XML, in and of itself, is just a metasyntax. It doesn't really compare to HTML or RTF.

You could almost just as easily say "Use binary data as a standard, which like HTML is already supported fully but Office 2003 (Word, Excel, and the others can read/write binary data just fine)."

Which would be true, as far as it goes. Nearly all programs can read some form of binary data.

Similarly, just because two programs use some XML-based format doesn't mean they're automatically interoperable.

Re:Office 2003 Supports XML Just Fine

[DavidD_CA]

A good point indeed, but since Office's XML format is open, others can easily write programs that work with it, create and read documents, etc. It's not closed and proprietary.

The format really is no different (in function or usability) than what Open Office or any other OSS program would save as.

But correct me if I'm wrong.

Re:Office 2003 Supports XML Just Fine

[Just Some Guy]

RSS is a perfect example of an open standard that quickly got muddled with versions.

Not really. RSS is RSS because everyone and their pet ferret came up with their own subtly different version to address perceived shortcomings. On the other hand, there is 1 (one) Opendocument standard.

Agreed, which is why they should just stick with MS Office (which they've apparently already purchased) and save as XML instead. Problem solved.

[...]

You're pushing OSS for all the wrong reasons. It's not because it's cheaper or open, it's because it's not Microsoft.

Do you get paid to say that, or did you come up with it on your own? Understand this: Word DOC files are not an open standard. You may cry, whine, plead, and insist all you want, but they're not. Full stop. If Office would adopt an open format, then it would make a perfectly acceptable tool for government interaction with that portion of the population that can't afford or use Office. That is not the situation today, so Office is not an acceptable option.

And preventing the public from sending the government a .DOC format, which 90% of the business are already accustomed to, is a better idea?

I don't care what weird format the government chooses to accept in addition to the open standards. I heartily care which format they choose to transmit their information.

Re:Office 2003 Supports XML Just Fine

[DavidD_CA]

Forgive my ignorance, but can I (or the other 99% of people out there) easily open and create an OpenDoc file without learning a new program or installing new software?

It's annoying enough that I must have a PDF reader to open PDF files that people send me. I'd be pissed if I had to load OpenOffice or some other free application just to read my jury summons.

Further, the 1 (one) OpenDocument standard that you speak of is so new that according to Wikipedia has only had a program that creates the files since June of this year. How is that a standard?

Does OpenOffice even fully support this "standard" yet?

I never claimed that Word docs are an open standard. I *am* claiming that Office files are a closed-standard that the majority of people can open, read, write, and use without installing anything on their computer. And don't free viewers exist for people who don't buy Office.

My whole argument is to consider the inconvinence to all of the people involved against the minor savings of not buying Office licenses.

Re:Office 2003 Supports XML Just Fine

[Just Some Guy]

I *am* claiming that Office files are a closed-standard that the majority of people can open, read, write, and use without installing anything on their computer. And don't free viewers exist for people who don't buy Office.

You don't get it. There is no version of Office or the free reader available for my system. It's much, much easier for you to download Open Office (for free), or get a free copy from the government (which they'd be legally allowed to give out) than for me to buy a new computer just to run MS Office.

If they were foolish enough to mandate MS Office as the official standard for incoming data, then that free reader turns into an expensive full-blown MS Office install. How convenient is that for Joe Taxpayer who wants to reply to his jury summons?

Re:Office 2003 Supports XML Just Fine

[Just Some Guy]

But correct me if I'm wrong.

You're wrong. Sorry for creating yet another followup thread, but the general consensus (which is all we have, barring a court ruling on the matter) is that the MS license is wholly incompatible with any Free Software licenses, meaning that not just anyone can write a parser for their files.

Re:Office 2003 Supports XML Just Fine

[killjoe]

"Agreed, which is why they should just stick with MS Office (which they've apparently already purchased) and save as XML instead. Problem solved. No need to have the Boston Office Party."

MS XML formats are proprietary, and have both patent and copyright limitations on them. Plus they can be locked via DRM. Try to open up those sample PPT files that MS provides you in open office for example. You can't because of DRM.

MS formats are locked so that only MS products can open them. IF you bypass the DRM then you can go to jail under the DMCA and MS can sue for patent violations.

MS XML formats are not open.

Maybe because he actually thinks?

[Mr. Underbridge]

I know you're being sarcastic, but Sun deserves the flak it gets from the OSS community. Scott McNealy has spoken out against OSS on numerous occasions, which is weird for a company that supports OSS in several different ways.

Maybe it means *gasp* that he actually has a brain and critical thinking skills, and intelligently discusses the pros/cons of OSS as opposed to drinking the kool-aid and spouting propaganda?

Re:Maybe because he actually thinks?

[digidave]

No, McNealy has universally condemned Open Source as a bad idea. It's one thing to explain why Open Source isn't right for Java, but it is right for OpenOffice, and it's quite another thing to pretend you don't open source anything and say bad things about the whole OSS community.

"Closed" formats are a pain.

[xmorg]

As a BSD user, I had to wipe my aunts computer due to virus's. After hours of scanning the computer wouldnt boot up.

Now each of her Works Documents have to be opened in the free "Word Viewer" copied and pasted into OpenOffice because she does not have the original software.

In response to PDF's being "closed", they may be owned by adobe, but at LEAST there is more than one way to view them, and they can be viewed and printed from any computer on a number of different applications. Also Adobe does offer Acrobat reader in some form or another for most systems.

Put it this way: a pdf or a wps of unknown version made in works?

Re:This will just confuse people

[trmcdougle]

No, Try HTML or Plain old ASCII text if you truly want compatability.

Region coding?

[tepples]

If they do this, their software will meet the Massachusetts requirement, and everyone can be happy.

That is, unless Microsoft uses legal and/or technical means to "region code" the OOo compatible version of Microsoft Office to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

For everything else...

[fahrbot-bot]

Building your data center...

• LAMP server - $5,000 dollars
• Configuration - $1,000 dollars
• Software - $0 dollars
  
  
• Ignoring Microsoft - Priceless.

There are some things money can't buy, for everything else...

Not likely...

[Digital_Quartz]

Most corporations like having someone they can go to for support. If open office crashes and burns on you, all you can do is post a bug repot and hope someone fixes it soon.

Right now it's an "open-format" vs. "accountability" tradeoff. If MS supported open formats, that would change in favor of MS, for most companies.

Re:Not likely...

[jubei]

But the funny thing is that if there is a bug in a closed-source program, there usually is nothing you can do about it. Users learn to work around the problems.

Unfortunately, companies fall for the illusion of accountability and support provided by major software vendors.

Re:Not likely...

[killjoe]

Yea, word crashed on me once and filed a bug report. Then MS sent two engineers to my house to try and figure out what happened. I served them some beers and ordered a pizza after about 10 hours but eventually found the problem. Apparently there was a bug in a DLL. Well the engineers just fixed the bug and installed the new DLL in my system and everything was hunky dory. I even had some leftover pizza for the next day.

MS rules man. If word crashes they will fix it right away.

Re:Not likely...

[Bert64]

If openoffice crashes on you, you can report a bug and watch the progress as it's fixed...
Alternatively, you can buy staroffice from sun, or sun will even sell you support for openoffice now. If you want paid support for openoffice, you can get it from several vendors including sun, if you don't want to pay you don't have to..
Contrast this to the microsoft approach, where you pay for the software, and then pay extra for support. I know many people and companies who use msoffice, and none of them have ever filed a bug report, they're more likely to find a nasty kludgy workaround because they realise that reporting bugs to microsoft is a fruitless exercise.. Just recently a colleague of mine encountered a nasty bug in the line counting functions when writing word macros... a google search revealed that the bug has been known for 8 years and never fixed. When you file a bug report, you hear nothing about it, you can't see the status of the bug, you can't track the development process and you can't fix it yourself.

This would be more interesting

[PickyH3D]

If it was not done by one of the most liberal states in the nation. I saw this coming years ago and once Arnold leaves Cali, it will probably happen there too.

Open Sauce?

[Martigan80]

lot of people live in Massachusetts and that is a big thumbs up for open sauce.

Does this mean that Heinz and Kraft are giving away their secret recipes?

Re:Is this really about open standards?

[Doctor Faustus]

Specifically, here:
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/ind ex_reference.html

makes no sense..

[mottie]

if they are worried about the public being able to read the documents OO doesnt seem like the right choice? are there viewer applications for OO without having to download/install the whole program? There are free viewer applications for all office 2003 products. chances of someone having OO installed vs microsoft office are slim (not to mention recognizing some crazy file extension vs .doc). Quite a few people I know have asked me how to open certain files they have received and they have turned out to be OO docs. Are there import filters for microsoft office? Can you view them in wordpad? Yes I realize that there are PDF readers everywhere, but that's only half of the solution.

Re:makes no sense..

[binford2k]

And what happens when the free viewers no longer exist, eh? Can you unzip a doc and still read the text? Yeah, I think someone doesn't understand open formats.

Re:makes no sense..

[mottie]

it's great that the format is open, but if a home user can't open the file, and has no idea what the file extension stands for it's pretty pointless. The people who have forwarded me OO files have assumed they were viruses based on their wonky file extensions. Rather than answer any of my questions you've just posted an emotion based "challenge" eh? Can they be opened in Wordpad? Are there import filters/OO viewers?

Re:makes no sense..

[SnarfQuest]

What happens when you want to open an old Word document with the current version? You are probably going to have problems doing that. OpenOffice deals with older versions of Word documents better than Word does.

You will never find any import options in Word for OO documents. That would help enable competition for the market, and MicroSoft is against that. Word is their current cash cow, and they are not going to do anything to harm their lock-down of users.

Re:makes no sense..

[mottie]

Have never seen a backwards compatibility problem with office. That's not my point, i'm not saying office is better, i'm saying that OO needs to be more accessible to the end user who has never seen it before. lightweight viewers, converters (can these not be written FOR office by opensource developers?), etc.

Re:makes no sense..

[binford2k]

You're still missing the point and there's no "emotion based challenge."

It's not whether a home user can open the file easily today. That's irrelevant. It's whether it CAN be opened at all if the company providing the free viewer stops providing that free viewer. In 25 years, will you be able to find a viewer to open word97 docs? It's doubtful.

OpenDocument, however, is an open format. It's plain text. Anyone can read the text by unzipping the file and opening the text up with any text editor. Because of this, it doesn't matter what happens to Sun (the company developing StarOffice/OpenOffice).

As long as ASCII or Unicode is still around, you could still open an OpenDocument file and read the text, even if it's 500 years in the future and Microsoft is only a footnote in some dusty old history book.

Re:makes no sense..

[mottie]

great, so users can open the document in 500 years but 99% of them can't figure out how to open it right now. that's perfect.

people need to stop talking about how great open standards are, and make them work for end users. the fact that the average slashdot reader can open the files doesn't help anything.

We're arguing about two completely different subjects. You keep bashing your head against the wall saying "open standards!" whereas i'm actually talking about the ability to open documents NOW. My grandma doesn't care if someone can open a document in 500 years, and she doesn't know how to unzip a file, or whether ASCII is still around.

Re:makes no sense..

[binford2k]

I wasn't aware we were arguing.

Regardless of the mode of discussion, people more intelligent that you have already explained why proprietary formats are a bad thing. You should go inform yourself before digging yourself in deeper.

Have a nice day.

Re:makes no sense..

[mottie]

As I've said numerous times now.. No where did I say that proprietary formats were good. I simply said that OO formats need to become more accessible. Users typically only remember their first few reactions to a program/format. If their impression is "I couldn't figure out how to open it" when someone asks them about OO, that's all they are going to tell them. keep on bashing your head against the wall tho, i think it's working.

Re:makes no sense..

[msuarezalvarez]

You may have missed this, but: people -are- working in order to make them work for end users.

Re:makes no sense..

[The Cisco Kid]

There may be free 'viewer applications' for MS-Word files *for Windows* but not so much for non-MS OS platforms. I dont advocate using any specific application's file format for distributing documents - rather a generic format than anyone can (and has) written software to read.

I don't have it.

[doublem]

At least, I didn't have it until I installed a licensed copy of Adobe Acrobat Standard.

The Adobe PDF printer you're seeing was added by a third party application, probably some flavor of Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional. I don't know what other Adobe products also add a PDF printer driver. Photoshop might, and I'm pretty sure Illustrator does as well.

No, it's not part of Windows XP, and the only way to (legally) get it is to buy the necessary software from Adobe.

Some demo versions of Adobe software may have a bug that results in the PDF Printer remaining behind after an uninstall, or after the demo expires. That could be another way you got the option.

But no, the rank and file Windows XP users do not have a PDF Printer available by default in either the Home or Professional editions.

Re:I don't have it.

[doublem]

Oh, I know there are plenty of free options. My point was that there are no PDF creators built into XP and installed by default.

Not a movie

[doublem]

"Real" "Butter" (TM)

Dude, that wasn't a movie.

They sell that stuff at the local supermarket.

Re:Not a movie

[bentcd]

I remember seeing "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" (also TM I'm sure) when I was in the UK, but that's about it. In Norway, we either get only real butter or else our laws are so lax they can call even synthetic butter simply "butter" :-)

It might be that I saw it in some US series or a movie as a bit of product placement. I am quite sure it was a satirical piece though, so probably not.

"Open Standards"

[Justifiable_Delusion]

Since when is Adobe's PDF an "Open standard" that can be read by all of the people? Mass. has no true indication that Adobe will allow its reader to be free for all and forever...

hrmppphh....grandstanding you might say.

Re:"Open Standards"

[Anonymous Coward]

There are probably parts of PDF that are propietary or undocumented (special features), but basic PDF is just compressed postscript.

There are LOTS of open source readers for PDF that work well.

Re:"Open Standards"

[tangledweb]

"Since when is PDF an open standard?" Since 1993, that's when.

You can download the specification:
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/ind ex_reference.html

or buy it on paper:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321 304748/

it seeems to me ...

[Savage-Rabbit]

... that the state of Massachusetts bottom line is not just cost. They are arguing that open file formats = democracy and closed file formats don't which makes sense to me. A citizen should not be forced to invest money in proprietary software because that is the only way he/she can read official documentation. The current situation of publishing official electronic documentation in *.doc, *.xls or some other closed file format is akin to making law books publically available for free or at worst a small nominal fee but printing them in such a way that you must buy special glasses that can only be purchased from company X in order to read them. People take it for granted that laws and other such documents are publically available to anybody at minimal cost when the medium is paper and ink, why should any citizen have to shell out several hundred dollars for a MS Office suite in order to read the exact same material on his computer?

Re:it seeems to me ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding your last statement:
    When I first encountered a PDF file on the web I wondered why it was not a plain text file which anyone could read regardless of OS. It was three times larger than any other file format and I had to go hunting for a program to install and view the file. I've hated Adobe PDF format ever since.
It IMHO it is a useless waste of hard drive space. The only reason I install any version of it is to view some dumb ass file from the likes of Symantec and others who bought into this crap.

Re:it seeems to me ...

[heatdeath]

They are arguing that open file formats = democracy and closed file formats don't which makes sense to me.

whether or not the file format is "open" says nothing about whether it costs to use it. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think using microsoft word for publishing documents that just really don't need it is a frustrating habit that many people have, and it's nice to see someone recognizing it.

But besides that, the irony of all of this is that by 2007, office will be using standards-based file formats, so I'm guessing the "readable by openoffice" clause will mean that most of the documents are still put out in microsoft word, as long as openoffice manages to support the xml formatted documents by then.

Re:it seeems to me ...

[Avenging Sloth 337]

Since when do you have to shell out big bucks to read MS Office documents? MS itself provides free viewers for all their formats.

1. Well, that's true - now. What makes you think it will be true forever? Is MS somehow obligated to continue providing viewers for free?
2. What about 10 years down the road? Will their viewers be backward compatible, or will you have to hunt down a ten year old version of the viewer?

Furthermore, the next version of MS Office will have open formats.

Please provide some evidence of this. I frankly don't believe it for a minute. While the upcoming Office file formats will be XML based, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the format will be open. Unless I've missed the boat entirely (which is certainly possible), it's my understanding that the "open" XML documents will contain lots of binary information understandable only by Office and decidedly not open.

Also, since when is open source a guarantee that a file format will be around forever? It seems to me the opposite is true.

If that's the way it seems to you, then you aren't thinking too clearly. Open source definitely guarantees that a file format will be around forever because the source will be around forever. In the absolute worst case, you would need to find a dusty old version of the app in question, and compile it yourself. However, I can't see how that worst case could ever happen since I'm assuming that the document format would be open as well as the application source. Think about it for a minute. If the source code of the application that produces and consumes the documents is open, then how in the hell would the document format be closed?!

It seems to me like Massachussett's decision is based more on politicking than anything else.

I suspect that this could very well be true, but I don't have enough first hand knowledge of the situation to come to any definite conclusion.

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.

Re:it seeems to me ...

[talaper]

so I'm guessing they're going to use a few dozen unpaid interns to do the grunt work?

I can see it now...

1) get a Mac
2) open up Word doc #1 (or whatever)
3) print to pdf
4) open up Word doc #2
5) print to pdf
6) open up Word doc #3
7) print to pdf
.
.
2462) open up Word doc #1231
2463) print to pdf

I don't envy their work!

Re:it seeems to me ...

[trewornan]

Furthermore, the next version of MS Office will have open formats.

Ah - you mean the allegedly open format which will allegedly be used by the next version of MS Office, under a license which is yet to be revealed but will allegedly be a "free license" in the way that MS choses to interpret "free license".

Re:it seeems to me ...

[shywolf9982]

Well, actually you don't purchase software. You are licensed to use it.

Re:it seeems to me ...

[cojsl]

Along the same lines: Peachtree accounting software- There are 4?? "levels" of Peachtree 2004. I created my file in the "level 1" version I bought. After my accountant edited the file in "level 4", my "level 1" wouldn't open it, instead demanding that I have at least "level 3". I understand not accessing the extra features of higher levels, but not being able to make basic GL entries?!?! I ended up buying "level 3". Every time peachtree sends me upgrade offers, I angrilly throw them in the trash.

Re:it seeems to me ...

[jmulvey]

The union is already filing a grievance about this. You should have seen their reaction when the first xerographic copier was rolled into a state office.

Re:it seeems to me ...

[arodland]

How about because... not everything in the world actually consists of plain text? A PDF is three times larger than a comparable text file because it contains about twenty times as much information. What really pisses me off is when people use PDF for documents that aren't meant to be printed. :)

Re:it seeems to me ...

[dcam]

This is one of the issues about software that either updates from the web or requires authentications from the web. What happens when the servers go down or the version is no longer supported?

I had a slightly similar situation. I bought a cable (which included some software) a little while ago so that I could connect and sync the contacts in my phone and my palm pilot (via my laptop).

The default install of the software didn't sync with outlook, however if you did a web update (windows update style), it added in a connector.

Fast track to two years later when I reinstall. It turns out that the company that made the software has turned itself into something else and no longer supports the software. They have taken the server(s) down. Phone support from the makers of the phone, they have no more recent version of the software other than what shipped with the cable.

In your case I'd have just spent some time hunting for a crack for the software.

Re:it seeems to me ...

[algf2004]

That's extortion...This was not an arragement I agreed to when I bought the software

It is definitely extortion, but

Having no choice, I did (buy it)

You object to the extortion, but then submit to it? Take the company to small claims court and sue for every expense that you incurred just to get your data back. Big businesses that use this method to extort more money from loyal customers deserve to get sued. But I think they will continue to do it until enough people fight back.

Re:it seeems to me ...

[PriceIke]

I don't think you understand. It was tax season and I had to have *immediate* access to my business' data so my accountant could begin working on my taxes. I understand what you're saying but with an IRS deadline looming, I didn't have time to fight this.

Re:it seeems to me ...

[Long-EZ]

I've been running QuickBooks Pro 2000 under Linux, using CrossOver (the commercial version of Wine). It's ugly, but it works. The user interface is messed up but the data integrity seems fine.

I've fought a lot of battles with Intuit's copy protection scheme which seems to be designed to force users to upgrade, even if their current version meets all their needs.

It's particularly bad when I'm compelled to buy an upgrade to the latest version of QB that doesn't work under Linux. Of course, they refuse to provide any native Linux support. They have a huge captive herd of Windows cows, and they want to keep all their cows in the DRM pen.

Intuit got a lot of bad press when they released a version of TurboTax three years ago that installed a ton of adware crap and was generally as invasive as spyware. It shows the kind of company they really are. They view customers as profit resources to be managed.

Intuit's copy protection scheme makes it impossible to sell used copies of QuickBooks (or, apparently upgrade your computer). It also allows Intuit to decide when it's time to force their customers to pay for another upgrade.

They've definitely alienated enough of us that we're just chomping at the bit to switch to any reasonable alternative. Unfortunately, it's notoriously difficult to escape from proprietary data formats. I've tried to compell the makers of CrossOver to fully support QuickBooks, including signing up to pay money for the improved support. I keep telling them that QuickBooks is the application that is keeping a lot of small businesses locked into Windows because there are already good alternatives for all the other big Windows apps, but nobody is going to enter all their accounting data again. It's massive. But the rossOver guys would apparently rather support Internet Explorer or Word running under Linux, even though Mozilla/Firefox and OpenOffice are better native Linux alternatives. Where are the alternatives to QuickBooks? Once your data is in their format, you're hosed.

I was pleased last year to see that GnuCash, the open source version of Quicken, has added enough small business features to allow many small businesses to use it for all their accounting. I'd definitely start with GnuCash if I were starting a small business today. There is enough demand that I'm hoping to see someone develop a data import routine to allow me to move my company data from QuickBooks to GnuCash soon. QB is the only proprietary software my small business uses. We were Massachusetts compliant, five years before the deadline! I'm looking forward to being free of QuickBooks.

Re:it seeems to me ...

[algf2004]

I'm sorry if my previous comment sounded a bit rude - I wasn't trying to be. I did understand your situation; I was just making a commentary on how companies abuse the customers that keep them in business.

I work as an accounting clerk and I definitely understand the situation you were in. It's unfortunate. If it wasn't for all those double-entry bookkeeping rules, I'd personally stick with a spreadsheet :)

Re:it seeems to me ...

[Bert64]

Same thing has happened to me, but with discontinued software that the vendor will no longer support in any way shape or form..
In your case, i would have pirated the latest quickbooks, converted my data to some other format (if possible) and imported it into some other app.. and then never given intuit any more of my money in the future.

Re:it seeems to me ...

[ninewands]

Quoth the poster:

MS itself provides free viewers for all their formats.

Provided you run Windows. I have not seen Microsoft provide free viewers for OS X, Solaris, Linux or FreeBSD.

Also, since when is open source a guarantee that a file format will be around forever? It seems to me the opposite is true.

Open source is not a guarantee that the file format will be supported forever but open formats are because anyone who wants to can implement the format for whatever platform they need it for, whether it be Linux or Windows 2050.

It seems to me like Massachussett's decision is based more on politicking than anything else.

It seems to me that Massachussetts's decision was based on the theory that governments should provide official documents in formats that can be read by the largest percentage of citizens possible, and that governments should opt for the least expensive (OpenOffice.org is, after all, FREE) way of doing business so as to save the taxpayers' money. After all, there is NO reason Microsoft can't support the Open Document standard in their products too, although I doubt that they can be very cost-competitive with OpenOffice.org. They may, if they wish, sell Office for the price Sun charges for Star Office ... IIRC, it's US$75.00 per seat.

You missed the point

[Just Some Guy]

That's right. Because we all know that government's never do anything beneficial to the community

avalys didn't argue that the government should provide less services. He stated that the government providing those services more cheaply saves the taxpayers' money. Surely we can all agree that regardless of what level of service we think they should handle, we want them doing it as efficiently as possible, right?

You started defending against an attack that was never made. Re-read what he said and I think you'd have to agree with his conclusion.

Re:You missed the point

[gowen]

If he really meant what you say, I do agree.

I still don't read it like that though (the line about "takes money by force" tells me exactly where he's coming from.)

Not really

[JavaRob]

Generating simple PDFs has been possible for a while now (even before OS X had it on every print dialog!), but Acrobat isn't going anywhere yet.

Making PDFs with embedded forms is a pretty common requirement; I think you need Acrobat to make those forms. There's also stuff with digitally signing documents, password protection, preventing/enabling printing, editing, highlighting, commenting, etc..

In theory (afaik) because PDF is an open format, other developers could implement the Acrobat featureset... but maybe Adobe has that locked down. Maybe you have to make an agreement with them if you use the PDF format... I'm sure they're pretty darn careful about what they give away -- Acrobat is a cash cow for them.

A non-IT perspective

[Descalzo]

As an elementary teacher, we have already begun to have problems with this sort of thing. I want to edit the text for our big assembly we want to put on each year, but if I am going to do that, I have to pay $50 for the latest license, or else my copy of Word (only like 2 years old) crashes when I try to save. I can think of a lot of things to use that $50 for.

Only problem now is that OpenOffice.org doesn't yet have a native version for the Smackintosh (you can't copy and paste between the Web and OO.o), and Appleworks SUCKS.

Re:A non-IT perspective

[SpaceLifeForm]

Can't you copy the file(s) to a windows box that has OpenOffice.org?

Even better, install YellowDog Linux on one of your Macs, install OO on that, transfer file(s) via net or floppy!

Re:A non-IT perspective

[Descalzo]

Now, that is something I would like to do, but our attendance software is strictly OSX and Windows, and it isn't worth the hassle right now to dual boot. We solved the compatibility problem by making sure we save in compatible formats. It's still a pain. Anyway, I have noticed issues opening Word documents in OpenOffice, especially when I use tables.

I have thought about it, though. In fact I just got a couple of iMacs, and am thinking of slapping Linux on there. Thanks for the recommendation of Yellow Dog.

Re:A non-IT perspective

[Bert64]

There is NeoOffice/J, a native port of openoffice 1.x to mac, openoffice 2.x is quite a way off however..

The Boston Free Party

[Locutus]

This is great news and one which I'll be sure to pass on to my local and state IT officials. After all, how many politicians like to be first at anything.

This might be the proverbial "barn door" opener we've been working towards.

Be sure of one thing though, Microsoft will not take this sitting down. No matter how long they've already been working on this.

LoB

PDF open?

[jxyama]

Is PDF "open"? Except for the fact Adobe distributes PDF Reader for free, how is it different from .doc format?

Re:PDF open?

[bXTr]

Same way that Java is "open". The specs have been published so that anyone and their family pet can create and/or render PDF. e.g. GhostScript.

Re:PDF open?

[Craig Ringer]

Here's the The Adobe PDF reference, for if you want to implement applications that use PDF. In particular, you might want to read Section 1.5 of the PDF Reference, "Intellectual Property". In summary, it says that they'll enforce their copyright on the PDF specification in order to keep the standard accurate, but grant you the right to implement the standard pretty much however you like.

Some apps that do so, without licensing the Adobe PDf libraries or tools, include:

GhostScript
OpenOffice.org
Scribus
Mac OS X
(specifically the window system, print system, and Preview tool) ... and *LOTS* more, including evince, xpdf, kpdf, libpoppler, and other open source PDF viewing tools/libs, several reporting libraries like ReportLab, etc.

HTML?

[Prof. Pi]

Use HTML as a standard, and use the tools they've already paid for to create HTML documents (Word, FrontPage) which require no new learning.

Since when did Word and Frontpage start producing HTML? (Or even ASCII?)

Re:HTML?

[DavidD_CA]

If that's intended to be humorous, then ha ha.

But otherwise, Word has had mediocre HTML export capabilities since 2000. It's been able to export as TXT since the first version. :P

As for FrontPage, many people scoff at it for website development, but since 2002 it has really become quite a powerful editor. I've taken websites that were quite mangled by DreamWeaver and cleaned them up considerably in FrontPage 2003.

Re:HTML?

[Prof. Pi]

As for FrontPage, many people scoff at it for website development, but since 2002 it has really become quite a powerful editor.

That it may be, but it still doesn't produce HTML. By default, it doesn't even produce legal ASCII.

Re:HTML?

[Seraphim_72]

Word has had mediocre HTML export capabilities since 2000.

HA HA HA HA HA! Mediocre?? Try horse shite, and it is getting worse with each new upgrade. I have users that insist on using it to produce html from word and power point all the time. Bloated hideous code that is horrible to maintain and breaks every chance it gets. It actually saves me time in the long run to create css sheets for them and teach them the basic html needed to maintain their web docs. Please oh please never let anyone use the "export as html" function of MS Office.

Sera

Re:Wait Until 2007? - It Won't Happen

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Exactly. This is another "Give us a better price or we switch to open source!" move that will turn at the last minute when Microsoft offers them a deal.

This means very little

[GWBasic]

It's very easy to generate pdfs from Office using the free tool pdf995. This will not require that MA moves away from Office at all.

Re:PDF?

[aristotle-dude]

Why would you, as a member of the public need to edit a published document?

how to comment on standard

[Anonymous Coward]

To see the draft of the "data format" standard, and to send comments to the Massachusetts government agency, go to this url and follow the links:

http://www.mass.gov/Aitd/

You've got it all wrong! This is NOT about format!

[Bizounours]

The State's decision has nothing to do with document formats whatsoever. This is about bottomline economy:

Save money by making a public statement on how your state is dropping Microsoft solutions all together by 2007 or so, then wait until Microsoft gives you a nice and VERY cheap solution...

No training costs, just saving costs. Tax payers and formats have no weight in the decision. They are the lure.

open formats - government statement

[Anonymous Coward]

The govt web site is not well organized. Here is a separate url that briefly describes the proposed standard.

http://www.mass.gov/eoaf/open_formats_comments.htm l

Will Not happen

[WindBourne]

due to being republican controlled. They are afraid of Bill Gates. See what happened in Colorado. It is the reply that was most telling. I wrote that to one of the California Gov. Candidates in hope that they would persue the idea.

Re:Will Not happen

[Blondie-Wan]

Yow, that's disturbing. What did the the governor's first responder, the tech guy, say about why they're "not allowed to replace MS with Linux"? I assume that's some sort of contractual requirement, but are any specifics available?

Re:Will Not happen

[WindBourne]

He simply said that they were not allowed to replace MS with Linux. When I asked who was saying it, he said his boss (Mark Holtzman, then CIO, but is now about to run for gov.) and bosses boss (bill Owens, CO's current gov. who singlehandly has put this state into the ground).

Personally, what scared me more was the Finance guy (never understood what finance, except possibly for Owen's relection campaign). He felt that MS was a bigger influence to him, than was the Sun, HP, and IBM. All three employed large number of people here in Colorado. HP and IBM has had to do lay offs. If Sun (and the other 2) ever finds out that Colorado Government is cutting them off at the knees to get ahead with a company who employs less than 100 in this state, well, the Colorado Government will have to do a lot of work to repair their damage. Keep in mind, that at the time that I proposed it, Sun, HP, and IBM employee more than 100K workers here. That is collectively, the unix workers WERE the single largest group of high-tech employees in the state. I do wish that one of these companies would call my government on this crap.

MOD UP - Metro vs. PDF

[SuperKendall]

Exactly right, Microsoft will probably be generating Metro files, not PDF.

pdf files

[falconwolf]

When I first encountered a PDF file on the web I wondered why it was not a plain text file which anyone could read regardless of OS. It was three times larger than any other file format and I had to go hunting for a program to install and view the file. I've hated Adobe PDF format ever since.

Sure you may need a program to read pdf files but pdf files look the same in Acrobat Reader on all platforms and the fact is is to read any document on a computer you have to have softwear to open it in. What I don't like is that all too often Acrobat Reader crashs or freezes on my computer.

Falcon

Re:pdf files

[Bert64]

There are many other viewer for pdf files, OSX comes with a nice one called "preview", i`ve never had the need to install adobe reader on my macs..

Re:pdf files

[Bert64]

You can have websites that contain bitmapped images too, just because someone can misuse the format doesn't mean the format is at fault.. supporting bitmapped images is a valid feature.
Printing the bitmapped images will actually result in very poor quality output since they're resolution limited, whereas downloading postscript fonts to the printer will work much better. Ofcourse, if there's a pdf writer so poorly written that it stores text as a bitmap, then the authors of it should be shot.

Re:pdf files

[Blue Hornet]

Maybe you'd like to try FoxIt: Foxit PDF Reader is small (the download size less than 1MB), so you can download it quickly. It doesn't need any lengthy installation, so you can start to run it as soon as you can download it. Find it at: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/ It's also faster to load than Adobe Reader. I've been using it for several months and I like it a lot.

Re:Word Viewer

[colinrichardday]

I didn't see SuSE 9.2 in the list of supported platforms.

Re:PDFs?

[m50d]

Acrobat performs poorly (7 is better than before but still quite slow) and xpdf is less friendly to use. I don't know about evince. I mention it because it's a recent rewrite and the best pdf viewer I've seen.

Finally, someone with reason...

[GoChickenFat]

regarding open formats: in the end, there's relatively little difference between an open and a closed format on a twenty-year timeline, from the perspective of the 98% group. Either way, they're not going to be the ones designing the conversion tool. If it's an open format, they have to hope that enough geeky guys with free time find it an interesting or relevant enough problem to solve. If it's a closed format, they have to hope that the company's still in business and updating its tools, or that it released something before it went belly-up, or that it opened its file formats, or that its developers are good samaritans. And here's the kicker: the 98% group does not know which of these alternatives is more likely to be the case. They probably don't realize the problem exists. It's not because they're stupid or willfully ignorant, because once again they only see the computer as a tool. You might as well call them stupid or willfully ignorant for not knowing what machine screws are used to hold their washing machine together.

stupid is relative...bring your C++, XML, and open source down to the farm (you know, the place where your food comes from) and see how far that'll take you.

Back when Microsoft was being pursued by the government my grandpa came up to me with the local newspaper and said "Who's this Microsoft and why is the government after them?". My grandpa never touched a computer, VCR, MP3 player, DVD, cell phone (he once accidentally hit the OnStar button in his truck and couldn't figure out where the voices were coming from) or even a tape player. He did however run a very successful 1000 acre farm and dairy and he lived a very long and happy life. He was 85 when he died a couple months ago and I still could never explain what I do beyond "I work with computers".

I'd give up all of this technology to live the life my grandpa had (as I build my second home file server/media pc). stupid is relative

Adobe Acrobat Professional - $449

[RhettLivingston]

At best, the reality is that this will force a shift to Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional at $449/copy or even worse, one of Adobe's creative packages that run in the $1100 range but at least offer more than just a publisher and is thus closer to being an office competitor. A very small percentage may shift to OpenOffice, but most government users want a packaged commercial product that dominates the market (if it doesn't, its not the mainstream choice that fits their comfort zone), and that they can order preinstalled on their PC.

As is typical in Massachusetts, this is just another idealistic excuse to increase costs so that they can increase taxes.

The PDF Spec...

[Phil John]

...is open, it was postscript that was license encumbered (IIRC). There exists a multitude of programs that can read and write PDF's.

OpenOffice.org can export to PDF. Evince, gpdf etc. can read them. There are also third-party libraries that output PDF documents (some written in pure PHP, such as FPDF, which wouldn't be as probable without specs.

This is old and only partial story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Techworld did a followup on this story here almost a year ago, and mentioned the impact it had on MS*. Is this from the archives?

*(MS is the same thing as M$, for those of you who never read anything but slashdot commments.)

This is ridiculous

[xtheunknown]

Why make every state agency save documents in Open Office formats? If they want the documents accessible to the public, they could distribute the documents in PDF format and store them internally in whatever format they want to. It's just like Open Source zealots to force people to use their product, whether they like it or not. They have now become what they hate, contributors to a lack of choice (at least within the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.)

Re:This is ridiculous

[The Cisco Kid]

Documents to be distributed to the public by the government should be stored in a non-proprietary format, so that *ANYONE* can write software for any platform that is capable of reading it, without having to pay any license fees. PDF may well be suitable, it is surely better than *any* specific word-processor format. (MS or otherwise)

Documents stored internally within a government organization should be stored in a standard non-proprietary format which supports editing, and definititely not in a proprietary closed format which is properly usable only by products having a single maker (such as MS products). If such a format exists, its surely relatively unknown. I'm dimly aware of Oo participating in some sort of group that was attempting to define such a format.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Coeurderoy]

PDF is not really a suitable "universal" format, not just because it is not really an "open" format (since only Adobe controls it) but the main issue is that it is a "display" format, and not an editable format.

The Open Office Format on the other hand is now normalized by the OASIS organization.
This means that other software maker can read and write OO formated documents without fear that their competitor decides to change the format stealthely in order to "improve" it and of course to break their software.

------------
There are three types of Public Servants buying "Closed Source Software", Ignorants Public Servants, Corrupt Public Servants and Ignorant corrupt Public Servants

Re:This is ridiculous

[The Cisco Kid]

PDF would only be suitable for a document being pulished to read and not for edit, obviously.

And as far as Adobe controlling it, if I produce a pdf with the current version of ghostscript, I can read it with the current version of xpdf - Adobe cant change that. Sure, they could change the format that *their* software produces so that it could only be read by their own software, but that would also break a *lot* of other software, and I doubt they are going to do that.

As far as editing, yes it was OASIS I was thinking of. And if theyve got their standard finalized, thats good. Hopefully it wont take too long to catch on.

what did the Romans give us?

[falconwolf]

Umm... didn't they invent the orgy? :o)

that's one of the great things Romans left us.

Falcon

Too much hidden

[jgoemat]

At my company the IT department went about replacing 100 MS Office installs with OpenOffice. We had gotten audited by MS and apparently we had a few unlicensed copies running around and we were due for an update anyway. That all came crashing down when a Word document from an exec got sent out. In MS Word it looked fine to him, but the document had changes tracked that were hidden. When employees opened it up they found some quite embarassing comments that the exec had 'deleted'.

Re:Too much hidden

[Bert64]

That's the fault of word rather than openoffice then, that exec should have been able to trust his software to not send the changes he'd removed.

What about multi-media files?

[walterbyrd]

As a linux desktop user, I have far more trouble with proprietary multi-media files than anything else. It seems they change the formats all the time. And I can't see where the formats are changed for any reason other than to force users to use proprietary players.

There are a lot of web-sites that simply do not work with any OSS browser, tons of content that will only work with proprietary players.

schools

[falconwolf]

Public schools are not so great in terms of quality, but they are DEFINATELY neccesery, ESPECIALLY in areas where people are less wealthy.

If schools aren't "so great" then shouldn't parents be able to send their child(ren) to better schools? My one concern with private schools is that they may teach one religion only or if they teach more than one then they make it seem as though one is better than another. But with the right teachers this isn't a problem. In college the profs I had for both philosophy and "Understanding Relious Man" you couldn't tell by taking their classes what religion if any they were a member of. My philosophy prof always played devil's advocate while the other prof always seemed to be from the religion we were studying at the tyme. When we studied Hinduism it seemed he was Hindu, when we were working on Buddhism, Buddhist. The same with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We studied 7 religions and students went away not knowing what he believed, well other than that a test in his class was a "celebration" ie you celebrated how much knowledge you had of the religion.

I'm not totally for or against privatizing education but I believe parents should have the choice of where their children go to school.

Falcon

PDF? Pardon?

[Wolfier]

Why PDF?  It is a print-only format - you cannot open all PDF files in an editor and then edit the texts in it and save it.

OpenOffice OASIS format is in the right direction, since it uses human-readable markups - if used properly, it is potentially as powerful as LaTeX.

This brings up the question: Why don't we just use LaTeX? ;)

What about Innovation?

[morganew]

Biggest problem no one seems to be addressing is that the OpenOffice format is not guaranteed to be the most innovative, nor is it truly the lowest common denominator (like .rtf).

Wax cylinders were a 'format' for music, but we don't want the government locking out the use of CDs or DVDs just because the people with wax cylinder readers can't use them.

Backwards compatibility is important, but you certainly want to preserve the option to take technology that may innovate, even in the document format space, and provide better services to your constituents.

Here's a good example: early iterations of WordPerfect certainly didn't allow the complex tables and embedded images we have in current formats - heck, early HTML was barely functional for presenting text and pictures. What if we were only allowed to presever content in original WP formats, or HTML 1.0?

Governments should pick winners and losers by the quality of the technology, not ideology.

Build backwards compatibility into your contracts agreements with your vendors, and use the format that gives you the best technology.

Re:PDF?

[holy zarquon's singi]

The circle the text paradigm in preview doesn't work that well compared to the highlighter pen paradigm in Acrobat unfortunately. I use highlighting to make it easier to scan complex text (scientific reports mainly).

I wish preview did cut it, because it's so much faster.

Re:PDF?

[holy zarquon's singi]

It was kind of obvious to me that microsoft was about removing value from their os when after using apple 2s and sinclair spectrums for a while, I got hold of a DOS computer, as a 13 year old or so. "What can I do with this then?". Answer: Not much. They haven't changed much since then, apart from adding the underhand tricks to promote lock-in.

C'mon, this isn't quite right nor impartial!

[enmane]

Disclaimer: I am not an MS lover and if anything more on the side of a MS-basher.

That being said, they will support open formats AND PDF formats. Isn't a PDF format a closed-source format where most users require Acrobat (a closed-source package) to create their PDFs. Yes, I'm aware that there are freely available PDF creation add-ons but they don't offer the ability that Acrobat does. Not only this but isn't the PDF format itself closed-source and even the reader is a closed-source but freely available program.

Where am I going with this you ask? Well, anyone can go to MS's website and download freely available DOC, XLS, etc - viewers. Isn't this exactly what Adobe is doing? How is allowing PDF and disallowing MS (with viewers) fair?

I'm from MA and I support them but they should have constraints from using ANY closed-source software, period, if they are claiming open-source requirements.

Not really getting the truth from MA either.

[enmane]

Disclaimer: I am not an MS lover and if anything more on the side of a MS-basher.

That being said, they will support open formats AND PDF formats. Isn't a PDF format a closed-source format where most users require Acrobat (a closed-source package) to create their PDFs. Yes, I'm aware that there are freely available PDF creation add-ons but they don't offer the ability that Acrobat does. Not only this but isn't the PDF format itself closed-source and even the reader is a closed-source but freely available program.

Where am I going with this you ask? Well, anyone can go to MS's website and download freely available DOC, XLS, etc - viewers. Isn't this exactly what Adobe is doing? How is allowing PDF and disallowing MS (with viewers) fair?

I'm from MA and I support them but they should have constraints from using ANY closed-source software, period, if they are claiming open-source requirements.

I'm sure this won't be modded as insightful or it will get modded down as it comes off as a MS lover when in fact it is the only fair argument that I've seen posted and I'm SHOCKED that I'm the only one that has seen this hypocrisy.

Re:PDF?

[richlv]

yep, but when i think of forms available, i prefer editable format - in some cases fields are too small or too big, so changing their size i can make a document thak looks a lot better and is more readable. of course, this approach would not work for forms that are processed by scanning & automatically recognizing choices, but there are very few if any of them here.

and now when i think of this, i even prefer laws in editable format - not to edit them as such, but to reduce font size, increase margins etc for printing if intend to read it. this way i can approximately 2 times reduce pages needed, which is hard to do with pdf (printing two pages on one side is less readable than customized document).

overall opendocument should be the ultimate goal for every document. pdf isn't impossible to edit, so there is no argument that it would be impossible to edit some text and pass it as the real thing (you could copy from it and then adjust the result, for example).

opendocument supports signatures, so these documents also would be relatively easy to secure where needed.

one case where pdf might be better is exact output - it is possible that opendocument looks slightly different on another machine if a font is missing, but you can embed fonts in pdfs. though how many documents like that are in government published docs ?

Re:PDF?

[ajs318]

The problem is that the file linked to is pre-compiled for a Windows system -- which is something I haven't got and should not need to have. This means I really need the source code -- so I can compile it for one of my boxes. Every Unix-like system {Linux, BSD, Solaris and some others I'm not running on any of my boxes} includes a C compiler. If the source code is properly presented, and if you're supplying source code the last thing you want is people making nasty comments about it, the compilation process is usually as simple as typing "make install".

As a matter of general principle I insist to inspect, or have someone else inspect, the source code of every piece of software I run, to make sure that it will not do anything I would rather it did not. In the light of what happens when people run untrusted software to run on their machines, I do not believe that this measure is in the slightest unreasonable.

If, however, I cannot obtain the source code, I believe the least unsafe way to run untrusted code might be to do so in a totally quarantined environment -- i.e., a machine with no connection to the outside world {network card} and no persistent storage {hard disk drive}. But this will still require a bootstrap loader with a minimal Windows environment.

Use in the future

[ArtStone]

"was needed to ensure that the state could guarantee that citizens could open and read electronic documents in the future,"

So what's that chance that anything that exists today (open or not) will be readable in 20 years? Tried to read your msdos 5 1/4" floppies lately? Still have any computer capable of running Electric Pencil?

Now of course, those are not "open" examples.

Been to a gopher site recently?

By the way, The Well is up for sale if anyone has a few million in cash sitting around idle:

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2005/08/30/health /c01083005_03.txt

Micro Dumping Party

[amyamie28]

I think its great they have made this shift away from Microsoft. Our Government needs its own operating systems. I hope this catches on in other states.

Welcome to M$ License 6,

[quarkscat]

MSFT's On-line Validation, and MSFT's Update Program. MSFT routinely revises their EULA, to which you must agree in order for service or security patches to install. While a number of states (or nation states) allow the end-user to wiggle out of modified EULAs, the time lost in the courtroom could lead to financial disaster and collapse of the business.

Just because a software OEM has you by the short hairs regarding software licensing & key validation does not mean that they will use this as a means of extortion in the future. But it does mean that they have that capability. And there are no guarantees that their "profit centers" will not shift at some point in the future to make such extortion a reality.

I am glad to see at least one state, the Commonwealth of Massachussetts, resist the siren song of proprietary file formats. Unfortunately, the Commonwealth of Virginia has taken the exact opposite tact. In fact, VA was one of the leading forces in adoption of software OEM rights over consumer rights, years ahead of the passage of the DMCA at the Federal level.

Re:PDF?

[miscz]

If you have to use Adobe Reader for its unique functionalities I guess it's better, I won't argue.

The only thing I want to do with PDFs is to read them and eventually print them. I can perfectly manage to do that with xPDF/gPDF. They load in 1 second on my computer, compare that to about 10 seconds (maybe I exaggerate) in Adobe Reader. Rendering is probably better in original but I have yet to see badly rendered PDF in readers I use.

Re:Not really [OT]

[Corrado]

Just a side note to anyone relying on OS X to output proper PDF files. It does not allow embedded fonts. This small oversight makes it *very* difficult to send output to print bureau. If your print contractor has different fonts or is missing fonts, you are SOL. :(

Almost there

[doodlelogic]

The pretext of the BTP was to protest the reduction of import taxes on tea imported through the East India Company (undercutting the existing taxed trade).

Unlikely

[Craig Ringer]

I think PDF support in Office is unlikely. While it'd be ideal - and since MS could license the Adobe PDF library, it'd be pretty quick for them - they're more likely to implement "Metro" support instead. That's the MS PDF-like format that they're talking about pushing with Vista.

Microsoft does not strike me as the sort of company that'd give Adobe free market exposure by shipping the Adobe Reader with the system, and licensing their PDF library. They could do as Apple have done and implement it themselves, but I think they'll want a format they control.

When it comes to OpenDocument, I suspect they're going to fight that for some time. Interoperability is a threat to the barrier to entry/exit around Office that lets them maintain inflated prices.

Requirements

[Craig Ringer]

Build backwards compatibility into your contracts agreements with your vendors, and use the format that gives you the best technology.

That's essentially what MA have done. They set some requirements for document formats, evaluated the market offerings according to those criteria, and selected suitable current offerings for use. My understanding is that MS is *quite* welcome to support OpenDocument in order to re-enter the state suppliers list. Alternately, they should be able to adjust their new XML format license (or hand it off to a standards body) in order to qualify, too.

It looks to me like the state is saying "we require at least from our formats" and microsoft is saying "we don't want to give you that". It's much like a vendor refusing to sign a contract while it requires backward compatibility - it sends a warning signal sky high.

Pretty decently, actually

[Craig Ringer]

The majority of the OO.o developers work for Sun. Others are with Red Hat, Novell, SuSE, etc. There's a fair bit of unpaid community involvement too as far as I know, but from what I've seen it's quite heavily business oriented.

So why are all these businesses putting in money for a free product? Because they all want to use it to drive sales of their money-making products. In Sun's case, that'll be for their thin client and desktop offerings (JDS, Sun Ray, etc).

There are certainly issues with this, but I don't think starving programmers will be one of those issues.

Lest you say I don't know what I'm talking about, while I'm not involved with the development of OO.o I /do/ work on Scribus (http://www.scribus.net/) in my spare time. I do this for learning, a challenge, and because its fun. I don't make my living off it, nor do I expect to, though I'm not adverse to making some money off it if the opportunity arises. Not everything is motivated purely by personal profit.

Minor correction

[Tune]

> anyone and their family pet can create and/or render PDF. e.g. GhostScript.

That would be xpdf, gpdf, pdftex, pdflatex or pdfcreator.
GhostScript renders PostScript (ps, not pdf), which is an "open format" as well.