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

[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

[/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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[Marc2k]

Halliburton? Walmart? Exxon? Microsoft?

You forgot Shin-Ra.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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...

[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...

[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...

[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

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 ;)

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?

[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?

[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]

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?

[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?

[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: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?

[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.

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...

[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...

[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.

Groklaw coverage

[stevey]

This was also covered on groklaw, yesterday.

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.

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Ü xØÏ7`AV¾ôAËÚ1f> @N` Ä)è 6ðxÀ!£ÿÑíBêÏôXa Û)# Ö Ìz îÁ ɾÝ-s_Ìdôi4

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?

[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?

[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: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: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: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:"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: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.

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.

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

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.

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: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...

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.

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: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.

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: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: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.

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.

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:Whilst I applaud this move ...

[JohnFluxx]

Not true, CSS has pagination rules.

Re:Acrobat Reader? Ugh...

[jma05]

Do you know any free PDF *EDITORS*?

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: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.

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..

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...

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.

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)

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?

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?

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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

[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: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.

"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: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.

Re:Is this really about open standards?

[Doctor Faustus]

Specifically, here:
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/ind ex_reference.html

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: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..

[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.

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 ...

[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: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?

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: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: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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.