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Massachusetts Explains Legal Concerns for Open Documents

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the battle-lines-are-being-drawn-and-quartered dept.

Tontoman writes "ZDNet is running a story that sheds new light on the decision by Massachusetts to switch to open formats for the commonwealth's official documents. This issue has previously been discussed on Slashdot, first The Massachusetts Office Party and then Microsoft Lashes out at Massachusetts IT Decision . From the article: 'Eric Kriss, Secretary of Administration & Finance for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, told CRN on Friday that Massachusetts had concerns about the openness of Microsoft XML schemas as well as with potential patent issues that could arise in the future.' The article also quotes a Microsoft executive on further reason that Microsoft's upcoming Office 12 will not support OpenDocument."

4 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. MS reply by DLX · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft said that Massachusetts decision is wrong because open document formats do not allow embedded video or audio in the document. I wonder, how many of us have ever used embedded audio/video feature in the .doc?!

  2. It wasn't a problem before by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The article also quotes a Microsoft executive on further reason that Microsoft's upcoming Office 12 will not support OpenDocument.

    Well, sort of. From the article:

    Yates reiterated the Microsoft does not intend to natively support the OpenDocument format, which he said was very specific to the OpenOffice.org 2.0 open source productivity suite.

    I don't recall Microsoft having any problems supporting say, WordPerfect documents, which after all were "very specific to the [WordPerfect] productivity suite." Of course, that was back when Microsoft were chasing WP down. It just wouldn't do to support a format that might help people not to use Office now would it?

  3. Format converter by Peer+Janssen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Isn't there anybody who could program an appropriate converter to be loaded into MS Word?

    I mean, if people can program an import filter, why not an export filter?

    There certainly people who know how to do it.

    Even if somebody has to sign an NDA agreement -- would it disallow to make such a filter?

    I'm sure this would be more productive than waiting for MS to do it.

    1. Re:Format converter by ozmanjusri · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Isn't there anybody who could program an appropriate converter to be loaded into MS Word?

      You're right, and this could be a fatal error in Microsoft's strategy. If there is a freely available converter which allows Word to import and export OOo files, any attempt on their part to make their own format incompatible could backfire and make OOo the default file exchange format.

      I've been looking at both OOo and MS XML formats, and it doesn't look like it would be too hard to impliment converters as add-ins for Office formats.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."