Slashdot Mirror
Massachusetts Explains Legal Concerns for Open Documents
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."
"No blood for oil!", "Bush lies!" ... so I hear from my liberal friends, who keep telling me how the Iraq war was based on lies and deception ... and I ask, what lies? Putting aside the WMD issue, which is far too subtle and complex for mere discussion on the internet, we still have the War on Terror. Yes, Iraq is full of terrorists, which was more than 50% of the reason our President (democratically elected; just to remind you that you are in the minority and therefore have no right to complain) decided to take out Saddam ... what's that, liberal, no terrorists in Iraq? Sure, you're right, no terrorists in Iraq! It's swarming in them ... this is why our President had to invade, to stop them from committing more acts of terror and endangering innocent little children. I really don't get anti-war types, to overlook facts this obvious ... could anybody enlighten me (in a civil manner, please ... I'd like to think that the reputation that extremist liberals have for being foul-mouthed is exaggerated)?
Is it just me, or is there anybody else that sees one thing that is very risky in the whole story? I don't want to support one side or the other here, but now we have a governmental body choosing one technical solution over the other based on some non-economical (at least not strictly) criteria that is in it's depth anti capitalistic (and I truly believe therefore very wrong). For example, why government of Massachusetts doesn't demand, that the cars they buy for their state fleet have all blue prints published, all technical solutions stripped from patents and all spare parts allowed to be manufactured by whoever gets the government bid ? The same could apply to anything else state buys. I see a problem with such demand and even deeper problem with governments favoring certain solutions over the other based on some criteria that are not as clear cut as one would think. What if we find out tomorrow that the same situation was reversed in favor of Microsoft? What are we suppose to do, if 49 other states will decide by governmental FIAT, that Open Source effort is a short lived phenomenon that will eventually loose it's appeal and disappear and as such is too risky to relay on? Based on such "educated" assumption the what if 49 governments will outright forbid any use of Open Source software and Open Source file formats as "too risky" for historical retention of governmental work? Do you think such scenario is ridiculous? If so, what you think about WMD in Iraq or so called AlKaida-Hussain connection to recall just a few propaganda hypes that our politicians are very capable of. We applaud the decision as long as it is in the Open Source favor, but what happens if some government body will make up criteria, that will eliminate Open Source? Are we going to applaud such decision then? The reason I'm disturbed by such political approaches is that if we allow one, we might be sorry the next time if somebody else will use the newly given tool to do exactly the opposite what we think is in a public interest. JM