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A Look At MS's MA Talking Points
tbray writes "It may not be a Halloween Document, but one of the lobby groups in the thick of the Massachusetts office-doc standardization fray passed me 'The Other Side's Talking Points', so I've published (and slightly deconstructed) them with a barnyard-animal picture." From the article: "The direction toward interoperability using XML data standards is clearly a good one. However, limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others. The proposed approach and process for use of XML data is quite open to multiple standards, yet the proposed standard for documents is quite narrow, preferential, and may not enable optimal use of the data-centric standards."
Microsoft Employees themselves are saying that open office formats (at least partially, or for old versions) are a good thing. Others are saying they want to quit soon. Note that this open revolt against their management is being spearheaded by the mysterious Mini-Microsoft.
Will these attitudes finally change MSFT from the bottom up, or just get these guys fired? I suspect the latter, but hey, we live in interesting times...
"limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others."
prohibits others? i know this is obvious to everyone here, but the fact that the oasis format is open and fully documented invalidates this argument. there is absolutely no reason why any vendor cant implement the oasis format.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
Maybe someone should remind Microsoft that they sponsored the development of OpenDocument.
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its own quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its own quotation.
"Let's face it, do you want to be the one who has to train all these government employees how to use OpenOffice."
The point of the switch isn't to save money but to support the freedom of information. If commonwealth employees have to be retrained in order to ensure that commonwealth citizens will be able to have access to commonwealth-published documents without being locked into vendor-specific software (or worse, a specific version of said software), so be it.
The commonwealth is there to to serve the citizenry, not sell software from an out-of-state vendor for the sake of saving a few bucks.
"The direction toward interoperability using XML data standards is clearly a good one. However, limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others. The proposed approach and process for use of XML data is quite open to multiple standards, yet the proposed standard for documents is quite narrow, preferential, and may not enable optimal use of the data-centric standards."
I had to re-read that line twice. I thought they were talking about Microsoft being preferential, narrow, etc, etc... not OpenOffice.
Can someone actually Orwellian-like bend their mind so that 2+2=5 for me, and explain the logic behind that statement where choosing an open standard over a closed-patented-licensed-EULA'd-sign with blood-give up your first born is a bad choice?
Or is this just what I think it is, one of Microsoft's "A Few Good Men" speeches:
"I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very OS that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a keyboard and start writing code. Either way, I don't give a damn what open standards you think you are entitled to."
I8-D