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Massachusetts Finalizes OpenDocument Standard Plan
wellington map writes "The state of Massachusetts has finalized a proposed move to an open, nonproprietary format for office documents, a plan that involves phasing out versions of Microsoft's Office productivity suite deployed in the state's executive branch agencies. Massachusetts expects its agencies to develop phased migration plans away from productivity suites that do not support OpenDocument, with a target implementation date of January 1, 2007. Looks like it's finally cemented after some heated discussions."
Seriously, I like it. I like the fact that govs are looking at the bottom line and trying to streamline operations. Phasing out Microsoft? That would have been unheard of ----- last year.
I am happy to hear the Chew'setts have the brass tacks to pull something like this off and I can't wait to see Microsoft shoot themselves in the foot on this one.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
While it will take more than days, I think that Microsoft will eventually come around and support OpenDocument. There's no technical reason that they cannot and Microsoft can't afford to let big customers get away. Once large companies and governments realize that they can get along just fine without Microsoft products, it will be even harder to get them back on the crack, so to speak. So I wouldn't be surprised if there are already betas running in Microsoft somewhere that support OpenDocument and they run on the Microsoft Linux Distro too!
Anyway, in the end, the customer is always right. So Microsoft will come around if OpenDocument gets any kind of real traction.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
One of the guys behind KOffice has just posted an open letter refuting a few aspects Alan Yates/Microsoft's criticism of open doc.
Do they mention why openness is a good thing? Or are they simply supporting it because it's the latest fad? Last I checked, Microsoft documents were accessible on all modern OSes, so it can't be because Microsoft documents wouldn't be accessible to the general public.
By the way, what will happen when the Federal government sends documents to Massachusetts in word format? Would the state send them back?
Suppose M$ suddenly decides to support OpenDocument, gets the state's business and then issues a "security patch", that introduces proprietary extensions as has been in the past?
Well, I can think of an easy answer: to begin to get out of the financial box MS has put most US governments. I can only speak about my own experience working in IT for Multnomah County in Portland, OR, but I know that they were spending millions each year on MS licensing fees, both for OS and Office applications. Sure, it can be expensive to switch IT standards, but it seems to me the more governments rely on open standards and open source software the less they have to spend keeping expensive proprietary software around. As a side note, Oregon at one point was considering a bill that would force local government IT to consider open source when making technology decisions. A move that had MS down there in a jiffy with a team of FUD spreading lawyers who quickly squashed it. As a partial result, Multnomah county is now 100% MS, no NetWare, no Linux, no alternatives allowed. They even fired or demoted those who refused to switch....
Better late than never. Or rather, better earlier than other govts. at any rate - govts like India, China and Peru have already decided against proprietary formats. A shame the Fed govt is still locked up in MS formats. Let's see is Mass. decision leads to a Mass movement for Open-ness in protocols, formats and standards.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I'll give you an example of the most basic reason.
I have a database in Access 1.0 format. It is entirely unreadable/convertable by current versions of Access, and there is no free software available that will convert it. Essentially the data is lost forever, unless I seach for a garage sale copy of Access 1.0 or 2.0 - and there is no guarantee that such software would work on Windows XP anyway.
Now as it happens I don't need that data. But local governments should not be put in a position where their achives of data become unreadable, purely because it's locked in a proprietary format that the vendor has moved on from.
Well, its hard to say why someone hasn't stepped up. I think its because up until recently Standards boards have always been a step or two behind the developers and users. A great antecdotal example of this is the Javascript DOM model. When IE 4 and 5 were released, they had support for Event Model attachment using Microsoft specific methods and event handlers. There was a need to be able to dynamically affix javascript events, often more than one event to a certain user action on the page. Microsoft implemented a solution that worked pretty good. There were flaws, though, like being able to flag whether those events 'bubbled'. So when the Standards board wrote or rewrote the Javascript standards, they added the proper flags. To someone just getting into the game, it seems like Microsoft's approach is non-standards compliant and inferior. They're right, but its all they had at one point, and to say that people should hold off on new features until someone else writes a standard for them usually means you're not first-to-market with a solution.
Now don't get me wrong, I support standards so that people can use the same data across different platforms. But its hard to wait for standards to be written. Its also harder from a business standpoint to say that you're surrendering software development decisions to a body of people that might not have your business's interests in mind.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
"Microsoft will publish the new Office Open XML Format specifications with the Open and Royalty-free license that we first made available for the Office 2003 XML file formats.
But Microsoft's license is not available to Free Software projects. Such a license fulfills most of the Massachussets goals, but unnecessarily limits what programs can implement support for the formats.
You mean something along the lines of what a myraid of programs, such as Open Office, already do for MS Office file formats?
Sort of. Those programs don't do a complete job. Reverse-engineering of formats is necessarily a series of successive approximations. For sufficiently complex formats, it's likely the series will never converge to a full implementation.
You don't have an Access 1.0 conversion program because no one's interested in writing one.
But why is that? Two reasons: (1) It's obscure, and (2) reverse-engineering the format is hard. Odds are that if either of those weren't true, there would be a converter. It's also likely that if it were a popular closed format, the available converters would still be incomplete, just as those for modern closed formats are.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Not so. If the Access 1.0 format were open, BasilBrush could have written a converter himself, regardless of how old the format was. But the format is closed, so he is f*cked.
Massachusetts does not want to be stranded like Basil. Will Microsoft still be around 200 years from now? Who knows. Massachusetts does not want to take the risk of having gigantic amounts of their data becoming unreadable in the future.
Having worked for UMASS and had contact with many state agencies in that capacity, I saw absolutely zero motion when MA supposedly recommended using Linux. There are just too many asshats that control the buying and tech departments for that to happen. They'll buy whatever their sales reps shovel at them. They have absolutely no clue, and probably will not even ever hear about this. (Not to get down on state employees... the rank and file are only 50% asshats.)
Hate to be a downer, but I am sure if you asked my former CIO in a year if he "got the memo" on this, he'd be bewildered and have no idea what you were talking about.
Someone had to do it.
When properly indented, it seems quite reasonable. What really scaries me is the <w:validateAgainstSchema/> <w:saveInvalidXML w:val="off"/> bits...
Err... I think you are quite mistaken
1. OpenOffice.org (read, Sun's Proxy) is one of the forces behind OASIS, but by no means the main force. There are quite a few heavyweights, both vendors and customers. Here's a list:
Vendors:
Adobe (Framemaker, Distiller)
Arbortext (Arbortext Enterprise Publishing System)
Corel (Word Perfect)
IBM (Lotus 1-2-3, Workplace)
KDE (Koffice)
SpeedLegal (SmartPrecedent enterprise document assembly system); both product and company later changed names to Exari.
Sun Microsystems / OpenOffice.org (StarOffice/OpenOffice.org)
Customers:
Boeing (complex, large documents)
National Archive of Australia (retrieve documents long after development)
New York State Office of the Attorney General (both)
Society of Biblical Literature (large, multilingual documents)
IBM really is planning to make a big play for the enterprise office market. This is not an OpenOffice.org product---this is IBM's Workplace product. If anything, IBM is a MUCH, MUCH bigger dog than Sun.
Furthermore, I believe OASIS gave the EU two opportunites for input. You are seriously misrepresenting things if you believe OASIS=OpenOffice.org
More information here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
2. The OpenDocument restrictions are simple. 1. You can't patent any aspects of the specification. 2. Anything you contribute to the standard must be offered Royalty-free, with no other stipulations. 3. Any copyrights you hold on *anything* you want included in the specification must be licensed to OASIS under a perpetual, transferrable, sub-licensible, royalty-free license.
Did you even _read_ the license agreement you linked to me? Do you realize that the only thing prohibited by that license is trying to prevent companies other than your own from using the format?
This is quite a contrast to the MS Office Open XML license. When I think of MS XML's license, I think of GIF. As far as I'm concerned, until MS gives up their patents on the MS XML schemas, they are a patent poison pill.
3. Furthermore, the MS XML schema excludes GPL licensed products. That's a big problem--- OASIS formats, and a truly 'free' format, would do not such thing.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Some could write such a plugin.
The amount of work would be quite a lot, especially if they wished to make said plug-in proprietary.
Also, I imagine that MS would try to break this plug-in quite a bit.
It's much more likely that someone would make a separate go-in between filter program.
If you are going to use a separate program, however, you might as well run OpenOffice.org to do you conversion. You could have an OpenOffice.org java/macro program that did exactly that. Drop the file on your openoffice.org converter, have openoffice.org launch MS office with that file.
Easy to build, quick to implement, and free, except for the developer's time (maybe an hour or two) to put it together.
At that point, however, you'll probably have people using MS office for basic tasks just start using OpenOffice.org. "I'm already opening in it in OpenOffice, and I'm only changing a few words-- I'll just save it in here. I'll save MS Office for the big jobs."
Also, with the coming of Office 12, I imagine that many users will actually prefer OpenOffice.org. Compare the OpenOffice interface to the Office 12 interface, then compare it to Office 2003/XP/2000/97/95.
Which one is closer? Which one appeals to you as the 'natural' upgrade path.
Worse, you'll have to run add-in software for converting DOC files to WordML (OfficeML) files. MS says they'll be releasing converters for that purpose. But that begs the question: Use MS filters for DOC files, and OpenOffice.org for ODT files, and MS Office 12 for the actual work?
Or just switch to OpenOffice.org for everything?
Small departments/individuals will use OpenOffice.org.
Medium department/organizations can use either OpenOffice.org or StarOffice (with pro support)
Enterprises can use IBM's Workplace enterprise document management solution.
The OpenDocument 'platform' is much better positioned to take over the government market that Office 12. It's really not even funny, and with Sun & IBM working together, theres a ridiculous amount of lobbying power.
MS versus OpenOffice.org foundation? MS wins in terms of procurment trickery.
MS versus OpenOffice.org, Sun AND IBM? Magic 8-ball says, "Outlook not so good".
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell