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Open Source In Public Sector Meeting Opposition
Open Source movements have been gaining popularity everywhere, but not everyone is happy about that. Johans wrote to mention a ZDNet Asia story discussing a controversy within the Malaysian computer industry over the government's 'Public Sector Open Source Software Masterplan. From the article: " ... the government has stated that its first choice in IT procurement are infocomm technology solutions developed on the open-source platform. It states that 'in situations where advantages and disadvantages of open-source software (OSS) and proprietary software are equal, preference shall be given to OSS' ... However, some industry consortiums have stepped out to voice their concerns over this policy." Meanwhile, Anonymous Coward wrote to mention a Fox News article entitled 'Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument', calling the attention of journalists to the 'huge mistake' that Massachusetts is making by switching to OpenDocument. From that article: "Officials in the state have proposed a new policy that mandates that every state technology system use only applications designed around OpenDocument file formats. Such a policy might seem like something that should concern only a small group of technology professionals, but in fact the implications are staggering and far-reaching. The policy promises to burden taxpayers with new costs and to disrupt how state agencies interact with citizens, businesses and organizations."
The Fox News article is by James Pendergast, hardly a friend of open source. More of his FUD-laced Fox articles can be found here.
If you don't want to read any more of his tripe at least look at the Founding Members of his organization... ah Microsoft. He's just a shill protecting MS' monopoly.
Trolling is a art,
My super-sparkly Palladium Wristwatch I got from Microsoft will get splashed and start bluescreening again!
Isn't that the main point of an open format document? To make it easier for the involved parties to interact!
[alk]
Does this Anonymous Coward has any studies done that show going towards Open document is a burden to tax payers? I can make a same clain without doing any studies. In the short term it may involve new costs but I think in the long term, it makes cheaper for not having to pay for commercial software licenses. This may be a benefit to the tax payers. How's that?
It's James Prendergast.. Who's he? Well, he works for Americans for Technology Leadership. And who are they? Well, last time they made the news, it was for a letter writing campaign, in support of Microsoft, in which thousands of largely identical letters were sent, including a number from dead people.
Can you say "Astroturfing"?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
"We can't figure out how we can make money from this move, It must be bad for every one, and by everyone we mean us."
Of course microssoft and friends are upset, office is there big cash cow, and if Mass pulls this off and saves some money, then there is every possibility more states will follow.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
1) Switch to an open file format now and deal with the problems and cost while they're still managable.
2) Lock yourself more tightly into vendor-owned file formats and either keep paying the vendor-tax forever or make a far more troublesome and expensive switch to an open file format later.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I'm wondering if you pulled the thread through far enough starting with Fox News, then the reporter, all the way to the source of and the reason for the article warning about dangers of OSS that you would find some Microsoft shill pulling strings.
Oh wait, I just Googled James Prendergast, author of the story. Hey!, Guess what!, he's Executive Director of ATL, a virulently anti-OSS organization and web site.
Hey slashdotter's, you might want to visit that web site a few times, and make sure you always have a fresh page by hitting SHIFT-F5!
WTF Fox?!? Fair and balanced news indeed!
FTfoxA: "Worse, the policy represents an attack on market-based competition, which in turn will hurt innovation."
Yeah, open standards hurt innovation. You know, it's not like groups like ANSI exist to try to re-standardize fractured languages with open standards that have evolved quickly and represent what the people who are using the language want. But hey, it's not like any language with an open standard ever caught on (C, C++, LISP, Ruby, etc.)
But you know, FOX most likely says that evolution is evil too. At least, as far as the public (schools) are involved...
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
The policy promises to burden taxpayers with new costs...
Boss: How much is the software going to cost?
Tech: Um, it's free.
Boss: How about all the manpower hours?
Tech: Alright, we'll shutdown the Quake server for the time being.
Hey you so called (politically) conservative geeks - here's a pretty blatant attempt by Fox news to pass of an industry slug as a journalist. Now think about Fox news doing that with the Israel/Palestine issue, covering any American Democrat, or any other international affair.
In short, wake up - Fox "news" is feeding you B.S.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
You've just GOT to love this little gem...
The article titled "ATL's opposition to the proposed Mandate of Open Office and Portable Document Format (PDF) formats as contained in Enterprise Technical Reference Model v.3.5." links to a PDF.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Before everybody goes crazy about the Fox News article, consider the source. American for Tech Leadership is a what it amounts to a PAC for different tech companies. Guess who is one of their major contibutors??
You guessed it, Microsoft.
http://www.techleadership.org/about/
So don't act all surprised when you see what amounts to a Microsoft spokesperson saying that Open Source formats are going to "cost too much" or "take too much effort". Fox News should be ashamed to run this "ad" as a news story; but when I come to think of it, everybody else does it too.
" The Massachusetts policy would instead direct contracts to just a few technology providers, while many would be locked out."
An interesting sentence that exemplifies the hypocrisy ripe within his arguments... we all know Open source is open and anyone can choose to support it as a 'technology provider'. Whereas Microsoft hand picks those companies it approves to have access to the information needed to be a good provider of it's technology.
This doesn't make any sense. In fact IMHO reality dictates that the situation is exactly opposite to this statement, excepting the fact that existing MS providers would have to adopt the Open format if they want to continue being a provider.. a choice they can freely make, but to say they would be 'locked out' is a flat out lie.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I'm shocked, SHOCKED I say. What's next, acting as a mouthpiece for government talking points/propoganda?
pudding, so they say, and this type of FUD is proof (or close enough) for the State of Mass. to know that they are doing exactly the right thing. Despite the fact that it makes me giddy to see the MS machinations squeeling like stuck pigs, I think this sort of FUD, and the resultant outcries are just the thing that will slowly turn the world to look at F/OSS. This, I believe, is due to the fact that if F/OSS wasn't worth looking at, wasn't a threat to the juggernaut that is MS, then there would not be this outlandish FUD going on.
While I feel sad that such pains must be endured, I'm glad to see the MS machine slowing down, losing some ground, and perhaps looking a bit pale in the face.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
the great thing about having an uncommon name like Ms Strzalkowski quoted in the article, is that a quick Google search for Strzalkowski and Microsoft reveals a certain Tomek Strzalkowski who appears to be friendly with the Beast. I wonder if they know each other?
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
The policy promises to burden taxpayers with new costs
Hello? Microsoft office costs over $300!! And that's just for the "standard" edition.
Idiots.
http://www.techleadership.org/ which Jim is said to be executive director partners with Microsoft and looks like a company meant to lobby MS software in government in the States and abroad.
That may have been the most lies and misinformation that I have ever read in one place. Some choice comments:
"In other cases, the OpenDocument solution may cost more and provide less, but agencies and citizens will have to pay the price and make do."
Yup, definatley costs more, being free and all.
"It may be that an array of exceptional, low-cost OpenDocument applications will emerge in the coming years."
*Ahem*... http://www.openoffice.org/
That's about as low-cost as they come.
"Many technology writers, in fact, have cast a skeptical eye on OpenDocument and applications that support the format. George Ou, writing on ZDNet, recently compared the new Open Office Calc product to Microsoft Excel and found it lacking, writing, "[i]f someone from Open Office can explain why it takes more than 100 times longer to create and load spreadsheet documents and why it uses up several more times memory that Microsoft Excel to work with the same data, I'd love to hear it.""
So, OpenOffice Calc isn't as good as Microsoft Excel, and therefore the OpenDocument standard is no good...
One more.
"Until now, Massachusetts' citizens and government agencies have been well served by a competitive, merit-based procurement process for technology services."
And they still could be. He forgets to mention that the OpenDocument format is in fact open and therefore anyone can support it. Microsoft could make a product that competes here just as easily as anyone else (or more easily, considering the money they have to throw around).
I could go on and on. The entire article is horrid, anti-open source propaganda.
Ozarka, Dasani, Oasis and Sparklettes have joined forces in opposition to the public water system citing anticompetitive behavior and enormous public risk of disease and terrorist threat.
... If you dont believe me. Go to www.foxnews.com, and click on "opinion" (don't take the submenu). It will take you to this article.
Theres nothing wrong with an opinion article saying that he is against the switch to open source formats (he makes a few valid points - the exception of Adobe Acrobat products and the fact that OO Calc does truly suck).
-everphilski-
While I despise Fox News for any number of reasons, this is a misportrayal. The piece is posted in their editorial department at http://www.foxnews.com/views — as of 10:45 EST it's the lead over there. While I would certainly agree that a more responsible news organization would label such pieces more clearly and prominently on the actual article page, rather than letting the attentive figure out that the "MORE VIEWS HEADLINES" implies that this piece is yet another "Views" piece, it's not a particular breach of journalistic propriety. That is to say, it's as well (or poorly) labeled as any of the other pieces of crud from their editorial department. Fox's editors should be flogged, but not for this any more than the rest of their execrable web site.
"Fox News... we report, you decide" (that Fox is full of... something, anyway).
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
How difficult is it for MS to just add OpenDocument support?
The article mentions ease of interoperability, claiming that everyone should use Microsoft Office since everyone else uses Microsoft Office.
THAT'S NOT INTEROPERABILITY! That's a monopoly! Microsoft is well aware of that fact, too, which is why they DON'T want to support OpenDocument. If they did, then people would be able to choose a different office suite and still be able to maintain working relations with others. Suddenly everyone has choice, and that's a bad thing!
Maybe this is just the spark needed to light a fire under MS's ass. Either they or the state of Massachusetts is going to have to crack, and I'm betting they will. It's trivial to add OpenDocument support to MS Office. Of course, once they do, they'll open the floodgates to personal choice... so maybe they'll bite the bullet and wait out Mass.
Disclaimer: I'm not an anti-MS zealot. I merely go with what is in my opinion the best tool for the job. I run Windows XP, Firefox and OpenOffice.org.
It is an opinion story. Go straight to the base web site, www.foxnews.com, and click on opinion. BAM, you arrive at this so-called "article".
The blind leading the blind around here...
-everphilski-
No where in the FOXNews.com article did James Prendergast list a specific complain against what OpenDocument doesn't have to offer. He has some quotes about how "[Open Office Calc] takes more than 100 times longer to create and load spreadsheet documents and why it uses up several more times memory that Microsoft Excel to work with the same data" and how "Microsoft keeps expanding into XML and metadata and OpenDocument may have trouble keeping up." If you read the article, you get this feeling this guy is a frothing, super-capitalist munchdog who really rates communism. Those FASCISTS!
Seriously though, my take is that "open" standards foster competition but can supress innovation when they are unable to grow and adapt. I'm not familiar enough with OpenDocument to really comment, but I do wonder how it stacks up, feature and architecture-wise against say WordOffice/PDF. Is OpenDocument really that far away from XML and metadata? Seriously...
That's not what I meant.
Say it isn't so. That... That'd be like calling the Houston Chronicle a propaganda organ for the Oil and Gas industry! ;) (If you think I'm at all exaggerating, it took them over three weeks to report anything about Enron after all the national news media outlets started covering it, and it wasn't even on the front page.)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Notice how OpenOffice lags behind in technology, while Microsoft moves toward XML and meta files.
Marques Johansson
Microsoft shill or not, I think this James guy has a point. I don't think anyone can really deny that openoffice is just not as advanced as the MS Office suite. Sure openoffice has several key advantages, but the local bureaucrat is not going to care that openoffice runs on multiple platforms when they're stuck on windows and suddenly can't properly load documents.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love for this to work, but I just don't see it happening. Openoffice just isn't that good yet. (Unless there is another mature office suite supporting Opendocument and importing MS Word that runs on windows). Even for my own personal use, which is a couple letters, a couple presentations, and a couple lab reports, Openoffice is a pain to use. I use it almost exclusively when I can, mostly because I don't want to pirate MS Office anymore, but I routinely run into things that are harder or impossible to do in Openoffice than in MS Office.
So yeah, good luck Massachusetts, I hope you succeed, but I wouldn't count on it.
I live in Malaysia, and have followed this debate for a while.
"Our views as represented by Pikom, are that the government should not dictate which development model--OSS or commercial--should be the preference for procurement," said Peter Moore, Microsoft's general manager for public policy, Asia-Pacific and Greater China.
As you can see from the evidence here, the voice that's being heard "through Pikom" is actually Microsoft's.
If the government chooses to move to an OSS operating system like Linux, Microsoft loses control over us. Malaysian application software developers actually have nothing to fear, because the govt is not going to lock out closed-source. It'll just have a preference for OSS programs if it fulfills the same function as a closed-sourced one. Meaning, locally developed custom apps are always going to be better-suited to the customer (the government), open or closed source. However, if Linux or FreeBSD got around to being the standard underlying operating system, Microsoft and its cronies would lose out big time, as it would lose it's control (but we would get our sovereignity, so who cares about Microsoft).
It's encumbent upon most governments to adopt standards that are readily available and open to their constituents. I suspect their might be legal principles at play that would allow suits to be launched forcing governments and their agencies to adopt Open Standards and, hopefully, Open Source.
Closed source proprietory software developers are right to fear what's happening in Mass. and elsewhere around the globe. It's the tip of the iceberg and closed source is booked on the Titanic.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
I would like to inform everyone that these people are confirmed Microsoft Shills, the opposers of the OSS Masterplan that is. They hijacked the event and took the mike and podium to themselves and spread their Software Architecture and anti-oss mantra. These badly brainwashed people call themselves
http://www.isac-m.org/Default.aspx?tabid=60
These people self-appoint themselves to represent Malaysia's software architects (shameless bunch) and their organisation is CLEARLY FUNDED by MICROSOFT.
Microsoft was gloating while their shills did the hijacking at the government initiated OSS masterplan dialogue event.
They are a shameless bunch of wannabes who're pandering to Microsoft and shamelessly appoint themselves to represent the masses of Malaysian software developers/architects.
They call themselves the The Independent Software Architects Council of Malaysia.
They're not so Independent after all, as we can confirm at least 4 of them work for microsoft and the rest of them are MS Shills.
Microsoft needs to stop planting their brainwashed shills and troops and telling lies to the public that these are the industry representative of the entire software developer population.
Spreading lies in the media and public will bring very bad reputation to Malaysian software developers. These people listed at the website are not qualified to represent us Malaysians. They serve the interest of Microsoft, not Malaysians.
Uh, PDF is "crackable" because there is a very detailed published specification. You can download yourself a copy from this site. The latest version is here. Adobe owns the trademark, meaning that nobody can call something that deviates from Adobe's spec PDF, but its just as open as the Open Document format. There are no secrets about PDF (though it does take some work to grok the complex 1200 page spec) and no license or royalties are necessary to use it. Prendergast's claim that PDF is not open is nonsense. It is open in all ways that are important.
Microsoft Word format is both proprietary and an actual secret. There isn't a published spec. Furthermore, it is very complicated and changes frequently. We know that it is "crackable" because people have successfully reverse engineered it sufficiently to make MS Word documents readable in programs such as OpenOffice.org Writer, but the fact that talented reverse engineers can't get it quite right shows that it isn't easy.
From http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=America ns_for_Technology_Leadership
r /archives/000421.shtml)s /tanks.html
... imploring him to go easy on Microsoft Corp. for its conduct as a monopoly."
<SNIP>
Americans for Technology Leadership was founded by Jonathan Zuck in 1999 as a "grassroots" organisations for concerned consumers who want less regulation in the technology sector. It also campaigns on general tech issues such as spam.
It has been frequently described as a Microsoft front group. [1] (http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmo
[2] (http://www.aaxnet.com/news/M010823.html)
[3] http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/blog/computer
In August 2001 the Los Angeles Times reported that a ATL was behind a "carefully orchestrated nationwide campaign to create the impression of a surging grass-roots movement" behind Microsoft. "The campaign, orchestrated by a group partly funded by Microsoft, goes to great lengths so that the letters appear to be spontaneous expressions from ordinary citizens. Letters sent in the last month are printed on personalized stationery using different wording, color and typefaces--details that distinguish those efforts from common lobbying tactics that go on in politics every day. Experts said there's little precedent for such an effort supported by a company defending itself against government accusations of illegal behavior."
According to the Times, the campaign was discovered when Utah's Attorney General at the time Mark Shurtleff received letters "purportedly written by at least two dead people
Eighteen state's attorneys general were joining with the Justice Department in its anti-trust suit against Microsoft. Iowa's Attorney General Tom Miller reported receiving more than 50 letters in support of Microsoft during the summer of 2001. "No two letters are identical, but the giveaway lies in the phrasing," the Times wrote. "Four Iowa letters included this sentence: 'Strong competition and innovation have been the twin hallmarks of the technology industry.' Three others use exactly these words: "If the future is going to be as successful as the recent past, the technology sector must remain free from excess regulation."
Dewey Square Group and DCI Group sibling firm DCI/New Media are credited with assisting Microsoft with its "grass-roots" campaign, according to the Times.
</SNIP>
I wrote an e-mail to Foxnews using my gmail account. Besides answering some of Pendergast's claims, I quoted sourcewatch and said a couple of things to them. Let's see how they answer.
Also got to love this little snippet form a press release on the ATL propaganda site:
"American companies doing business across the globe should not have to face a higher standard of regulation in the European Union than they do here"
Seems they're against 'higher-standards' too.
http://www.techleadership.org/press/092605.shtml
So then we have an organization whose founding members include Microsoft, two Microsoft fronts, and at least two outfits that sell Microsoft software. Nice. And it proceeds to act like a Microsoft front itself. Real big surprise there...
and a lot of bad ones. I am in total support of the free market, but have a government agency standardize on a technology is not limiting free markets, it's simply an organizational decision. Governments have done this for quite some time. They standardize on PCs, or Ethernet, or SQL or any number of other technologies. Mandating that a product do X is ok and doesn't inappropriately limit the market. Arguably this policy decision is being driven by polital and not technical factors, but that is still acceptable.
The author is 100% right on when he raises the concerns of increased costs, major implemention headaches, a reduction in the quality of the products. This is part of a major shift in technology. It's not abnormal. Mass. is gambling on the fact that they're political objectives and strategy to reduce a single vendor tie-in will payoff in the long run with increased competition, and better tools. Gambling is the right word here because they are going to have to pay serious premium to build new tools, integrate those tools, support those tools, and train their people on the new tools without any gaurantee that the market will respond in a significant way to justify the expense. I think in 18 to 24 months we will be hearing about major reductions in the scope of this initiative or a complete abandonment of the policy. The costs are gauranteeed, I don't think the politicians have the stomach to actually run that much risk for that much time for something that most people could care less about (even if there is real value).
I'm a Massachusetts taxpayer, and I am quite pleased to see my tax dollars going to fund something which will be quite useful down the road. The cost is trivial compared to what was lost through the Big Dig cronyism. Priorities, people!
The key sentence:
d =8966&news_iv_ctrl=1037
Jim Prendergast is executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership.
Americans for Technology Leadership Founding members
* Association for Competitive Technology
* Citizens Against Government Waste
* Cityscape Filmworks
* Clarity Consulting
* CompTIA
* CompUSA
* Microsoft Corporation
* 60Plus Association
* Small Business Survival Committee
* Staples, Inc.
http://www.cagw.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&i
itizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today urged Congress to eliminate the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Advanced Technology Program (ATP), which funds private sector research and development
These are the other tech programs CAGW doesn't like.
http://www.atp.nist.gov/gems/listgems.htm
Who is Association for Competitive Technology?
http://www.actonline.org/aboutus.htm
While ACT members include some household names like eBay, Orbitz and Microsoft, our members are primarily small and mid-size companies. Smaller, entrepreneurial technology firms like Sax Software,
http://www.actonline.org/principles.htm
ACT and its members believe that the best way to achieve a healthy Tech Environment and a thriving technology industry is to apply free-market principles that promote innovation, investment and competition. ACT is committed to core free-market principles including:
1. Consumers, not governments, should pick winners and losers in the marketplace.
2. Small tech businesses thrive on innovation, not regulation and litigation.
3. The law of regulation includes the corollary of unintended consequences.
60 Plus has set ending the federal estate tax and saving Social Security for the young as its top priorities. Why should they be against this? It would save money in the long term.
The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council) works to influence legislation and policies that help to create a favorable and productive environment for small businesses and entrepreneurship. By educating policymakers, elected officials, the media and the public about the critical role that small businesses play in our economy--and how government actions can positively or negatively affect the small business community.
I don't know about you, but I'd want a refund from the SBE Council if they are supporting not going to an open document standard. A standard means that every small business could work and bid on any part of the project. Odds are most of the work would be done locally and not outsourced overseas. This is a great move for small business. (It is a bad move for those small businesses that store everything in their own little data format that only they know about. Which is exactly what this effort is trying to get rid of in the government realm.)
Now, at the risk of getting flamed off the face of the earth I would like to ask you a question.
Do you genuinely believe that the current crop of news options on TV is completely representative of the viewpoints? If you answered yes, then you can stop reading.
If you answered no, my guess is that you're sophisticated enough to understand that while you may disagree with Fox, they represent a significant portion of the populace. The news options that we have avialable today aren't all inclusive, and generally tend to cluster around one story.
The fact that there are other options is a good thing. And yes, even though they often make fools of themselves at Fox news, they also stumble onto a story every once in a while.
Suggesting that they are worthless as a news source is the worst kind of intellectual elitism, the kind that says if I disagree with you you're wrong.
Whether you like it or not, even a blind squirrel can find a nut every now and then.
PS, no I don't take them seriously as a news source, but that's a TV thing, not a Fox thing. I tend to believe information is valuable in any form, even if only to give insight into what others are thinking.
Why did you bother Googling for him? If you look at the end of the article, it expressly states that he works for ATL. Now, howling about googling them and finding what flavor bastard is implied might be worthwhile, but don't make it seem like they were hiding something that they came right out and said themselves.
WTF Fox?!? Fair and balanced news indeed!
It's over in Fox's "Views" Department (note exact URL before clicking), making it an editorial-- or more exactly an "opinion" piece. (Editorials are written by on-staff editors. Opinions are written by anyone who wants to vent... much like Slashdot, actually.) Traditionally, Editorials and Opinion columnists are allowed much more latitude from the ideal of the neutral journalistic voice. Of course, traditionally editorial and opinion pieces are labeled much more clearly than Fox News does with theirs, so better to distinguish them from the more factual and less subjective elements of the news.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Rather than asking "Is it a good idea to use an open file format not supported by our current software (Microsoft)?" they should be asking "Why don't Microsoft programs support an open file format?"
By reading the Article I was surprised by their argument. Not only is it flimsy, it just doesn't add up.
a ns_for_Technology_Leadership
Now I know why....
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americ
We need to get in contact with Fox News and see that this stops here.
foxnewsonline@foxnews.com
The guy who wrote the article for foxnews, James Pendergrast, works for:
Americans for Technology Leadership
Read all about the pro-Microsoft jobs they do:
here
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
It is not intellectual elitism to consider a news source that has been shown multiple times to have subtly deceived it's viewers en masse about important issues in the past a bad news source.
Fox News freely mixes opinion and fact without clearly differentiating between them, and often runs with the "talking points" published by a daily memo from the RNC - this is a known fact, not an opinion and not a speculation.
People who use them as their primary news source have been shown to disporportionately believe inaccurate things about reality that believing the wrong thing on supports the current administration. Such things as "Have we found WMD in Iraq?", "Was there a Link between Al Aqaeda and Iraq?", "Is there widespread international support of the War in Iraq?" - 70% of individuals that use fox news as their primary news source answer atleast one of these three incorrectly. [Source: PIPA Study]. Furthmore Individuals who hold misconceptions on these dispronportionately support(ed) the administion more than individuals who did not. [Source: PIPA Study] The breakdown of individuals holding these misconceptions was also extremely partisan with the vast majority of individuals holding th ese misconceptions being right-wing republicans. [Src: PIPA Study]
I cited the PIPA study because i have much of it's information memorized, but it's not the only study that shows this
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Not quite. It's to make it easier to insure that they can continue to do so, regardless of any future idiocy by any one vendor. Naming no names, of course....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I think _economists_ need to rally about the fact that intellectual monopoly law inherently is a form of taxation and subsidy, with all the economic damage that causes to the free market (ranging from slower economy to slower adoption of (supposedly) improved technology).
Any increase or extention of copyright or patent rights is effectively comparable to raising VAT or similar taxation and giving the money to corporate interests. With the difference, of course, that there's little democratic control or accountability.
That OpenDocument is NOT OpenOffice.
Sure, OO writes out to that format- but OpenDocument is an open specification that not only all the main FOSS office suites either already support it or are in the final stages of supporting it- and the other Office Suites of mention other than MS Office are in the same situation. MS is the only one that's not on the same page.
Furthermore, for most people's Office suite needs, they do not need MS Office's functionalities. It might be a cherished notion that you need MS Office- but for the large part, most people aren't making dynamic documents, those very documents have absolutely no business whatsoever in Government in the first place, and the very issues that make MS Office documents very problematic in the first place are due to those "advanced features".
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
1) The township should have NEVER used something such as Access, which was never intended for that sort of use in the first place, to do it's custom database operations. If they needed a database, they should have purchased one along with whatever tools to make decent user interfaces (i.e. Delphi or even VB proper, for goodness sake...)- it's what was intended for that sort of thing. Every time I see someone that used Access for something, I cringe because it's not reliable, slow, and all- it is the wrong tool for anything other than making small databases of things like CD collections. That's all it ever really was intended for.
2) PDF being right out with this proposal? Do you even think about what you type? PDF is a generic format that is pretty much readable by anything that most people would be using. Word DOC format ISN'T, and as such, has no business in government procedures or documents- PERIOD. It's about being able to provide usable, consistent access to documents for decades in many cases. You can't do this with MS Office- PERIOD.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I really love that they are supporting this measure at the government level. It seems to me (and I haven't seen anything really covering this angle) that it is a very smart thing to do - it forces commercial software to compete at being better than anything else available for the task, rather than just being what is known. By having a mandate of looking to OSS first, it raises awareness that it is even an option.
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
(The Beatles)
"The policy promises to burden taxpayers with new costs and to disrupt how state agencies interact with citizens, businesses and organizations." -- James Prendergast
How terrible!
But what about the poor taxpayers who have paid so much tax that they can't afford to buy the latest version of Microsoft office?
Is mr Prendergast suggesting that an IT Dark Ages is the way forward?
"Worse, the policy represents an attack on market-based competition, which in turn will hurt innovation. The state has a disaster in the making." -- James Prendergast
Competition?
Microsoft has always killed off that and, now that something new has struggled to get its head above the water, Mr Prendergast would like to see new competition killed off?
Innovation?
If it wasn't for the competition that Microsoft faces there would be no innovation - such as the bleak times of Windows 98 (that great and innovative successor of Windows 95).
If Microsoft was to add Open Document support to Microsoft Office there would be no problem. The question is: is Microsoft going to support this or is Microsoft going to attempt to maintain its anti-competitive monopoly?
If it costs so much for people to switch to an alternative there shall never be any competition in the Office Suite area; everybody would be forced to stick with Microsoft's proprietary formats. Is this fair?
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
Build it, and they will come.
OS-neutrality is NOT a good argument to stick with MS formats.
Really. Seriously.
Also:
What I think is needed, and what I have proposed to the Norwegian Government, is that the government, together with the EU, hold a public competition where anyone can submit their contributions to an open document format. This also gives Microsoft an option to contribute. However, the stakes are also very high for Microsoft, because the winning format will be made mandatory for use throughout the public sector of the EU.
This has already been done. Microsoft is a member of OASIS. The EU has specifically encouraged MS to contribute whatever they would like to see in a document format to OASIS. Furthermore, the OASIS format is an open format.
I don't know about the format being that immature for spreadsheets-- OpenOffice.org Calc is not so bad.
And, how can you compare that to WordML and ExcelML? They have 0 real world testing.
If governments adopt open formats, app writers will support them. If the EU specifics OpenDocument, iWork will follow soon.
It's painful, but sticking with MS proprietary stuff is NOT the answer to platform neutrality.
You might be happier if the new Office XML formats become the standard. But that excludes us Linux users indefinitly. We don't get MS Office for Linux.
Better to make a switch to a *real* open standard, and fix the problem of no standards based apps for the Mac platform, than stick with the monopoly supported vendor standard.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Right, ...encouragement is not enough.
...and because government has selected these formats as mandatory, they will become widespread very fast because everyone has to communicate with government. That will grow the ecosystem very fast and basically all developers will benefit from it.
I think that radical measures should be used, and an open competition by the EU is one means of facilitating that. The outcome would be an open format spesification that anyone could implement regardless of operating system. A format -- or rather a set of formats being able to handle media, spreadsheets, drawings, presentations and so on.
I also think we have to remember that for any open format selected, it will be dead easy for Microsoft to write filters or plug-ins that read and write the open formats.
The future is in beta