Massachusetts' CIO Defends Move to OpenDocument

Mark Brunelli writes "A public hearing concerning Massachusetts' plan to dump Microsoft for OpenDocument featured a fair share of controversy as the state's CIO tried to fight off naysayers. Linda Hamel, the general counsel for the Massachusetts Information Technology Department (ITD), suggested that groups that oppose the OpenDocument file format standard might be influenced by Microsoft." We reported on the bounce back against the OpenDocument move this past weekend.

Comments

Any Hot Guys Here?

[AssCork]

Just kidding...of course there aren't!

Fuckin geeks.

Re:Any Hot Guys Here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trick Please, I already gots me a shorty. Peace Out, Nigg.

The end of his speech:

[Anonymous Crowhead]

"Bottom line: OpenDocument is bloated. Just like we like things in government."

Re:The end of his speech:

[kremehild]

Sounds like a CONservative RepubliCON.

Re:The end of his speech:

[CastrTroy]

Opendocument isn't any more bloated than microsoft office documents. Most of my OpenOffice documents end up way smaller than what they would be had I used MS Office. Maybe there is a bit of extra information in there, but if the end result is a more compatible document format, that is kind of human readable, then, maybe it's good to have a little bit of bloat.

Re:The end of his speech:

[bobbomo]

Its not referring to the size of the documents. OpenDocument files are zipped text files where MicrosoftDoc is uncompressed binary. I assume the MicrosoftXMLDoc will be comparable. The bloat is in the software, there's no argument against this. Its a memory hog. Disclaimer. I have been using OpenOffice.org since StarOffice 5.

Re:The end of his speech:

[CastrTroy]

Well then maybe you should design an OpenDocument editor that's not so bloated. OpenOffice/Staroffice may be bloated, but that doesn't stop you from building a non-bloated editor which supports the opendocument format. That's the nice thing about the opendocument format. You can design your own application to handle the files if you aren't happy with the current offerings. There's also a few other wordprocessors out there that support these formats. You might want to give them a try.

Re:The end of his speech:

[bobbomo]

yes, how great a format is that?! i'd love to see wordpad-sized program to handle OpenDocument format. i'm sure it will come around soon enough. i've tried the plugin for AbiWord and it works OK, but i dont really use the program. depending on what i'm doing i either use ConTEXT or OOo. for complex word docs, i actually use Microsoft Word Viewer to handle the printing.

Influenced by Microsoft?

[honeypotslash]

Most likly they think Word Processing IS Microsoft Word.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[mysqlrocks]

Pacheco said it appeared that no cost analysis had been done before ITD committed to OpenDocument, and that the agency had moved forward unilaterally without input from other agencies.

How did they end up using MS Office? Did they get input from other agencies? Probably not. At the time, as the parent comment says, they probably thought "Word Processing IS Microsoft Word".

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[MBCook]

<crazyRant>

Word processing IS Microsoft Word.

It was the first word processor.

Don't let them tell you lies. There were no word processors before word. Why do you think it's called a "Word" processor? That's right, that name comes from MS Word. "WordStar" and "Word Perfect" didn't exist, you just think they did because they put something in your water and brainwashed you.

And don't tell me about typewriters. Typewriters were based off of the design for Microsoft Word. In the future a time machine will be invented which will be used to go back in time and give the man who invented the typewriter what it should look like to look like MS Word. Why do you think the longest word you can spell on the top row of letters on a keyboard is "typewriter"? That is EXACTLY the kind of easter egg people at Microsoft LOVE. They put it there when they gave the design of the QWERTY keyboard to the guy who designed it (note: I'm not using his name because due to this revisionist history, we don't know the real creator's name).

And how do I know all this? They told me next Tuesday. Right before they executed me. That wasn't a good day.

</crazyRant>

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Orgazmus]

"..they gave the design of the QWERTY keyboard to the guy who designed it (note: I'm not using his name because due to this revisionist history, we don't know the real creator's name)."

Come on, we all know it is John Qwerty. Stop with yer lies!

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

shh...you make too much sense for these parts.

When people can't attack the *argument*, they of course attack the individual. Anyone who disagrees *must* be corrupt, they *must* be controlled by Microsoft. No evidence of this mind you, but they just spout all the wild accusations they want. Folks around here will eat it right up...

You guys don't realize how anal state and federal governemnt is about providing accessiblity and avoiding lawsuits. How do you tell your disabled employees that they have to start using inferior software?

My State has no money for schools, roads, or anything else, but you want them to spend billions to cut everything over to the latest lefist craze? No thanks, Castro.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a severe issue with letting Office 98 / 2000 / pick your flavour less than the current run on old hardware: Security. There are a large amount of holes in Office 98 and Office 2000. Likewise there are lots of holes in Windows 98, ME and 2000. When Vista comes out Microsoft will immediately stop patching Windows 2000 as their security model is to patch the latest OS and the one previous. No others. The same patching model applies to Office. Office 98 is no longer patched because 2000 and 2003 are the 'supported' versions.
What you are asking the State to do is to either:
A. Spend LOTS of money for maintaining Office licenses and the hardware/OS that it can run on (do you honestly think that Office 2009 or whatever is after Office 12 will be installable on Windows 2000? Even if it is, will it run at a decent speed to be usable?)
B. Ensure that there are machines out in the State offices that are vulnerable to plenty of viruses and other malware.

Your comment about a totally new office suite is relatively accurate, but with Microsoft constantly shuffling around their menus I feel that getting new Office versions isn't that much better.

Either way, it seems an expensive endeavor.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[MBCook]

That's true, you've got some points. I don't think there is any evidence (perhaps yet), as it is supposed to be the "logical conclusion".

But you have to remember that MS is playing this like they passed a law saying "No MS software... ever... 'cause." In reality Massachusetts said something more like "We will use .txt files for everything" and MS just doesn't want to make their program read and write that format. They are free to do so. The spec isn't GPLed so they'd have to open up all of Office.

They just don't want to.

And it's their fault. If they made it so they could then they could argue against the switch quite effectively.

• "Eveyone else uses our software, you'll still be able to open those things easily."
• "Our software is designed to be usable by disabled people"
• "You won't have to spend all that money and time retraining people on the new software"
• "We'll GIVE YOU the software this year... just don't switch!"
• etc.

They are putting themselves in this boat by being stubborn. MS is sticking it to themselves. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they stayed with Office if MS would just implement the format. And with their army of programmers, how long could it really take them to do that? A week tops?

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Tinidril]

So the *only* reason someone might think that sticking with a product that is used by 90% of market (formats included) is that they were influenced by Microsoft?

No, I dont think that is what was said. And the fact is, that many of the polical organizations that are jumping into this arguement receive much of their funding from MS. Are you saying that MS funds these groups without thinking that it will bias the output?

I actually went through most of the submitted comments on the Mass website, and most of those opposed were from political organizations losting MS as a major contributor or founding member.

I don't believe that Linda was implying that these organizations are wholly owned subsidiaries of MS, but the connection to MS funding is clear.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[chill]

There are pros and cons of going either way (MS or OSS) but this decision sounds like it was made by pure ideology.

Which is how it should be. The ideology that the documents generated by a Government Of the People, By the People and For the People should always be available TO the people, not at the whim of a corporate entity. That is what it boils down to. The people should not be required to pay a fee, license a patent or buy specific software to interact with their government or review the documentation created by said government.

Microsoft can easily add export/import filters to their existing product line and thus be compliant with the requirements and still be usable by everyone in the gov't.

  -Charles

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Soko]

All of your concerns can be addressed very simply. If Microsoft would write an ODF import/export filter for Office (or commission such a thing), all of the wonderful features are available in the data format that the state desires. It's a win/win.

The only possible reason that Microsoft is withholding support is they can't dictate terms on what programs use ODF, and can't therefore lock out software with "IP imparing licenses" from using the same data format. This is the reason Microsoft is lobbying so hard to get OfficeML in as is - so they can retain control of who uses thier formats. This denies users of Open Source products legal use of OfficeML, unless those project change thier licenses. It's a game of chicken - but the OSS folks have a lot more to lose than Microsoft does.

Office is superior to OOo in most respects, but it comes at a price that is more than monetary. If MS would get of of thier high horse, swallow thier pride and compete solely on technical features (where there is little doubt they will win) all these issues go away.

Soko

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[ShieldW0lf]

acheco took exception to Hamel's remarks and first asked if she believed these groups were in fact "wholly owned subsidiaries of Microsoft," before asking if she believed they had been "bought" by the software giant.

"Those are your words, not mine senator," Hamel replied to both questions.

Yes, but thats clearly what you wanted to imply isn't Linda?

I believe the correct phrase to use here would be "Yes, but that's clearly what the facts you've presented here imply, isn't it Linda?

I love how you depict the whole thing as being about ideologies. You know how some people buy cell phones on contract, then later when they are dissatisfied with the service they are screwed, while other people buy cell phones and pay as you go plans so they are free to change providers should the need arise? This is the same thing. The CIO doesn't think tying the future of government documents to a single convicted monopolists patent protected format is a wise idea, and that is his determination to make.

There is no practical difficulty preventing Microsoft from stepping up to the plate and giving them what meets their needs, they're simply refusing to do so. It would be like if I went to a dealership to buy a truck for pulling stumps out of my yard and after failing to lease me a sportscar they went to all my family and friends telling them about how stupid I was for insisting on a truck and attempting to force me to lease a sportscar.

Technical issues aside, financial issues aside, who in their right mind would want to deal with a company that treats their customers that way? They've clearly demonstrated that if you get involved with them and you don't bend when they rattle their zipper, they'll attack you personally and publicly in an effort to have you replaced with someone more pliable. As in, it's not just dangerous for your company to deal with them, it's dangerous for your career as well.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[The Cisco Kid]

Its NOT about the software. Its about the FILE FORMAT.

MS Word is perfectly acceptable, so long as MS produces a version that reads and writes the standard FILE FORMAT. (It might also be acceptable if they were to *fully* open the MS file format, to the point that *any* software author/developer is free to completely and fully implement it without restriction)

In any case its all about *not* forcing a specific software package on everyone, even if it is the one that has 99% of everyone uses due to MS' illegal monopoly. Using MS format would *force* Word on everyone. Using OpenDocument format does *NOT* force a specific package *ANY* developer, *including MS* is free to provide software that supports that format.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[danielk1982]

Which is how it should be. The ideology that the documents generated by a Government Of the People, By the People and For the People should always be available TO the people, not at the whim of a corporate entity. That is what it boils down to. The people should not be required to pay a fee, license a patent or buy specific software to interact with their government or review the documentation created by said government.

They don't have to. They can download a document viewer(free from Microsoft) or even OpenOffice.

I stand by my statement that the move to OpenDocument is purely based on ideology and here's why:

1) MS Office cannot read or open OpenDocument format (conversly OpenOffice can).
2) MS Office is used by 90% of the market. Which means most state documents will not be able to be read by outside parties without extra effort (and a bit of tech savy-yes downloading OpenOffice implies tech savy)
3) OpenDocument is not accessible to Blind and Deaf users. Here in Canada accessability for the disabled is taken very seriously.
4) #3 implies that a subset of users will need to continue using MS Office and will require OpenDocument documents converted to an Word-readble format. Which means you are not really supporting one format, but now must contend with two and the products that read them. How will you pass documents around when you have different users using different largely incompatible products?

All this sounds like OpenDocument is just not the way to go *right now*.

I really believe an open document format is the way of the future and sooner or later this move will be necessary, but clearly the time is not right now.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Tran]

How is the open document format not accessible to Blind and Deaf users?
That accessability is not a function of the file format. That is a function of the application or the OS.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the future a time machine will be invented which will be used to go back in time and give the man who invented the typewriter what it should look like to look like MS Word.

Yep. Just ask Dan Rather!

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[bhirsch]

They have not made Office compatible with ODF. That is the crux of the issue. The answer to this is not for the state to cut off its nose to spite its face.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

As the last article on this noted, there are a fair number of blind and deaf state workers who could not get by using OpenOffice.

This has been suggested, but I have not seen research to back it up. Even were that the case, those workers could still use Koffice, Abiword, Wordperfect, or any other word-processor that supports the open Document format (all have announced support) and which integrates with braille boards and other such devices.

Not to mention that a fiscally conservative approach would be to use MS Office on older hardware due to its lower processor and memory consumption compared to OOo.

The state has a site license for MS Office now, which will only support Office 2003 and later as of next year. Office 2003 and 12, both have much higher resource requirements and only run on Windows XP, which is beyond the capabilities of some of their current hardware. Open Office runs on older OS's and uses less resources, contrary to your assertion.

Did you even read the article? The proposed cost of Open Office, with training, support, and installation is 5 million. The proposed cost of Office, without training for the new version is 50 million. Yeah, it sounds like sticking with the 50 million dollar offer sure is a great deal. What crack head modded you insightful?

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Surt]

<slashdotGrammarJerk>

It's That willn't a good day.

</slashdotGrammarJerk>

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[16K Ram Pack]

OpenOffice is not a 100% Word-compatible document reader. That's the whole point of things like OpenDocument - that we can all read and understand the data (and build new readers and converters).

A Word viewer also ties them into Mac and Windows, and not only that, means that the data contained cannot be mined in any way by a computer program.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[JamesTRexx]

but clearly the time is not right now

If not now, then when?

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[danielk1982]

Short answer: when it makes sense to.

Longer answer: When most people will be able to actually open and read the documents you create.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

And how do I know all this? They told me next Tuesday. Right before they executed me. That wasn't a good day.

Speak for yourself. I'm quite looking forward to it now.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[timeOday]

Most likly they think Word Processing IS Microsoft Word.

If so, they're going to be hard to pry away from Word regardless of what anybody says. Nobody likes to be "reeducated." Instead, the people behind this movement to OpenDocument should keep the debate about the format, not about dumping Word.

The CIO should say, "We have decided to adopt an open document format for reasons X, Y, and Z. In order to keep our business and earn the $X million dollars we pay them every year, we hope Microsoft will be responsive to customer needs and implement support for our chosen format. If they decide not to, of course we'll have to seek solutions that meet our requirements." Put the ball in Microsoft's court, after all, in the consumer-driven market economy we supposedly live in that would actually be the case.

Really, I wouldn't have a problem with people using Word if only it didn't force me to use Word, too.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[rco3]

No. The crux of the issue is vendor lock-in. Massachusetts wants to avoid it, Microsoft wants to enforce it. If Massachusetts requires the use of an open document format and Microsoft refuses to support it, who is cutting off whose nose?

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[16K Ram Pack]

As the last article on this noted, there are a fair number of blind and deaf state workers who could not get by using OpenOffice.

The article says nothing of the sort. It only makes two assertions, one from Curtis Chong that Word already has certain features with regards to screen readers and braille printers, and also that someone from MA said that such workers would remain on Word.

Neither of these statements say that blind (and there's no reference to deaf whatsoever) workers could not get by using OpenOffice.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

It pretty much is.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[JamesTRexx]

Then it makes sense to do it now before everyone is forced to buy a new pc with new Windows and new Office 12 because MS doesn't want to support an open format. OpenDocument documents can be read by software like OpenOffice.org, Abiword, Koffice, etc, software that can be run on existing hardware and operating systems.
Massachusets want to give everyone, including those people that can only afford a hand-me-down pc, access to information right now, not just those that can afford to pay and use software from a single vendor.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[shibashaba]

Oh yes I'm sure. Come on now. Senators have always been involved with the selection of software for government agencies. You wouldn't believe all the congressional hearings that took place when the federal government wanted to move away from WordPerfect. It was just horrible.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[chill]

They can download a document viewer(free from Microsoft)

That document viewer is NOT free. Yes, it doesn't cost $$ but you're missing the point. A while back Microsoft made available free fonts for the web. Where are they now? Microsoft decided to stop distributing them and while they were freely redistributable, the Word viewer is NOT. Where is the free MS Works viewer? What about a viewer that reads MS Word 4? They disappeared on a whim of a corporate entity. There is NOTHING to say Microsoft will stop distributing a free viewer anytime in the future.

1) Microsoft and third parties have acknowledged they are working on ("investigating", in Microsoft's case) plugins for importing/exporting OpenDocument formats. Are you implying that the world's largest software maker can't create a simple filter by January 2007?

2) How many of those documents are in older Office formats that even the current Office doesn't support all that well? That is the point. Unless forced, Microsoft will NEVER open up the formats and third parties will ALWAYS be locked into their product.

3) OpenDocument has nothing to do with blind & deaf users. That is a function of the software, not the format. If MS adds an import filter, then Word can be used, can't it? If not, the disabled market is a big enough one to get 3rd parties do develop software for it pretty darn fast. Job creation.

4) No, you're supporting ONE format -- OpenDocument. That is, if MS stops throwing a fit and releases a filter for it. If not, a third part will as that is money to be made. Again, servicing disabled users has nothing to do with format and everything with the software.

When would it be a good time? When Microsoft doesn't hold 90% of the market? Without large customers exerting their rights, exactly how is that going to happen?

I would be greatly surprised if the switch goes on as planned and there is not:

a) an import/export filter in MS Office for the various OpenDocument formats;
b) free "viewers" for the OpenDocument formats;
c) at least ONE good screen reader and other disabled-assisting software for OD formats

all long before January 1, 2007.

  -Charles

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[tonyr60]

Which is pretty much exactly what the CIO did say.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Fallen Kell]

My argument would have been much simpler.

Can OOo open and read >90% of the current MS .doc format? Yes. Can OOo save to a MS .doc format that can be read by current MS Office products? YES.

So we have just clarified that by using OOo, anyone with OOo, OR MS Office can read our documents? YES!!! So, by moving to OOo, we not only allow our citizens the ability to use a free piece of software to communicate with us, we also can continue working just as we have been in the past? Pretty much, yes. Even with the dissabilities issues, there is no reason NOT to change to using OOo and saving a copy in OpenDocument format AND a .doc format for the time being. Interoperability software will be made if and only if there is a market for it. If no one uses OpenDoc, then no company will produce interoperibility software for the format or the software where OpenDoc is supported. BUT you can still use OOo and save the output to .doc format for the cases where this is required...

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[narcc]

AbiWord is a personal favorite of mine, it's super-fast, lightweight, and easy to use. As for ODF support ... well, they have an import/export filter for it (separate download) but I have yet to successfully export a ODT file. They do have great support for LaTeX, one of my favorite formats.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[SoSueMe]

The only reason the "MS Word" is even remotely accessible is that MS has worked extensivly with AT vendors.
Rather than subscribe to an Accessible-by-design philosophy, they chose to create scripts or hacks to work with the most popular AT software.
JAWS would not work with many MS products without their collabotation with Freedom Scientific.

Moving to a format which separates presentation from content is the best thing that could happen for PWDs.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Maxhrk]

i dont know what's funny or not about deaf people using OpenOffice. I can use OpenOffice fine unless voice are being used by openoffice. :)

i dunno about blind though. deaf? pfft. i can use openoffice fine unless i don't know what OpenOffice don't let Deaf people use it for... feh.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

So according to you it is MS's responsibility to support there standard? and if WA decides to have a different standard and every other country and state does the same it is MS's responsibility to go out and support 100's of "open" standards. Open standards are great but they are impractical, especially when everyone chooses different standards, What is needed is MS to produce an open standard which MA can then adopt, the current situation is a recipe for disaster.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

When Vista comes out Microsoft will immediately stop patching Windows 2000 as their security model is to patch the latest OS and the one previous. No others. The same patching model applies to Office. Office 98 is no longer patched because 2000 and 2003 are the 'supported' versions.

This is nonsense. Are you a Mac user? This "security model" you describe seems to be the update policy of OS X. Office 98 was a Mac product.

Microsoft's support lifecycle policy is clear: Business and Development software (including Windows 2000/XP Pro and Office) get five years of mainstream support and an additional five years of extended support. Extended support includes security updates, paid support, and Support/Knowlege Base information.

You say "Microsoft will immediately stop patching Windows 2000" when Vista is released. Wrong. Microsoft will continue to patch Windows 2000 until June 30, 2010. Microsoft will continue to patch Office 2000 until June 30, 2009.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[MBCook]

No, I'm just pointing out that MS has an option here, they aren't being unilaterally shut out.

It would be a problem if Washington were to go with another standard (Washing state? Never happen), and the Oregon another, then Utah another, etc. But at a certain point (perhaps when Oregon came up on the list I just gave) then they can argue "Hey! We support this fine open format. And this one. Why don't you pick one of those."

Right now, the only open standards that are supported by Word that I can think of are plain text and RTF, neither of which is very attractive.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[bhirsch]

Last time I checked, OOo, AbiWord, and WordPerfect could work w/ MS Office files.

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[farrellj]

What's really funny is that according to Netcraft, the Citizens Against Government Waste are using Open Source, Open Standard software:

Site report for www.cagw.org
Site http://www.cagw.org/ Last reboot 158 days ago Uptime graph
Domain cagw.org Netblock owner convio.com
IP address 66.45.103.69 Site rank 120043
Country US Nameserver named.cagw.org
Date first seen August 1997 DNS admin netadmin@convio.com
Domain Registry publicinterestregistry.net Reverse DNS unknown
Organisation Citizens Against Government Wa, 1301 Connecticut Avenue, NW Su, Washington, 20036, United States Nameserver Organisation Citizens Against Government Wa, 1301 Connecticut Avenue, NW Su, Washington, 20036, United States

Hosting HistoryNetblock Owner IP address OS Web Server LastChanged
convio.com 8025 I.H. 35 North AUSTIN TX US 78753 66.45.103.69 FreeBSD Apache 1-Jun-2005


And wait, could it be that "Americans for Technology Leadership" also run Open Source, Open Standards software? You betcha!

Site report for www.techleadership.org
Site http://www.techleadership.org/ Last reboot 58 days ago Uptime graph
Domain techleadership.org Netblock owner Global Net Access, LLC
IP address 65.254.39.124 Site rank 889858
Country US Nameserver ns.ez-web-hosting.com
Date first seen November 1999 DNS admin billingsys@ez-web-hosting.com
Domain Registry publicinterestregistry.net Reverse DNS ez13.ez-web-hosting.com
Organisation Association for Competitive Te, 1413 K Street, N.W., Washington, 20005, United States Nameserver Organisation Ez-Web-Hosting, 4633 Welborn Dr., Sherrills Ford, 28673, United States

Netblock Owner IP address OS Web Server Last changed
Global Net Access, LLC 55 Marietta St, NW Suite 1720 Atlanta GA US 30303 65.254.39.124 Linux Apache/1.3.33 Unix mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_ssl/2.8.22 OpenSSL/0.9.7a PHP-CGI/0.1b 29-Sep-2005


If MS's pro-predatory "standards" are so much better than Open Standards, then why are these organizations using software founded and created upon and with Open Source, Open Standards software?

There is a name for this type organization: Hypocrite

ttyl
          Farrell

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

The interesting point that this brings to mind is the fact that this very same CIO attended and was a speaker at the Open Source Forum in South America. This factiod was dug up using Google to view a website proclaiming the forum. The MA. CIO appeared to be the only government official on the program. We can only hope that he was not influenced by all the players who benefit from this ill conceived maneuver that may well cost MA a fortune in the long run and end up looking like the revival of the Big Dig fiasco!

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[rco3]

"Last time I checked, OOo, AbiWord, and WordPerfect could work w/ MS Office files."

But not with complete functionality, and that's the point.

Microsoft can and do change how their document format works, and do NOT publish the specifications for that format. Those who have implemented compatibility have had to reverse-engineer it. For a variety of very good reasons, Mass. wants their documents created in a format whose specifications are open and available to the public without restriction. There is no technical reason why Microsoft cannot implement such a standard. The only reason that Microsoft don't want to is because it breaks their vendor lock-in. Massachusetts has no reason to protect Microsoft's profit margins, especially at the expense of Mass. taxpayers whose needs are, as a point of fact, EXACTLY what the gov't of Mass. is supposed to be meeting.

The ability to gain access to a computer for the purposes of interaction with one's state government is not synonymous with the ability to gain access to a copy of Office - especially not a current copy compatible with the latest revision of the .doc standard.

Again, if Mass. requires a format whose specifications are known and unencumbered but Microsoft chooses not to support any such format, who is being unreasonable? Which limits customer choice more: a format whose spec is open and unencumbered and thus can be implemented completely and properly by any developer who wants to, or a format whose spec is closed, unavailable to developers, and subject to change without notice?

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Bill is behind the QWERTY keyboard as well ??? Is there no end to his imfamy ?

Re:Influenced by Microsoft?

[Godwin O'Hitler]

I'm sure that with the $45m the state saves it could do something to make the disabled user experience less frustrating should those users find themselves penalised becasue of Microsoft's refusal to make their applications compatible.

Microshaft Influened?

[themepsp]

This line kills me: "OpenDocument file format standard might be influenced by Microsoft." Why?

Re:Microshaft Influened?

[ergo98]

This line kills me: "OpenDocument file format standard might be influenced by Microsoft." Why?

It's currently reading as - "suggested that groups that oppose the OpenDocument file format standard might be influenced by Microsoft."

Of course the meaning is that some believe that the big backlash recently (with every "grassroots" group announcing their beefs with the move to OpenDocument) is the result of Microsoft lobbying, which isn't an inconceivable idea.

OpenDoc

[airrage]

I think common sense would say that having a "common currency" in file formats is a good thing. But if it were me, and if I play CIO for a moment, I'd make DANG sure I get it right before converting millions of documents. Just one gotcha and ten years down the road you are left out to pasture - technically speaking.

I'd work more towards .pdf in the near-term and see how these openDoc formats shake out.

Re:OpenDoc

[erroneus]

Here's the thing though -- It's conceivable that Microsoft, as a means of encouraging people to upgrade would cut off support for older document formats and never release the souce code for the programs that generated the original file format. And in this conceivable future, we would not be able to run the old binaries conveniently or at all. It's a problem.

With a lot of programs that utilize OpenDocument format, the source code is readily available and can be recompiled for whatever platform is being used as the time. Further, the precise specs for the file format is available for adaptation into whatever platform exists at the moment.

In short, propritary lock-in and/or lock-out is an important fear that Microsoft is not and will not address. Open specification is just about the only way to avoid this.

Re:OpenDoc

[BlogPope]

Just one gotcha and ten years down the road you are left out to pasture - technically speaking.

Exactly. If only you had access to the document specification, then you might be able to do something to fix that problem.

Re:OpenDoc

[nine-times]

Just one gotcha and ten years down the road you are left out to pasture - technically speaking.

At least, being open source, you won't be without recourse. Can the same be said of Microsoft's new Word formats?

I'd work more towards .pdf in the near-term and see how these openDoc formats shake out.

PDF is fine, but not so great if you want anyone to be able to edit it down the road.

Re:OpenDoc

[ergo98]

But if it were me, and if I play CIO for a moment, I'd make DANG sure I get it right before converting millions of documents.

Remember that Microsoft has made OfficeXML the default file format in the upcoming Office 12, so some sort of shift seems inevitable. That sort of transition was probably taken as an opportunity to consider alternatives, which is how OpenDocument got its big break.

I'd work more towards .pdf in the near-term and see how these openDoc formats shake out.

PDFs are one of their file formats (in fact it led Microsoft to support PDFs natively in Office), however it's more of an output format rather than a working format.

Re:OpenDoc

[aaronl]

PDF is only good for fixed content. Anything that you're going to be working with the data in you can't put into a format like that! If it's headed for an archive, then PDF is a fine way to do it. If it's a MS Word .doc now, then it's probably best to convert it to an editable format, so OpenDocument.

Realistically, if your project to convert things is happening now, what else would you convert to? OpenDocument already has good support, is a very clearly defined format, and is unencumbered. It's also easy to work with to generate documents from other data.

Re:OpenDoc

[oliverthered]

Do you know what the X in XML stands for? It stands for the ability for a format to change but provide backwards compatibility, it allows OpenDocument for to grow to fit it's needs inclusing those gotchas ten years down the line.

Re:OpenDoc

[filesiteguy]

As one working right under a CIO - that's usually not an issue. Remember, CIO stands for "Career Is Over". :)

Re:OpenDoc

[destuxor]

You know, I'm still very interested to read exactly how the government intends to perform the actual conversion. There have to be so many documents, no doubt they intend to have someone script something together that will read each .DOC and .PDF and convert that into an OpenDocument format, but who reliable will that be? We all know saving .DOC's in OpenOffice can (occasionally) be precarious, sometimes even exporting a file to a non-standard format in MS Office leads to unexpected results. What they will have to do is run their scripts and then have a team look at each document side-by-side to ensure the conversion was successful, but even if 99% of all conversions do work according to plan, you're still looking at an enourmous task.
But, of course, we're well aware of the long-term benefits, so I suppose a three-month project of doing the actual conversion will ultimately help our grandchildren when they have to convert that into their preferred format of the day.

Re:OpenDoc

[Tinidril]

I'd work more towards .pdf in the near-term and see how these openDoc formats shake out.

Great, so everyone can just sit back and wait to see how OpenDoc shakes out. Then in ten years we can all pat ourselves on the back because we took the safe route and lo-and-behold OpenDoc imploded. How exactly to you expect a conversion to take place if everyone is too chicken to stand up first?

There is also a flip-side to your logic. The fact is that there _will_ be a conversion over to XML document formats for Office applications. Microsoft has their prefered version, and the rest of the industry has theirs. Wouldn't it be a little irresponsible to convert to the new Microsoft format without waiting ten years or so to see which becomes dominent? Of course as all that time goes past you will still be using the old binary document formats that everyone knows are going to be obsolete.

I'd work more towards .pdf in the near-term and see how these openDoc formats shake out.

Massachusetts is going to be using pdf where it is appropriate. But pdf is not a format that can be effectively used for many purposes. Nobody is going to use pdf for spreadsheets for instance.

Re:OpenDoc

[WinterSolstice]

I have this exact problem with all sorts of documents. Products that simply don't exist anymore. Splash. Wordstar. MS Works (though I seem to recall someone found a converter). DeScribe. I have docs I wrote on the Commodore Plus 4 that I was only able to retrieve via some lovely commodore emulation software that allowed copy and paste :)

My motto these days is that if you can't read it right now in several different tools (ala PDF) and you don't own the code; don't trust it to be there when you need it.

-WS

Re:OpenDoc

[cayenne8]

"I'm still very interested to read exactly how the government intends to perform the actual conversion. There have to be so many documents..."

According to the article...they're not converting old documents. They say they're only requiring documents submitted after the new standards date to be in OpenDocument format. I believe they said the cutoff date is Jan 1, 2007?

Re:OpenDoc

[Misch]

converting millions of documents

Not converting. Only documents created after 1 Jan. 2007 have to be created in either a PDF format or an OpenDocument format.

Re:OpenDoc

[Mantrid]

I didn't read it that they were going to backconvert every doc, just that they'd be switching to the new document format in 2007.

Re:OpenDoc

[NickFortune]

But if it were me, and if I play CIO for a moment, I'd make DANG sure I get it right before converting millions of documents.

But surely, if you need to absolutely sure it's going to work out, then you need an infinite amount of time to evaluate the new format. I can see that appealing to Microsoft, but it sounds like a recipe for inertia and stagnation to me.

If I were to play CIO for a moment, I guess I'd be looking to evaluate the format until I felt confident that

p(bt(MS)) > p(bt(OD))

which is to say the probability of Bad Things resulting from OpenDocument was less than that of Bad Things resulting from retaining MS Office.

That way we might get to see a decision in finite time and still feel confident that the Right Thing has been done.

Of course, you'd really want to take into consideration

p(gt(OD)) - p(gt(MS))

which should be positive inidicating that the probability of Good Things resulting from adopting OpenDocument is greater than it would be if MS Office were retained.

In fact, ideally you'd want to minimax the two, looking for the maximum chance of good versus the minimum harm. If your probabilities come out positive overall, then you can proceed with the switch to OpenDocument. It's as close to DANG sure as you're going to get in the real world.

You know, I just had this wild thought. You don't suppose they already thought of this in Boston? I mean what are the odds ...

Re:OpenDoc

[jonadab]

> Here's the thing though -- It's conceivable that Microsoft,
> as a means of encouraging people to upgrade would cut off
> support for older document formats and never release the
> souce code for the programs that generated the original
> file format.

I don't think they did that to encourage people to upgrade. If that had been the reasoning, they would have dropped support for all but the most recent format, rather than the ones from 5+ versions ago. It's far more likely that the reason they dropped support for the really old formats is because the code that handled them was old and crufty and unmaintainable in the current environment, as tends to happen with code that only still exists for legacy reasons. It probably used the old pre-Win32 APIs and everything; of *course* they dropped it once they thought they could get away with that and most folks wouldn't notice.

Of course, whatever their reasoning, the effect on your fifteen-year-old documents is the same:

Boss: Hey, we need to roll in these new ammendments to this business ethics redemnification policy. I'm pretty sure Eisengander worked on it in 1989. Go through his old documents and find it.
You: [hours later] This might be it, but it appears to be in Word 3 format.
Boss: Okay, so open it in Word.
You: We don't have a copy of Word 3 anymore. The oldest thing we've got is Word 97, and it won't open anything older than Word 6 format. Even if we had Word 3, it's unlikely we could get it to run on Windows. Neither Word 3 nor DOS 6 is available for purchase anymore.
Boss: So convert it or something. Make it work. Otherwise you're retyping 350 pages.
You: Get my successor to do it. Here's my notice.

Re:OpenDoc

[Vengeful weenie]

Even for archiving, PDF looses all of the metadata. If you'd like to search for a formula, as opposed to just some text (like 2x), PDF doesn't help. What something is can be just as important in some cases as the text. When people stop thinking of documents as things you just print out, that will become apparent.

Re:OpenDoc

[HermanAB]

Well, that already happened. Current versions of MS Word doesn't support all its old versions. You need OpenOffice or WordPerfect for to access old Word docs.

BTW, Corel WordPerfect also doesn't support all its old formats. You need one of the utilities I wrote to read WP v1 and v2 docs.

Re:OpenDoc

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's headed for an archive, then PDF is a fine way to do it.

I'm headed a little off-topic, but what about copyrighted fonts. Oh, I know, everyone verifies that the fonts they embed in their PDF files are unencumbered by copyright, but every once in a great while someone slips up and forgets to do their homework.

So your municipal government has a jillion archived PDF files available for public consumption. What happens when someone who owns the copyright on a font comes along, downloads them all, and finds the documents that violate the copyright?

Maybe the RIAA could represent them, after they finish locking down other media.

Nothing against PDF's at all, just an amusing little issue that never gets any attention.

Re:OpenDoc

[2ms]

The article said that it was misconception that millions of documents would be converted. Apparently only documents from 2007 on would be OpenDoc. So that was FUD when concerico or wtvr his name was complained about ton of work of converting millions of old documents.

Re:OpenDoc

[plj]

Remember, CIO stands for "Career Is Over"

Sometimes I truly wonder that I still haven't been fired, despite the fact that I'm typing exIT many times a day.

Re:OpenDoc

[WindBourne]

Technically speaking, The opendocument format issue is a total red herring. PDF is pretty much a read only format so it does not make sense. The opendocument works on about 1/2 the office packages out there, and shortly, will work on all office packages except for MS Office. But several converters are being developed to help convert from Opendocument to MS Office format. Anybody who affords MS office can afford the converter.

There is no technical downside, and even the cost issue is a red herring. MS Office has always required conversion from old to new formats. This costs the same amount of money that it does to convert from Office format to OpenDocument (hint: the real cost is in the labour).

Re:OpenDoc

[ozmanjusri]

no doubt they intend to have someone script something together that will read each .DOC and .PDF and convert that into an OpenDocument format, but who reliable will that be?

It's built in to OOo 2. Just select File/Wizards/Document Converter and follow the prompts. The Word converter in 2.0+ has worked exteremely well for us, and the conversion process is painless - set aside a directory structure for OpenDocuments, start the converter and let it go.

then have a team look at each document side-by-side to ensure the conversion was successful

You can switch on logging with the converter and - guess what - it will produce a hyperlinked document listing the original and OpenDocument versions side-by-side so you can check them. I suppose the log will also alert you if the conversion fails, but I can't verify that - none of the ones we've converted so far have had problems.

Re:OpenDoc

[destuxor]

I wasn't aware that OOo had such capabilities, thanks for your comments!

Re:OpenDoc

[ozmanjusri]

I wasn't aware that OOo had such capabilities

I'm only just starting to learn some of its capabilities myself, and already I have no doubt that it'll change the way offices work.

It's a real shame all discussion is being channelled into a narrow "MS feature vs Open Office/Document feature" pissing contest, because the implications of Open Document for document creation, distribution and management are immense. The data handling model for OOo will be a real seachanger as well, once it's understood.

Maybe in a few months when the asstroturfers, shills and FUDsters get out of the way, we'll be able to have a real discussion about Open Office instead of these incessant "my spreadsheet is faster than yours" bitch fights. Then we'll learn a thing or two from the people who actually have the smarts to use it properly.

Re:OpenDoc

[boisepunk]

"My motto these days is that if you can't read it right now [...] don't trust it to be there when you need it."

*cough*MS Works!*cough*

$50M verses $5M

[Bob_Robertson]

The early audio recording of the two hour meeting between the CIO's office and various members of the vendor population including the idiot... I mean, the representative of Microsoft, is really amazing. If you haven't heard it, I suggest you do a little digging and find it.

The CIO did make one very interesting statement about money. $50M in order to get Office-12, because of license fees, OS and hardware upgrades, for something that cannot even be tested at this time.

In comparison, to roll out OpenOffice to every state employee, including training (which never seems to be in the pro-Microsoft column), $5M. Mostly because there is no hardware or OS upgrade requirement since OpenOffice runs on everything. Today. Now. Including using the document specification they really want, which Microsoft says they have no plans on supporting.

Fascinating. Foot, rifle, Microsoft pulls trigger.

Bob-

Re:$50M verses $5M

[YU Nicks NE Way]

No, OpenOffice.org does not run on "everything". It's a horrific resource pig, which will require significant hardware upgrades to run. By contrast, Microsoft Office runs on the hardware they already have.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[Kenja]

"OS and hardware upgrades"

Sorry, why do you need OS and hardware upgrades for MS Office-12? I sense a bloated budget proposal. MS says that Office-12 has the same hardware requirements as Office XP, which runs fine on a PII 300mhz. So the IT departement tried to sneak hardware and OS upgrades in with the Office software upgrade budget. Cant blame Gates for that one.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[Tran]

You must have missed the earlier articels where MA said that they still run many machines with Win98. IIRC, office 12 does not run on that "OS". Not sure if OpenOffice 2.0 does.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if you provide a link with evidence people would believe you more.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[badriram]

mmm, If you noticed the OpenOffice running at 1/3 the of MS Office article. Then I would think OO would be the one with more requirements. Irregardless, this argument is about OpenDocument, not open office. And i really doubt either side is promoting their idea for the good of society, they do it for their own personal beliefs.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[Benanov]

However, OpenOffice.org does run on Windows 98, which MA has stated they have computers running it. Office 12 will not run on Win 98.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[Kenja]

Ok, thats a vallid point. Yes OpenOffice does run on Windows 9x. However I find it dog slow on hardware from that era. Bottom line is that if they feel they need hardware upgrades for MS Office odds are they will need them for OpenOffice. OS requirements asside.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[jferris]

Your posting privileges have been automatically suspended for propogating the usage of the nonstandard adverb "irregardless".

Re:$50M verses $5M

[Anonymous Coward]

"runs fine on a PII 300mhz"...

Eeh...Fine? Are you nuts?? MS Office is almost completely unworkable in such a configuration.
Well.. Maybe you've tried it...I know I'd go insane working like that. :-)

Re:$50M verses $5M

[TheCabal]

So why does it take 3 minutes for Calc to open up a spreadsheet while it takes Excel less than 10 seconds to open the same file?

Re:$50M verses $5M

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless they use another less-resource-hungry program that also happens to support OpenDocument on those older computers. (Abiword, for example. Sure it's not as featureful as OpenOffice, but at least it supports the format. You've got to make compromises somewhere if you're running older hardware, but at least you have the choice.)

Re:$50M verses $5M

[Tran]

Of course they do not have to use Open Office. They could use other as yet unknown to us lightwight Open Document compliant word processor.
Though yes they di give the numbers as a comparison between MS Office and Open Office. I would wager that part of the Open Office $5M includes *some* of the same hardware upgrades as the office upgrades. The 2 that put the whole idea together did do their homework on the subject. But, and yes, they did say that it was a rough estimate on both numbers - and that is why Pacheco can call them out and complain not a proper cost benefit analysis was done. But that is starting down the pat start splitting hairs.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[WhiteWolf666]

What planet are you from?

Of the below, only Office 12, OpenOffice.org 1.1.5, and OpenOffice.org 2.0 have XML document format support. Office 12 is MSXML, and OpenOffice.org are OpenDoc.

Oh, and don't tell me they shouldn't upgrade from Office 2000, or Office 97, or whatever. I'm 100% Massachusetts has a site licensing policy; Office 2000 went End-of-Life on 6/30/2004. Office XP goes End-of-life on June 30, 2006. Neither of these makes for a good, forward-looking 'upgrade'. It's going to have to be 2003 or newer.

Office 12 preliminary system requirements:
Microsoft Office 12 will run on Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or later, or the Windows Longhorn client. Server components will require Windows Server 2003 or later and, potentially, SQL Server 2000 or later. Office 12 will support x64 platforms natively, though it's not clear whether this support will ship in the box with the initial release, or later as a separate add-on.
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/office12_prev iew1.asp

Microsoft Office 2003 system requirements:
To use Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, you need:
Component Requirement
Computer and processor
Personal computer with an Intel Pentium 233-MHz or faster processor (Pentium III recommended); optional installation of Business Contact Manager for Outlook® 2003 requires a 450-MHz or faster processor (Pentium III recommended)
Memory
128 MB of RAM or greater; optional installation of Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2003 requires 256 MB of RAM
Hard disk
400 MB of available hard-disk space; optional installation files cache (recommended) requires an additional 200 MB of available hard-disk space; optional installation of Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2003 requires an additional 190 MB of available hard-disk space

OpenOffice.org system requirements, version 2.0:
Microsoft Windows

* Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000 (Service Pack 2 or higher), Windows XP, Windows 2003
* 128 Mbytes RAM
* 200 Mbytes available disk space
* 800 x 600 or higher resolution with at least 256 colors

Solaris: SPARC platform edition

* Solaris 8 OS or higher
* 128 Mbytes RAM
* 250 Mbytes available disk space
* X-Server with 800 x 600 or higher resolution with at least 256 colors

Solaris: x86 platform edition

* Solaris 8 OS or higher
* 128 Mbytes RAM
* 250 Mbytes available disk space
* X-Server with 800 x 600 or higher resolution with at least 256 colors

Linux:

* Linux kernel version 2.2.13 or higher, glibc2 version 2.2.0 or higher
* 128 Mbytes RAM
* 200 Mbytes available disk space
* X-Server with 800 x 600 or higher resolution with at least 256 colors

System Requirements for OpenOffice.org 1.1.x
Windows

Microsoft Windows 98, ME, NT (Service Pack 6 or higher), 2000 or XP

Pentium compatible PC, 64 MB RAM, 250 MB available hard disk space
GNU/Linux ("Linux")

Glibc 2.2.0 or newer

Pentium compatible PC, 64 MB RAM, 300 MB available hard disk space

X server and graphics card capable of 800x600 resolution

Performance testing, OpenOffice.org versus MS Office 2003:
http://www.matt13.com/computer/open_office_or_ms_o ffice/

OpenOffice.org uses less CPU, less RAM, and far less Hard Disk space.

Does OpenOffice.org start slower on

Re:$50M verses $5M

[Anonymous Coward]

How did this get modded up? It's bordering on "troll."

Re:$50M verses $5M

[thebdj]

Multiple reasons. M$'s closed format that OpenOffice had to work around to get to open Excel (and other format files) in a somewhat proper fashion. You notice you get those may not open correctly or appear properly messages with OpenOffice. Oh and then there is the fact that the Office Suite programs have hooks into the OS. I mean when you have the source code for the OS available to you, of course you know how to treat it just right to open files faster.

Besides, what are you using that takes 3 minutes to open a spreadsheet anyway?

What I want to know is why simple text files and comma separated files aren't more popular. I mean how often do you seriously need all the formatting that you use in Word/Excel (or the OpenOffice equivalents)?

Re:$50M verses $5M

[queef_latina]

Fuck off

Re:$50M verses $5M

[temcat]

Word 2000 worked like a charm for me on a Celeron 266 with 128M RAM.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[SkjeggApe]

That's NOTHING! I have a perfectly nice and simple spreadsheet that Calc opens in a few seconds, and Excel STILL hasn't been able to open, after 2hrs of trying and trying..

Here, I'll attach it.... (let me know if/when your spreadsheet software can open it.)

[attachment: VerySimpleSpreadshet.ods]

Re:$50M verses $5M

[TheCabal]

Besides, what are you using that takes 3 minutes to open a spreadsheet anyway?

Calc itself, for one thing. When I first tried using it I thought it had hung because it took so long to fire up. Only by accident when I tried starting it up and walked off to get a Dew did I notice that it was just taking a horrendously long amount of time just to start- and that's not involving an Excel worksheet or anything like that.

I can also say that Write literally drove my wife to tears it was so difficult for her to use, she begged me to reinstall Office so she could get some work done.

No, I'm not against OpenOffice, but damn it's freakishly bloated and slow, even on Linux. Have you seen the size of the damn internationalization package?

Re:$50M verses $5M

[digidave]

I've found Calc 2.0 to be pretty much as quick as MS Office for XLS spreadsheets with about 20,000 lines. Calc takes longer to open OpenDocument spreadsheets than it does to open XLS because OD files are compressed, so they have an extra step. IMO, this extra step is made up for by vastly smaller files, which is really noticable for large spreadsheets.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[YU Nicks NE Way]

I stopped reading when I read things like "preload [OpenOffice]; that is, after all, what Microsoft does." That's crap -- you can look for yourself and see that Office isn't preloaded.

Once again, the Slashdolts are living in a fantasy world.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[NickFortune]

Bottom line is that if they feel they need hardware upgrades for MS Office odds are they will need them for OpenOffice. OS requirements asside.

Bottom line is they don't have to use OpenOffice to use OpenDocument. That the whole point of the exercise. It's not a power grab by OOo as MS would have us belive - it's a way to make sure everyone has a choice of office software, and that they can choose freely.

AbiWord can handle OpenDoc and it is nowhere near as fat as OOo.

Heck, it even runs on Windows if you insist on a proprietory OS

Re:$50M verses $5M

[Red Alastor]

Of course they do not have to use Open Office. They could use other as yet unknown to us lightwight Open Document compliant word processor.

Known as Abiword you mean. They support OpenOffice 1.x format right now, in 2007 they will most certainly support ODF too.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[NickFortune]

At the risk of betraying my ignorange - how can I look and see for myself? What do I have to do?

Re:$50M verses $5M

[NickFortune]

At the risk of betraying my ignorange

Or even my ignorance. Then again, I've already betrayed my inability to spell check. How much worse can it get?

Re:$50M verses $5M

[whoever57]

Word 2000 worked like a charm for me on a Celeron 266 with 128M RAM.

Interesting, but not relevant. Office 2003 requires Windows 2000 (at least). Ever tried running Windows 2000 on a machine with less than 256MB? Even with 256MB, it's pretty slow.

What's the minimum Windows OS requirement for Office-12?

Re:$50M verses $5M

[roscivs]

Inflammable means flammable? What a country!

Re:$50M verses $5M

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Turn on the task manager. Look to see that Word, etc. aren't installed. Check the start up time.

Go to a version of windows which shipped before the version of office you're running. Do the same test.

Notice how fast both are. Notice that Word 2003 already supports XML. Then realize you've been lied to by the OO.o worshippers.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[NickFortune]

Turn on the task manager. Look to see that Word, etc. aren't installed. Check the start up time.

Well, aren't running anyway. Of course, that doesn't make a lot of difference on Windows, since MS apps .exe files tend to be tiny files, with most of the code living in numerous .dll files. These can be loaded at runtime, and I don't know how to check for this using the task manager.

Windows also has this, (possibly undeserved), reputation for grabbing the majority of the memory for use by MS apps at boot time and yeilding it but grudgingly to non-MS apps. In which case you wouldn't necessarily notice a difference in any event.

Admittedly, that last bit has the ring of urban legend to it, so I'm not convinced. Then again, MS have pulled similar tricks in the past, which is why I'm interested in a way to tell how much preloading may have gone on. Sadly, I'm no further forward on that point.

Notice that Word 2003 already supports XML. Then realize you've been lied to by the OO.o worshippers.

I don't mean to sound ungracious, but that's slightly more information than I asked for. Specifically, I had hoped for a way to check which .dll files were loaded at boot time, rather than guidance on how to change my belief patterns - thank you all the same.

And I do realise that Word 2003 already uses an XML file format. I also realise that said format is due to be withdraw in favour of the MSXML format in Office-12 because the Word 2003 one isn't up to the job. So there's no particular reason to stick with that version of Word.

Tell me, do you regard a half-truth told with intent to deceive as being any less offensive than an outright lie? You may want to re-evaluate the source of your data.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[TykeClone]

It does. I'm not sure how happy it is, but it does.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[mjm1231]

I took it for granted that by preload he was referring to prefetch(have a look at the /Windows/prefetch folder). But it is my understanding that prefetch should work the same for OOo as for MS Office.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[ahziem]

Though not officially supported, we use OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 on many Windows 95 computers without any problems--other the normal problems from using Windows 95. Openoffice.org is OK, and I have a feeling 1.1.5 would work on Windows 95 too.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[rtb61]

Your wife begged you to install microsoft office. Are you serious. Your wife also cries when she uses open office. I would have to say that you have more serious problems in your household than which office suite you happen to be using. Perhaps your own personal operating system needs reprograming.

I just tried the same thing with open office and it took nine seconds. I tried the same thing with microsoft office and so far it has taken well over a year, maybe one done I might install that crapware, nah, really bad idea, besides I threw the last lot of discs away (couldn't sell them, I do retain my intergrity and I couldn't figure out anybody I hated enough to give them to). I have even turned down free copies of the latest version of that crapware (there are still people nasty enough in this world who will try and stick me with that nasty stuff, of course most of them happen to work for one particular vendor).

No, I'm not against microsoft, WHAT!!! (eep might head nearly started to spin when I typed that), yeach! I bloody loathe them and their greedy, customer abusive business practices, not to mention their seemingly endless marketing drivel, M$=B$ everybody knows what it stands for (even the ones that get paid to pretend it isn't true ;-)).

Re:$50M verses $5M

[cbiltcliffe]

Word/Excel, etc might not be loaded, but let me ask you this:

How much of the Office .dll package is loaded by FastFind, which is loaded at system startup?

Re:$50M verses $5M

[WhiteWolf666]

FUD
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290144/

I quote:
What is the Osa.exe file?

The Office Startup Assistant (Osa.exe or OSA) is a program that improves the performance of Office programs. . . .

What Are the Advantages of Running the Osa.exe File?

The Osa.exe file initializes the shared code that is used by the Office XP programs. When you use the Osa.exe file to initialize shared code, the Office XP programs start faster. If the Office programs, instead of Osa.exe, initialize the shared code, the programs take longer to start.
Back to the top Back to the top

Can I Remove the Osa.exe File?

You can safely remove the Osa.exe file without causing the Office XP programs to fail. However, if you remove Osa.exe, you no longer benefit from the performance advantages that are provided by running Osa.exe. Also, the Office Shortcut Bar (OSB) may no longer start automatically, if you configured the OSB to start when Windows starts. (See the notes for the command-line switches later in this article.)

Don't forget the indexing services; I'm sure they load random shared DLLs, and they do NOT show up in the task manager. I quote:
Microsoft's Indexing Service
  Starting with Office XP, Microsoft has included a new "fast searching" feature (parasite) which may cause your computer's hard disk to run continuously.
  Apparently, this feature is implemented via Mosearch.exe and Mosdmn.exe, neither of which shows up in the task manager. As with findfast, don't just delete these files. Instead, follow the (very confusing) instructions provided in OFFXP: Hard Disk Runs Continuously After You Install Office XP (Q282106) to disable it. Unfortunately, this feature must be disabled for each installed Office XP application.

Also, I believe the various DCOM stuff that was optional in earlier MS systems, and comes standard in newer OSes preloads a shared office code.

Additionally, MS Office is 'prefetched', meaning that the DLL's are organized on disk for optimal loading speed. This happens with all windows apps.

You can do this on Linux, too. In SuSE 10.0, which has OpenOffice.org preloading set by default, OpenOffice.org loads in 5 seconds, on a mediocre celeron. On my system it times to around 3.4 seconds.

Also, you didn't bother to read the benchmark I linked. OpenOffice.org write uses less ram than MS Word, takes less time to startup (when neither are preloaded), and has a much smaller HD footprint.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[YU Nicks NE Way]

None. Fastfind is no longer loaded at startup, and has not been for some versions.

Re:$50M verses $5M

[Trepalium]

Are you quite sure about this? That's not what Microsoft says about this. Since I can't take for granted that you'll read the link, here's the important part:

What Are the Advantages of Running the Osa.exe File?

The Osa.exe file initializes the shared code that is used by the Office XP programs. When you use the Osa.exe file to initialize shared code, the Office XP programs start faster. If the Office programs, instead of Osa.exe, initialize the shared code, the programs take longer to start.

Osa.exe is installed by Office and is automaticalled added to the start menu in the Startup group. It doesn't preload as much as the OOo preloader does, but it does preload (Specifically, Mso{$OFFICE_VERSION}.dll, which may load other DLLs).

In the future, if you want to rant about misinformation, you might want to make sure that your information is correct.

How very /. of him!

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is even the tiniest pro-Microsoft bent to any statement then it must be because of a conspiricy invloving Bill Gates himself!

Never mind that every alternative to Office is currently buggy, slow, broken and lacking in modern features! NO! It's must be Microsoft propaganda!

Maybe actually having a real company behind OO.o will get it off the ground (around version 3 or 4). But wholesale swapping from Office to any other alternative will be like going back 5-10 years in office productivity over night. Who the hell want's to do that?!?!? Certainly not the people actually USING the computers that the software runs on. Only beurocrats that know NOTHING of the situation :(

Yeah, having government officials dictate software policies, sounds like a great idea to me!

Re:How very /. of him!

[jav1231]

You're missing the point. The Mass. move isn't to OpenOffice, it's to OpenDocument. What they choose to run is a different story. OOo and Wordperfect, for example, plan to support. Microsoft only plans to import it, I believe, and that only recently. Microsoft if fighting the standard. The idea that this state government is moving to OOo is an extension of the MS PR machine. Get everyone worried about losing Office and an outcry will ensue. Nevermind the fact that they're locking themselves into perpetual licensing fees and a proprietary format. Hey, the vendor's benevolent so what's the harm, right?
More people, more companies, and more governments need to really stand on MS's neck on this and get them to support standard formats. MS doesn't want to because then they have to TRULY compete with other software. Now if Office is so great, why not just support the format? Why not say, "okay, we'll support it and beat you on equal footing!" The mark of a champion is that he will beat you at your best. MS wants to take out your quarterback's legs, get rid of the instant replay and challenge system, AND make you play on their home field before they'll even join the game.
When are people going to realize they are the software industry equivilents to rapists and pedophiles.

Re:How very /. of him!

[arfonrg]

"Never mind that every alternative to Office is currently buggy, slow, broken and lacking in modern features!" -I assume this was a typo.

Surely what you meant to type is: "Never mind that every version of Office is currently buggy, slow, broken and lacking in modern features!"

Re:How very /. of him!

[The Cisco Kid]

You, sir, are either grossly misled, or are an intentionall MS shill.

It isnt about forcing people to not use MS Word - its about setting a fair, open, and public standard for the file formats used so that *everyone* can decide what tools to use. Making MS secret format the 'standard' *forces* everyone to use Word, unless MS completely and fully opens the specification for it.

People can use MS Word if they really think its the best tool for them - but they must have a way to read and produce the standard format. That can either mean MS adds native support in Word, or they use a third party plugin or convertor.

MS was recently quoted as suggested that 'customer demand' might drive their decision to support OpenDoc. Hello? MS? MA is a customer. They are demanding it.

Once MA stops buying new Word licenses, MS *will* add OpenDoc to Word, and MA can buy Word again. But MS will *only* do that if they are absolutely forced, as it sets a precedent, and once that ball starts rolling it will mean an end to MS lock-in. Word may still be popular, but no one will be forced to use it.

Yes, converting away from single-source vendor lock-in is hard. But the longer you wait, the harder it gets, and people have been blindly waiting for pretty long already. But once you finally get it over with it gets easier and less expensive in the long run, and switching software in the future (for whatever reason) is no longer a huge issue, since any choice has to support the existing standard format.

Re:How very /. of him!

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, statements like "When are people going to realize they are the software industry equivilents to rapists and pedophiles." make you look like a raving loon. Such language in support of our "cause" is not helping one bit.

You may have valid points, but if you cannot put them into words without resorting to mindless arm waving, then just don't bother, we'll be better off!

Re:How very /. of him!

[CDPatten]

Why is it so hard for you to except that maybe people like MS Office? Let take this for example, Word Perfect has been around for years and use to be number 1. Remember Lotus Notes? MS Office came along, didn't get bundled, was expensive, and is now number 1. PEOPLE CHOSE MS OFFICE. MS Offered a cheap word processor product called Works. People didn't like it. They like Office.

" its about setting a fair, open, and public standard for the file formats used so that *everyone* can decide what tools to use. Making MS secret format the 'standard' *forces* everyone to use Word, unless MS completely and fully opens the specification for it."

That is just FUD Microsoft Office 2003 XML schema license.

But to address your premise, I can't find that anywhere in the state constitution or in any laws. I think that is a nice notion you have, but isn't the job of the CIO of the state. The CIO isn't supposed to promote/FORCE some obscure standards that may or may not succeed on the citizens of MASS (before you argue it, the standard currently is less then 3% of the Office market). The CIO should be implementing the most compatible solution for the citizens. Guess what that is... MS Office. When you have 95% + of a market you are the standard.

Open Format gets allot of press in our circles, but for the rest of society, its non-existent. The appointed CIO that made this unilateral decision is going to get stopped by officials elected by the people of MASS.

Re:How very /. of him!

[DigiShaman]

Maybe I'm stating the obvious. But can't we use a standard already in place. How about HTML or XML to do the formatting? You just need a browser to view the document. The compilers can be retooled for an office enviroment.

Re:How very /. of him!

[jav1231]

Where is the metaphor lost? Microsoft robs the young (startups) of innovation, capital, and technology. Bullying tactics, strangling companies of their suppliers, MS has done a lot of this. Perhaps my statements were over the top in a more civilized setting, but this is /. give me a break.
Either way, I stand by the idea that Microsoft is unethical, brazen, and devoid of good. Not because they are big and successful but because they have become so dishonestly.

Re:How very /. of him!

[PostItNote]

ODF is an XML-based format. So when you ask "why can't we use XML?", the answer is "they are trying to!"

Re:How very /. of him!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

That is just FUD Microsoft Office 2003 XML schema license.

Is this even a coherent sentence? I assume you intended to babble some uninformed BS about how MS's new file format is open, even though it isn't, and cannot be implemented by other vendors since it stores vital information as encoded chunks of binary data within the XML.

But to address your premise, I can't find that anywhere in the state constitution or in any laws. I think that is a nice notion you have, but isn't the job of the CIO of the state.

Umm, the CIO is supposed to get the best tech at the best price. Just like everything else, he wrote a standard for what he wanted and is accepting bids. Just because the standard they decided upon is the Open Office format instead of a format only one vendor can bid on does not mean he is legislating. You might notice he chose the standard the entire European Union has also decided upon.

This is not rocket science. Just because you have been buying a special kind of patented electrical plug for years, does not mean you should not choose a new one when it comes time to renovate a building, especially when anyone can bid on the new one, while only one company can bid on the old one. It is common sense and business sense not to lock yourself into on supplier.

The CIO should be implementing the most compatible solution for the citizens.

I'm glad you said that. Who can run OpenOffice and write to that format? Anyone, the software is free and runs on all major OS's. Who can run Word and write to .doc? The subset of the population that is running Windows or Mac OS and can afford to spend $100+. I think it is clear which one is more compatible.

When you have 95% + of a market you are the standard.

Who cares if it is a de-facto standard. It locks you into one supplier which means you are screwed in purchasing negotiations. Only an idiot would go with a product available only from one vendor. If MS wants to be a supplier then they can meet the product specifications of their customer. Gee what a crazy concept, a supplier providing what the customer wants, and bidding against other suppliers. If MS does not want to bid and compete, well that is certainly there choice. So far your only argument has been, they should do what everyone else does because everyone else is doing it. What a great way to stifle all progress forever. Hopefully the legislators in MA will not be as blind as you are.

Re:How very /. of him!

[nico60513]

People do like Microsoft Office. And they will still be able to use Microsoft Office. Because this decision by the CIO covers only documents produced for or by the Executive branch of the Massachusetts state government. It doesn't require any citizen of Massachusetts to switch to OpenDocument or OpenOffice. In other words, the decision covers exactly the CIO's area of responsibility.

The problems with Microsoft's format, according to the CIO are:

1. Each developer who wants to implement or distribute it has to request a license, thus locking out projects based on the GPL.
2. It is controlled by a single entity, not a standards body.
3. Microsoft's patent offer (i.e. not to sue) is restrictive.

They had the same complaints about Sun's patent offer, which caused to Sun to restate their patent offer into much broader terms.

Microsoft does have 95% of the market, today. Massachusetts is worried about access to their official state documents hundreds of years from now.

Re:How very /. of him!

[CDPatten]

You are a pretty smart guy. Too bad you can't get basic things like gender down. "He" is a "She". HER name is Linda. You would have learned that if you read the first sentence of the article. Next time read the article you are posting about before actually posting. :)

"That is just FUD Microsoft Office 2003 XML schema license."

You are correct it was not coherent. In my haste I forgot to put a "." and typed the link incorrectly. It was a link to FAQ for the MS open xml format (not patent free, but free for anyone to use without royalties.) In other words you can use it, but can't change it on them. I think you will find it quite educational. It should have read like this.

"That is just FUD. http://www.microsoft.com/Office/xml/faq.mspx"

Anyways, you must not be following the case closely. The argument originally made was over fear that the ms format wouldn't be readable in 10 years. Not any of the nonsense you tout. It was today we saw a change and the cost came into play, but sadly she was disingenuous.

Her numbers for Office at FULL PREMIUM PRICE (without the bulk/volume and government discounts) would give her 125,000 copies of MS Office... sorry to disappoint her, but there just aren't that many office employees under her jurisdiction. Her MS numbers included a brand new top of the line premium computer + undiscounted premium MS Office licenses, but not for an Open Format solution. As we just discussed she also added a few extra licenses that weren't needed... 125,000 vs. a few thousand. Hmmmmmmmmm.

That's sweet and all, but intellectually dishonest. Office 12 will run on any XP machine out today. Not to mention they would be upgrading the computers as part of the IT cycle anyways. She was spouting FUD. Your side will never make headway against MS until you stop lying about numbers and make a case based on merits, not on fake facts. Memory hog anyone? That wouldn't be Excel with that title would it? Nope it wouldn't. OO all the way baby!

"Who cares if it is a de-facto standard."

The answer to that would be the vast majority of citizens in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who use the MS software and are happy with it (I'm one of them). The typical person does not want to go search the web for some "free" software they had never heard of just to read a government document. Not to mentions people's hesitation to install it and have it clutter up their computer with another program.

The state CIO's job is to serve the people, not the OSS agenda. It's an appointed position and not elected... in other words not accountable to the people. That is probably why we see a unilateral decision like this. And today, regrettably for Linda, is why the elected officials in the state feel the need to squash this on behalf of the citizens of MASS.

Re:How very /. of him!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, the state CIO's job is to serve the people, which is why this isn't about which software package to use, but rather which document format is acceptable. Using a proprietary, closed format from a single vendor is NOT an acceptable solution for "the people." You get an open standard instead, one that anyone can write to (including Microsoft, if they would stop being so stubborn), and then everyone is served. If Microsoft would stop playing games and include this format in Office, people could continue to use Office, and the open format would serve the state's interests.

Re:How very /. of him!

[aaronl]

You're spouting absolutely incorrect information all over this post. I'm going out on a limb here and I'm going to say that I know more than you on this topic. I happen to be a government official in MA, so I feel very comfortable saying that I know more than you about this. Just because a couple Senators say it, doesn't make it correct; it isn't their job to know everything about everything.

1) The State distributes public documents in PDF, not in Word docs. They occasionally will send Word and Excel files around to other government institutions, if they require a lot of data input, formulas, or validation. This *already* causes severe compatibility problems due to issues between versions of MS software.

2) Appointed positions have to be voted upon by elected representatives. There is your accountability.

3) The State has a CIO, and ITD, and various others to make these decisions and recommendations. If they ignore these people/departments, they are basically making them unnecessary, and should justify why they're spending the money for nothing.

4) The State does have several tens of thousands of desktops. Every municipal government has several State machines to do voter registration, police queries, and other functions. You have things like the Registry, with their many thousands of machines, you have courts, DOR, DLS, DET, etc. So yes, there are a very lot of desktops out there under State control.

5) The State tends to run with old computers until they do a full replacement, or they die (it seems whichever is longer ;-). Many current machines are running NT4, and, as they pointed out, there are still Win98 machines out there, too. XP won't run on those computers, and neither will Office 12. Using OpenOffice would give them more life from existing equipment, if they desire.

6) You forgot support agreements on all that hardware/software. Not that all of it will be purchased with those agreements. It depends on whether they're doing RFP, going with the bid list under existing contract, etc.

7) People aren't going to be worried about those things, at all. They had to install something to read all those PDFs on nearly every State and Federal website. If they're downloading tax forms, those are PDF, for example. People certainly don't get all worried about installing some random software, either.

The elected officials are talking about squashing this likely because some MS agent bent their ear on it. If you read some of the things that people said against using OpenDocument, and requiring Word, you see how unfounded many of those comments really are. All the talk about disability and accessibility was quite interested. Software had to be specially written for Office because of it's non-standard nature, for example.

If this initiative gets shot down, I think you'll find that it had everything to do with MS influence, and nothing to do with worrying about the People.

Re:How very /. of him!

[CDPatten]

I looked at your company's website, and it looks like you are pretty entry level... in any case I doubt you are an employee (other then a random consult, probably for Ferdi up at the high school, hardly a state employee).

In response to your 1-7 bullets.

1.) - That simply is crap. Word Pad (and hundreds of other editors) can open pretty much all MS Word files (Macros aside, and they wouldn't be used in public documents). Formatting may be lost, but you the content is still there. MS Docs are large because they offer backwards compatibility for a few generations. Not to mention 2003 opens all the documents from 97-on. You are spreading disinformation here.

2.) - Romney appointed this position. "elected representatives" is wrong. 1 person, the governor, that is accurate. The very nature of my statement "appointed" implies an elected official put them there. However, the CIO is not accountable to the people, they are accountable to an elected official. Nobody knows who appointed this yahoo, look at yourself. You didn't even know. There is no accountability to the people.

3.) - No. What happened is the CIO made a bad decision, and due to checks and balances state officials stepped in. What if the CIO woke up this morning and decided to move the state back to DOS? Pretty stupid, huh? Well it would be important to allow the elected officials to step in and stop it. This is a similar case.

4.) - Clearly you haven't followed this case. For one, it isn't referring to any random state computer. Secondly, tens of thousands are not 125,000 (10,000 are not even being talked about for THIS upgrade anyways). Thirdly, the majority of the registry machines run their own software and don't need any office, a pdf viewer at most, courts aren't in this discussion (the rmv isn't either for that matter), and frankly your list is uniformed and just FUD. Your incorrect generalizations, your numbers, are all just pulled out of your ASS.

5.) - This is one of your more stupid points. NT 4 is over a decade old. The handful of machines using it would be upgraded soon anyways. Not only are there very FEW, but even FEWER that are actually used as a desktop where people need office solutions. Win98 is in the same boat, and most of those got upgraded to Win2k so incredibly fast it's not even funny. Win98 was very unstable, and certainly hasn't been left around for a decade. Anyone who is using 98 is going to be upgraded soon anyways, and frankly is so neglected they probably wouldn't get the open format software to begin with. But more specifically to the absurdity of your point.

Here are the hardware specs for OO and MS Office 2k3. The hardware requirements are virtually identical.
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/sys_reqs _20.html
http://www.microsoft.com/products/info/product.asp x?view=22&pcid=3c3bd1bb-5595-4512-bcca-f764770e1d7 1&type=req

6.) - I disagree, but let's take it as accurate just for fun. It still doesn't even out her fake numbers. Nice try though.

7.) - People are familiar with Acrobat. They use it all day at work, and it's all over the internet TODAY. PDF's are just as common (if not more so) as word files. It is a proprietary format owned by Adobe, just like MS owns the .doc format (actually MS's format is more open). Almost nobody in the general public has heard of your open format crap. After everyone's bout with spyware they are hesitant to download software. Maybe not 2 years ago, but today people are... certainly not some random program that they have never heard of before.

As far as elected officials getting their ear bent. MS gave Romney more money in the last Election then Obrien. The money trail stops at the CIO's boss' front

Re:How very /. of him!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I just thought I'd address a few of your arguments here, to clarify a few things.

That simply is crap. Word Pad (and hundreds of other editors) can open pretty much all MS Word files

You're the one spouting crap. MS Word can't even open all MS Word files and likely nothing ever will be able to since the spec is not published. I have plenty of Word files I have inherited that cannot be opened by any currently available software (only be old versions of Word that are unavailable). That is annoying for my company's private records. It is wholly unacceptable for documents owned by "The People."

Here are the hardware specs for OO and MS Office 2k3. The hardware requirements are virtually identical.

Why don't you read your own links, specifically the supported OS's. Also, the link you post is for Open Office 2, The first version is still available, supports the same format, and has lesser requirements.

PDF's are just as common (if not more so) as word files. It is a proprietary format owned by Adobe, just like MS owns the .doc format (actually MS's format is more open).

You are misinformed. PDF is an open, published, unencumbered standard with multiple readers and writers. 50 years from now, if someone needs to read a PDF, and no readers work on any current OS, they can read the spec and implement one, or a conversion to a format that is supported. DOC is a closed, unpublished, undocumented, intentionally obfuscated, has dozens of versions, and some versions are patent encumbered. That is a big difference.

After everyone's bout with spyware they are hesitant to download software. Maybe not 2 years ago, but today people are... certainly not some random program that they have never heard of before.

OK, who is it that is so afraid of spyware they will refuse to download a program from a government website? Do tell.

Interesting enough its democrats looking to keep them, because its best (at least at this point) for the citizens.

That is your opinion and a pretty weak one. So far your arguments for using word have still been, "everyone else does." Gee great logic. OpenOffice can read and write .doc file adequately right now and supports the state's preferred format, and is free and is open source so modifications to it are subject to competitive bidding. Word costs money, is closed source, does not support the preferred format, and is only available from one supplier (one known to criminally abuse their market position). Are you going to provide any arguments for Word, or are you just going to continue to spout uninformed technical FUD and ad hominem attacks. You're pathetic. I hope MS is not paying you too much for you astroturf, your arguments are sure not worth much.

Re:How very /. of him!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It was a link to FAQ for the MS open xml format (not patent free, but free for anyone to use without royalties.) In other words you can use it, but can't change it on them. I think you will find it quite educational.

Do a little research on a site not run by MS. First the license forbids GPL programs from using the format. Second the format relies upon binary data encoded in the XML header that is completely undocumented. Putting "open" in the name does not make it open and is just a speaking point for politicians and a way to propagate this FUD you are spreading. No one with any technical knowledge has been fooled by this.

The argument originally made was over fear that the ms format wouldn't be readable in 10 years.

...which it probably won't be since it is still in an undocumented format and old Word files currently cannot be read by any program available on the market today.

Her numbers for Office at FULL PREMIUM PRICE

OK, let me nip this in the bud. Whatever the cost of Office it will be more than zero dollars right? So if we are comparing the cost of upgrading to a new version of Word (which eventually all users will have to do if they stick with .doc) and the cost of training and support for that versus the cost of a free office suite plus the cost of training and support for that, you are claiming that the Word option will be more cost effective. Now keeping in mind that the state can take bids from lots of different companies for training, support, and upgrades to Open Office, whereas they have to pay whatever MS decides to ask for the same for Word, you are still claiming that Word will be cheaper? At what point did the nice doctors drill that hole in your head?

The answer to that would be the vast majority of citizens in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who use the MS software and are happy with it (I'm one of them).

Most users don't even know what word processor they use and don't really care. For that matter most users don't have any word processor on their computer. If they want to send .doc files to the state, fine Open Office can read and convert them. If, for some reason, they don't want to download Open Office, they can request documents in a different format like .doc, or PDF and the state can still make those for them if they feel the need. And if you want to use Word and you still want to exchange office files with the state, well you're a customer, just ask MS to implement that format or buy a program to convert from a third party.

The typical person does not want to go search the web for some "free" software they had never heard of just to read a government document. Not to mentions people's hesitation to install it and have it clutter up their computer with another program.

They don't have to search for it, the state can distribute it themselves on their own server along with the files. I'd guess most people would be happier to download a free program from the state than have to pay hundreds of dollars to buy one just to read files they've already paid for with tax dollars. As for "cluttering up their hard drives" take a look at the footprint of MS Office vs. Open Office. One is a lot more clutter than the other, guess which one.

The state CIO's job is to serve the people, not the OSS agenda.

Hahahah, yeah it is a open source conspiracy. They have an "agenda." Open Source is a feature, plain and simple. It means programs can be modifies and are always subject to competitive bids. That has little to do with this case. The state has mandated an open standard. That is just common sense.An open standard serves the people, saves them money, and insures availability of documents for the future. It also happens to mean you need to convince MS to support that standard and/or get a third party to write a converter if you want to do business. Boo hoo. The same is true for WordPerfect's format and any other. Your assertion that a state should always use the same, closed, for pay, software that you do is foolish and short sighted. Get a clue already.

Re:How very /. of him!

[CDPatten]

You really didn't make any good points... so I'll try to be brief.

-I said HARDWARE requirements, because that is what was discussed by the CIO... the machines not being powerful enough to run office. SOFTWARE, specifically Windows 98 came into play by you guys, and I sufficiently squashed that FUD in my other post.

Also, this plan is for two years from now. So OO 2.0 is what would be used. Either you are swimming in information that is over whelming you, or just disingenuous. I think it's a little bit of both.

-I didn't say PDF wasn't open, I said that MS's format was more opened. And it is. AND Adobe owns the patent, its theirs and you can't change it. You can use it, but can't change it on them. Read both of the licenses and you will learn something.

You are operating under the uninformed notion that MS Office 12 is a closed format, it is not. It can be used royalty free. It is also published and documented in great detail for anyone to see or use. Read my other posts to get links and educate yourself.

-First of all, at no point will the government provide downloads to software. Maybe links to another site that will give you software, and that is were the problem comes in.

As far as "who"? Your mother. What the hell do you want me to do? List people? I was speaking directly about the average end-user that I reference a number of times in my posts. Spend some time reading trends and you will learn that people are starting to get very scared about ID theft and spyware. The rate of downloads on sites like downloads.com has dropped drastically in comparison to what it use to be. People just don't download anything anymore.

-There argument for Word is this. It is a better program, and as the handicap people said, it offers accessibility tools that you don't get with any others. Recently Slashdot had a posted article that showed that OO 2.0 is slower and uses more memory then Office, specifically Excel. How about that for an argument?

You newbs/zealots make me tired.

Re:How very /. of him!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I said HARDWARE requirements, because that is what was discussed by the CIO... the machines not being powerful enough to run office. SOFTWARE, specifically Windows 98 came into play by you guys, and I sufficiently squashed that FUD in my other post.

If by squashed you mean, demonstrated that you don't know what you are talking about. .DOC is only really readable and writable completely by Word. Only certain versions of word are available for sale and they only run on certain platforms. Thus at least those minimum hardware standards for Word+the right version for Windows need to be met for a proposal using .doc format.

Using the Open Office format, the minimum requirements of machines are much lower because you can use any number of word processors and OS's with lower hardware requirements. Abiword+Linux, for example, will keep current hardware viable when their is no .doc solution to do the same. Further, even using the same OS, their are several programs with much less hardware requirements than any available that read/write the .doc format. What part of this are you failing to understand?

Also, this plan is for two years from now. So OO 2.0 is what would be used.

No, open document will be used. It may be using openoffice 1, 2, staroffice, abiword, wordperfect, koffice, or any number of other programs for a particular desktop, as needed.

I didn't say PDF wasn't open, I said that MS's format was more opened.

What the hell is "more opened?" You said "PDF is proprietary". This is completely untrue. It is an open, approved standard that is fully documented and has been implemented by dozens of companies and organizations. Word is not open, not documented, and in fact as obfuscated as possible to try to stop reverse engineering. It is not even a single format, but a whole group of them that are not compatible with one another.

AND Adobe owns the patent, its theirs and you can't change it.

PDF is not patent encumbered. It is trademarked, which is to say, you can change it all you want, but only Adobe is allowed to decide which documented format is called "PDF." You can take the PDF spec, change one thing in it, and call it "Bob's document format" and Adobe can do nothing about it. More importantly anyone can make readers and writers and will be able to do so in the future. Claiming otherwise is uninformed hogwash as is claiming that any of the Word formats are open or unencumbered. You're just full of shit on this one.

You are operating under the uninformed notion that MS Office 12 is a closed format, it is not. It can be used royalty free. It is also published and documented in great detail for anyone to see or use. Read my other posts to get links and educate yourself.

Too bad you are completely wrong. The format is not fully documented, vital formatting data is stored as a binary in the header, and patents restrict use of the format for many types of programs including all GPL software. Gee that would not be because OpenOffice is GPL would it? Get a fucking clue. The so called "Open XML" word format is XML that avoids the benefits of XML by encoding chunks of binary data and using patents to remove all the benefits of having a documented format. The most open thing about it is the fact that they put open in the name, because it is not open it is closed.

First of all, at no point will the government provide downloads to software. Maybe links to another site that will give you software, and that is were the problem comes in.

He asserts. Traditionally that is followed up by some support, or is that just your opinion that you pulled out of your ass?

Spend some time reading trends and you will learn that people are starting to get very scared about ID theft and spyware. The rate of downloads on sites like downloads.com has dropped drastically in comparison to what it use to be. People just don't

Re:How very /. of him!

[aaronl]

Some people have day jobs... mine happens to be in government. Some other people apparently do not interact with the public, or with users - for example: you. You're quite misinformed about most of your points, and outright wrong about others. I'd be wrong to say you know nothing about it, but you definitely fit the category of "knows enough to be dangerous".

1) Wordpad cannot do the formatting or scripting of any MS Word document. It also cannot open OpenDocument or WordXML. Also, MS Office docs are large because they are OLE memory dumps. It has nothing, at all, to do with compatibilty. It lets the programmers be lazy, and has the side benefit of fast loading documents.

2) The CIO, and ITD, do not report to the people as their function is not to provide service to the people. Their responsibility is internal to the government. However, since their policy effects how the public interacts with the government, it is even more important than a typical IT department. Also, if I was so inclined to care who appointed the CIO, I could've looked up the public record.

3) The CIO made the best decision concerning the data that it was generally possible to make. The CIO and ITD do not gain by getting rid of the MS format documents. They have no stake in what format gets used any more than anyone else. Moving to DOS across the board would be pretty stupid, but it might also be the best decision for some circumstances. They aren't really that similar of cases, anyway.

4) If the State standardised that new electronic documents are to be in a certain format, then it effects everyone that works in, and with, the State. BTW - there is more to the Registry than clerks and a few officers, too, and they don't do nearly everything through their custom system.

5) NT4 is still commonly used on State machines, and likely will be until those computers stop working. Also, many municipalities still have NT4 machines, and they need to communicate with the State, too. If the State starts sending documents in OpenDocument, the cities and towns need to be able to read and write them. That's the only reason that a number of municipalities keep Office around. You have a bad habit of assuming that the State does regular hardware upgrades and such; they don't do that across the board. Also, hardware specs for Office 2003 are irrelevant, you need to worry about Office Vista. *Those* hardware and software requirements are substantially higher.

7) People are familiar with clicking the link that says "click here to download the program to view this file". PDF is also an open format, so anyone can implement it. That's why you can do things like click the "Print to PDF" button in OpenOffice, or any number of other applications. The MS format is heavily obfuscated and encumbered by copyright and patent. OfficeXML is *less* so, but still is not open. Besides, people do download and run any little stupid crap thing... that's what keeps all the repair shops in business, and also one of the largest driving factors in new PC sales. They'll certainly download the thing from the link next to the OpenDocument files.

You really don't know any of the important facts on this. You don't know how average people act, you don't know about the formats, and you don't know how the State operates. You obviously don't work for or with the State, and likely have little interaction with government, at all. You want to give reasons why choosing a new format is bad, then give real reasons.

Re:How very /. of him!

[GaryPatterson]

I work in a corporate environment, and we use MS Office for pretty much everything. I actually quite like Excel and Word, and have copies of them at home on my PC and Mac.

Having used Word since the days of Word 4 on the Mac, it's clear to me that the format has changed quite a lot over the years. That's evolution, and features are added.

"No bad thing," most would say. And I agree for the most part.

But when I try to open a really old Word file, the formatting is mangled, features are lost and I generally have to recover the ASCII text and re-create the file.

That's with Word. Excel is generally a lot better at this (in my experience), probably due to the highly structured data.

I'm under no illusions that a file that exists today in Word may not be readable in years to come. I believe that it almost certainly won't be - you just have to go far enough down the road for support to be dropped.

Any government should be able to produce documents *years* after they're originally written. That presents difficult storage requirements that most users never have to deal with. What format will text files use in 20 years, or 50 years? No-one knows, but people in government IT will be expected to convert old documents to it. The best way to plan for that is to use the most open formats available now. That means going to open, fully documented standards.

Influenced by Microsoft?

[danielk1982]

Linda Hamel, the general counsel for the Massachusetts Information Technology Department (ITD), suggested that groups that oppose the OpenDocument file format standard might be influenced by Microsoft.

So the *only* reason someone might think that sticking with a product that is used by 90% of market (formats included) is that they were influenced by Microsoft?

There are pros and cons of going either way (MS or OSS) but this decision sounds like it was made by pure ideology.

acheco took exception to Hamel's remarks and first asked if she believed these groups were in fact "wholly owned subsidiaries of Microsoft," before asking if she believed they had been "bought" by the software giant.

"Those are your words, not mine senator," Hamel replied to both questions.

Yes, but thats clearly what you wanted to imply isn't Linda?

Obvious Tag

[Shadow Wrought]

From TFS: Linda Hamel, the general counsel for the Massachusetts Information Technology Department (ITD), suggested that groups that oppose the OpenDocument file format standard might be influenced by Microsoft.

Later on in the press conference she goes on to assert that rain is wet and and that 2 plus 2 does indeed add up to 4. She did not, however, make any comments concerning what you get 4 of.

Re:Obvious Tag

[daveed]

'Units' dumbass

Re:Obvious Tag

[Shadow Wrought]

Huh... I always thought 2 dumbasses plus 2 dumbasses = 1 bar fight. Is there no end to what you can learn with open standards?

Step in the right directions

[pvt_medic]

Being from Tax-achusetts, i am glad to see that the state continues to move this way. This saves tax payers money, which in the end benefits everyone in the state. But also it is the state realizing that they are doing something that will help allow easier (still far far from perfect) access to state records which we have a right too.

Re:Step in the right directions

[Rob Riggs]

I'm always interested when I see Massachusetts called Tax-achusetts. The overall tax burden on MA residents (10.1%) is only slightly above the national average (10.0%). You never hear of "Taxes" (10.9%), "Utax" (11.1%), "New Taxico" (12.0%), or "Louisi-assess" (13.0%).

I live in Colorado, and the tax burden for CO residents is below average (9.5%), but we cannot fund all of the new unfunded mandates from the new "debt and spend" ruling party.

Brining this back on topic, I'd welcome an OpenDoc initiative in this state to help reduce spending. There are a ton of things I'd rather we spend our public tax dollars on than the MSFT tax.

Re:Step in the right directions

[CDPatten]

If you were really from MASS you would know that the saved money would never go anyone but elected officials and their friends. Just Ask FAT MATT about the F-ING TOLLS!

Re:Step in the right directions

[Anonymous Coward]

Tax-achusetts makes sense in context. I'm not sure how you got the 'overall tax burden' numbers but NH (you know one of those states right above MA on the map) has a 0% sales tax and a 0% income tax (OK, we have a 8% 'rooms and entertainment/meals' tax and a 5% interest/dividend 'income' tax but no 'normal' income or sales tax). So comparatively ...

Re:Step in the right directions

[akac]

Actually, Texas was shown to be better than Colorado.

http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/taxesbystat e2005/

37 Colorado 9.50%
38 Nevada 9.50%
39 Montana 9.50%
40 Oklahoma 9.40%
41 Missouri 9.40%
42 North Dakota 9.40%
43 Texas 9.30%

Re:Step in the right directions

[Rob Riggs]

I got the numbers from here: http://www.retirementliving.com/RLtaxburdens.html

Re:Step in the right directions

[AK Marc]

I'm not sure how you got the 'overall tax burden' numbers but NH (you know one of those states right above MA on the map) has a 0% sales tax and a 0% income tax

Right, and they are the second lowest overall tax burden. I would imagine that property tax would be a factor in overall taxes. Also, no state sales tax doesn't mean no local sales tax. Are there any local sales taxes in NH? And don't forget "sin tax." There are still taxes on cigarettes and gasoline. Just because there is no income tax or sales tax does not mean that there are no taxes.

What a stupid thing to say!

[LexNaturalis]

I would think she'd lose all claims to credibility by making statements like that. For one, she's making an ad hominem (although not against a singular person in this case) argument by arguing that the groups are wrong because they are (allegedly) supported by Microsoft. That argument falls apart, logically, because someone could offer a simple counter statement of "so, why does that make them wrong?"

I do find it interesting to note that the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science is criticizing the move and I think they offer legitimate reasons for using Microsoft products-- that is, until OpenDocument supports the same braille readers and other screen-reader programs. If the blind state workers are using MS products and the other state workers are using OpenDocument, I'd think that might cause some problems. The article didn't mention any specific fixes for that, so hopefully they thought that one through. However, based upon the fallacious logic, I'm assuming they (or at least Ms. Hamel) don't think things through all the time.

Re:What a stupid thing to say!

[wo1verin3]

They MAY not be wrong, but they're certainly not impartial if that is the case. I'd rather hear from someone who was. Same goes for the court system.... judges (or people who make decisions) should be impartial and work with the facts.

Re:What a stupid thing to say!

[nine-times]

I would think she'd lose all claims to credibility by making statements like that. For one, she's making an ad hominem (although not against a singular person in this case) argument by arguing that the groups are wrong because they are (allegedly) supported by Microsoft. That argument falls apart, logically, because someone could offer a simple counter statement of "so, why does that make them wrong?"

This complaint would be more... moving?.... if that was all that she had said on the topic. She was at a hearing on the subject, and among other things, was asked about some complaints. Her response was that many of the groups who have complained had been funded by Microsoft.

Yes, I know, I'm still bound to run into shouts of "AD HOMINEM!!!" People just love to show off that they know the technical wordings for things. However, whether these groups are influenced by Microsoft goes to the heart of things. You see, any response that she comes up with as to why these objections are invalid/wrong, she must answer the question: well, why would they just make these things up then? What's the motivation of some group or another to claim that a file format is insufficient? Why would normal people go out of their way to spread lies and misinformation about something like a file format?

The answer being, they have a political agenda and economic incentive.

I'm assuming they (or at least Ms. Hamel) don't think things through all the time.

Yes, ok, so why does that make her wrong? AD HOMINEM!!!

Re:What a stupid thing to say!

[geoff lane]

Surely any complaint should go to Microsoft for not supporting a popular and soon to be commonly available document format?

OTOH, perhaps a note to Google who are planning on supporting some programming work on OO.org could be effective?

To presume that Microsoft is the alpha and omega of software is to surrender your world to a company whose only interest is to restrict innovation and kill competition.

Re:What a stupid thing to say!

[gpw213]

I would think she'd lose all claims to credibility by making statements like that. For one, she's making an ad hominem (although not against a singular person in this case) argument by arguing that the groups are wrong because they are (allegedly) supported by Microsoft. That argument falls apart, logically, because someone could offer a simple counter statement of "so, why does that make them wrong?"

And if this were the only argument presented, then you might have a point. However, when the specific points *are* addressed, and then in addition it is pointed out that the majority of the opponents also have a suspicious commonality, then that is no longer an ad hominem attack, is it?

I do find it interesting to note that the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science is criticizing the move and I think they offer legitimate reasons for using Microsoft products-- that is, until OpenDocument supports the same braille readers and other screen-reader programs.

You are making the same error that many of the opponents of this move seem to be making. Namely, confusing OpenDocument with OpenOffice. OpenDocument is the file format. It does not now, nor will it ever "support the same braille readers and other screen-reader programs". That is the job of the application, not the file format. Massachusetts is not mandating any particular application.

If the blind state workers are using MS products and the other state workers are using OpenDocument, I'd think that might cause some problems.

This is nothing that they won't be dealing with anyhow. They will not be able to magically switch everyone over in a day, and they will have to deal with all of the pre-existing documents in Word format. Getting the occasional Word document from a blind worker is not going alter things substantially.

Re:What a stupid thing to say!

[Anonymous Coward]

So for a $45M differential you can hire 45e6/(150e3 per year with benefits *3 year upgrade cycle) =111 exhorbitantly paid full time typists for the blind workers. Or, (shiftily rolling eyes), we could reverse engineer the document format and add support for whatever we need! Or (even shiftier) we could RTFSpec and pay someone to write patches into OpenOffice.org. Ooh (ultra-shifty) we could probably even get the suckers at OpenOffice.org to merge it into their code base and then we stick them with maintaining it!

Re:What a stupid thing to say!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think she'd lose all claims to credibility by making statements like that. For one, she's making an ad hominem (although not against a singular person in this case) argument by arguing that the groups are wrong because they are (allegedly) supported by Microsoft.

No, in this particular case, it's a valid argument. The reason these groups are being listened to is because they are meant to represent various interest groups. If they are instead representing Microsoft's interests, then their opinion loses its value. If there are valid concerns that actually impact people worth caring about (e.g. the disability groups mentioned in TFA), then they'll get brought to the table by groups that aren't funded by Microsoft. But when the bulk of the criticisms are being made only by people with a good reason to care about Microsoft's profits, it seems insane to pay attention to them.

Re:What a stupid thing to say!

[belmolis]

I have yet to see a list of what features useful to the visually impaired are present in MS Office and absent from the word processors that support ODF. Until I see such a list, I can only consider this to be FUD. OpenOffice Writer, for example, has some accessibility options in its options dialog. Maybe they aren't sufficient, but it certainly isn't the case that accessibility has not been considered by the authors of software supporting ODF.

On the other hand, how good is MS Word? According to the Wikipedia article on screen readers, neither MS Word nor Internet Explorer meet Microsoft's own accessibility standards:

...Microsoft Word does not comply with the Microsoft Active Accessibility API, so screen readers must still maintain an off-screen model for Word or find another way to access its contents.

I sure wish we could hear from some objective advocates for the visually impaired, on the one hand, as to their requirements, and on the other hand from people who know what software meets these requirements and what doesn't.

Re:What a stupid thing to say!

[belmolis]

Sorry, I screwed up the link to the Wikipedia article. Here it is.

Re:What a stupid thing to say!

[Anonymous Coward]

Spend $1 million adding support for blind users, still cheaper than M$.

Influenced by Microsoft?

[bhirsch]

It would be nice to see one shred of evidence to support that claim other than their opposition to OpenDocument.

As the last article on this noted, there are a fair number of blind and deaf state workers who could not get by using OpenOffice. Not to mention that a fiscally conservative approach would be to use MS Office on older hardware due to its lower processor and memory consumption compared to OOo. Don't forget the added initial cost of supporting a totally new office suite at a time when the state has enough budget problems.

This seems like a high price to pay to stick it to MS.

God Damn it, Zonk!

[Anonymous Coward]

We reported on the bounce back against the OpenDoc move this past weekend.

OpenDoc is not the same thing as OpenDocument. If you need to shorten it, you can say ODF.

Re:God Damn it, Zonk!

[plj]

Bullshit. What once was OpenDoc is now totally obsolete. .DOC, instead, is the most widespread word processor document format in the world, so it is only convient and logical to call the open and standards-based alternative "OpenDoc".

Not that ODF is bad either, but the risk of confusion between OpenDoc and OpenDocument is virtually nonexistent. And ODF could also refer to .ODF files, which is the format used by OpenOffice.org Math and the like, and is definitely not among the most important of OpenDocument formats – the file name extension for text documents, which arguably is the most important OpenDocument format, is .ODT.

Re:God Damn it, Zonk!

[bill_mcgonigle]

I think I'll call my next computer a Commodore 64, since it's obsolete and there's virtually no risk of confusion.

Actually an ODF OpenDoc part would be quite interesting. We're still waiting for the pendulum to swing back.

Re:God Damn it, Zonk!

[plj]

I think I'll call my next computer a Commodore 64, since it's obsolete and there's virtually no risk of confusion.

No, it's not. While not actually wildly used, there are still emulators, people are really using software programmed for it (old games etc.), even creating new programs (demos) for it. Heck, even real C64 hardware still exists. If you have an old box under your desk called C64, you're not going to put new one next to it and call it C64.

Instead, who the hell is nowadays programming anything using OpenDoc APIs? Who even regularly uses software, that supports OpenDoc, save the few, who are still running ClarisWorks in Mac OS Classic?

Re:God Damn it, Zonk!

[bill_mcgonigle]

Instead, who the hell is nowadays programming anything using OpenDoc APIs? Who even regularly uses software, that supports OpenDoc, save the few, who are still running ClarisWorks in Mac OS Classic?

There are a small number of enthusiasts, especially around CyberDog. I'm not one of them and don't particularly understand them, but I'm not as willing as you are to negate them simply to avoid having to type 'ument'.

There are also still those who believe OpenDoc (and software componentry in general) was a good idea, if poorly implemented and horribly managed. Some of them would like to re-implement OpenDoc.

In other news

[Tribbin]

Officials can't confirm, nor deny that companies that are using the OpenDocument format might or might not be influenced by Microsoft.

Ad Corporatum

[Anonymous Coward]

Not using OpenDoc _solely_ because it's advocates may be influenced by Microsoft is Ad Corporatum.

Attack the flawed logic and reasoning, not the corp that may have funded it.

Step in the right directions-steady as she goes.

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think your tax rate is going down because of this manouver?

FSF have a interesting report from the meeting

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

FSF have a lengthy and interesting report from yesterdays meeting

RTF or plain text

[Anonymous Coward]

Please present evidence that blind workers use Word in contexts outside plain text editing or simple formating captured entirely by RTF format.

You won't find any.

Let them use M$ and its fancy braille readers, etc., to work in plain text.

Groklaw coverage

[l2718]

For details and analysis you can't beat Groklaw's coverage, including notes by two bloggers who attended the meeting.

Also note that the hearing was convened by a senator who seems to confuse "OpenDocument" and "OpenOffice" and "open standards" with "open source software".

Re:Groklaw coverage

[l2718]

oops.. should be confuse "OpenDocument" with "OpenOffice".

Damn Microsoft

[jiushao]

Yeah, damn Microsoft running around paying visually impaired people to claim that they want to be able to read government documents. The nerve, like accessability is more important than switching from one office suite to another because some people dislike the licensing of the XML format of the current one!

Sorry to break up that little run of sarcasm to point out ahead of time; Almost every reply that I would automatically get to this post about the licensing of Microsoft Office 2003 XML schema license is to a great extent FUD. There is not really a terrible patent issue, all licensees get royalty-free rights to all Microsoft patents to allow using the schema freely. Granted this is GPL-incompatible since anyone distributing the result has to accept the schema license, and also the schema license has a BSD-style advertisement clause. These are hardly the earth-shattering taking-away-our-freedom-lets-sing-with-RMS issues though.

One notable thing to point out here is that OpenDocument actually has a similar IP issue, notice how you get a royalty-free license from Sun for the IP in that format?

Overall this is making an awful lot of noise considering that people are supposedly getting "liberated" from a fairly reasonable product here, despite it being from Microsoft.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[jiushao]

Oh, wait, the OpenDocument link has changed since I originally made this rant a month ago, now Sun apparently makes a blanket grant. On the other hand people were pushing for this before the end of september as well. My original point however is that even though Microsofts schema license may not exactly be open-source purity it seems quite sufficient. This looks like a mindless OSS crusade to me.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[fader]

As a tax-paying resident of Massachusetts, I disagree. I should not be required to pay for a license from Microsoft to read documents that my tax dollars paid for. It's as simple as that.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[Black Perl]

Can't you just download the free Word Viewer? You have to do the same kind of thing with PDFs.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[ivan256]

Right, that's a great point. In order to allow access to visually impared people without making them use the screen reader software they already own, we should instead impair access to all of the non-disabled people who can't afford either Office 12, or the computer upgrade required to run it. Along with all people of future generations (visually impaired people included). That makes a lot of sense.

The comment that people are directly, financially influenced by Microsoft is clearly rediculous (they may, however, have their opinion clouded through belief of Microsoft marketing information), but the real issue here is whether anybody will be able to access this information in 50 years when Microsoft doesn't sell Office 12 anymore, and isn't maintaining the MSXML format documentation. That requires an open format specification, and has nothing to do with patents at all.

Think about it. If you don't use an open format you've got to migrate all your documents with each new version for continued access. The second you miss a version, from the persoective of the majority of people you've lost your data. With an open format you have no ongoing expenses because people are free to interpret the information based on the readily available instructions.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[fader]

That's a great idea! I can shell out to MS for a Windows license and then downl... oh wait, we're back to where we started. Not to mention that I can't send in anything to my government... it's supposed to be two-way. Instead of this roundabout, I'm honestly and genuinely interested in hearing your justification for a government ever storing public documents in a closed format. I've never been able to come up with one, but I'd love to hear it.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[Yobgod Ababua]

"This looks like a mindless OSS crusade to me."

It's actually a crusade about State Sovereignty. The point is that OpenDocument, like ASCII and certain forms of PDF, is a international standard that is freely available for any programmer, company, or government to create software to read, write, or otherwise mangle documents that were stored in that format.

Microsoft's XML, aside from not being in an international standards track (something MASS requested and MS didn't do), can only be legally implemented by people MS decides to allow to implement it, for the purposes MS decides to allow. In the future it is even possible that they could remove previously granted permissions.

It is the responsibility of government to make many of these documents available to their constituents for as long as neccessary, no matter what computer OSs they may or may not run and what software companies may or may not exist. To do that you need a standard format that anyone can implement. OpenDocument is that format.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

a) People are upset with Microsoft because MS are pulling dirty tricks to block the competition. MS could add OpenDocument filters to Office, but doesn't want to, and the disingenuous statements about how hard and expensive it would be are annoying. (Office has filters for WordPerfect files, and MS had to reverse-engineer WordPerfect to make them; the OpenDocument format is public, which means it's available to MS too. Since WordPerfect filters were much harder than OpenDocument would be, and MS already made them, they are an existance proof that MS could do OpenDocument filters if it wanted.)

b) The Microsoft solution isn't even available yet for testing; OOo has finished testing and released.

c) The Microsoft solution will not run on old computers.

d) The Microsoft solution costs money for the upgrades.

e) The Microsoft solution, being a new XML-based format, will cause users to have to deal with document format change anyway. Now is the perfect time for MA to do this.

f) Blind users will not be locked out of the new format, even if Microsoft holds firm on the refusal to make a filter for the new format. Someone else could make a filter; OOo already has excellent import and export of Word documents; and if OOo has inadequate support for blind users, that can and will be fixed. The short-term annoyance of the blind users is NOT a good reason to stop a change that in the long-term benefits everyone (including those same blind users).

g) The new format means that all users, including blind users, can choose among multiple competing products. Don't like OOo? Try AbiWord, KOffice, WordPerfect, etc. And I think MS will give in and support the new format once this is a done deal.

h) I don't think MS is completely evil. But it's clear that OpenDocument is a good thing for the users, better in fact than MS's upcoming new format. OpenDocument can be better than MS XML without MS XML being completely bad.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[Black Perl]

That's a great idea! I can shell out to MS for a Windows license and then downl... oh wait, we're back to where we started.

I use Linux and when I need to read a Word document I use wv (wvware.sourceforge.net). Does a decent job.

Not to mention that I can't send in anything to my government... it's supposed to be two-way.

That's a twist I haven't heard before. Are you saying Massachusetts requires you to send them Word documents only?

Re:Damn Microsoft

[jiushao]

It's actually a crusade about State Sovereignty. The point is that OpenDocument, like ASCII and certain forms of PDF, is a international standard that is freely available for any programmer, company, or government to create software to read, write, or otherwise mangle documents that were stored in that format.

But it fails in other way, for one OpenDocument's only complete implementation is relativly obscure. Something having been stamped by a standards orginasation does not have much practical impact compared to a well-documented standard from a company at any rate. It is not like standards organisations have any actual legal or social obligations, anyone can start up something they call a standards organisation. can only be legally implemented by people MS decides to allow to implement it, for the purposes MS decides to allow. In the future it is even possible that they could remove previously granted permissions.

Incorrect. See, here the FUD is showing. You only have to accept the license (which contains no provisions about who you are or any other odd restrictions), the license is perpetual.

It is the responsibility of government to make many of these documents available to their constituents for as long as neccessary, no matter what computer OSs they may or may not run and what software companies may or may not exist. To do that you need a standard format that anyone can implement. OpenDocument is that format.

I'll just come out and state my opinion here; OpenOffice is a piece of crap, Microsoft Office is bad bu OpenOffice is worse. Why they have to run about and distribute things in the format of an office suite is a mystery to me anyway, but I don't see many advantages to switching to OpenOffice (pleasing 2% of the population perhaps, while pissing off a whole bunch of others). What they push documents around in internally while they are still being edited I don't think is a huge issue, can't say that I care if it is Microsoft Office or not.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

There is something that somehow always gets missed by people dazzled by how "open" the Office XML schema license is, and that's the fact that IT IS NOT REDISTRIBUTABLE. So, right now, commercial software vendors and open source guys alike can get a perpetual license to use those schema in their software. Fine. But anybody who USES that software also has to get a license from MS too. The day MS decides to pull this licensing policy, you're left with your existing user base, and that's that.

"Open", my arse.

"You can freely write software to help promote our shit as long as it helps us get a new monopoly", that's more like it.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[16K Ram Pack]

Which means you have to buy Windows. It also means that you can't programmatically read the data to process it, or generate documents programmatically.

As for PDF, it's all documented. Which means that you can write an application to convert it, your own reader or a program to generate them. For most people, talking to Word means either OLE to Word or using some reverse engineering code that can't guarantee compatibility.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[jiushao]

In order to allow access to visually impared people without making them use the screen reader software they already own, we should instead impair access to all of the non-disabled people who can't afford either Office 12, or the computer upgrade required to run it.

Right, Office is far from ideal as well, I don't see that much point in moving to OpenOffice however. If nothing else the system requirements are even worse.

but the real issue here is whether anybody will be able to access this information in 50 years when Microsoft doesn't sell Office 12 anymore, and isn't maintaining the MSXML format documentation. That requires an open format specification, and has nothing to do with patents at all.

Maintaining the format specification? Once you have the Office 12 XML schema you have the Office 12 XML schema. There is nothing more to it. Sure if somehow all known copies of it is lost we are in trouble, but the same goes for OpenDocument. The only issue I can think of is if you for some reason refuse to accept the Office XML schema license, which you have already stated that you apparently don't have any issue with.

Think about it. If you don't use an open format you've got to migrate all your documents with each new version for continued access. The second you miss a version, from the persoective of the majority of people you've lost your data. With an open format you have no ongoing expenses because people are free to interpret the information based on the readily available instructions.

But the issue is the same for Office XML and OpenOffice here, one can go on using one version of Microsoft Office just as well as one can go on using one version of OpenOffice. OpenOffice's format will change with time (by necessity) as will Microsoft Office's format. Both are well-documented where they are now however so any data created now will continue to be easily readable.

I'll state here to though; Neither Office 2003 XML or OpenDocument is a sane way to distribute documents into the general public. I am just arguing against since it seems that people want to replace one bad solution with another that don't offer any improvement.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[merc]

Yeah, damn Microsoft running around paying visually impaired people to claim that they want to be able to read government documents. The nerve, like accessability is more important than switching from one office suite to another because some people dislike the licensing of the XML format of the current one!

Why not, they got dead people to engage in letter writing campaigns.

*blinks*

Re:Damn Microsoft

[jiushao]

a) People are upset with Microsoft because MS are pulling dirty tricks to block the competition. MS could add OpenDocument filters to Office, but doesn't want to, and the disingenuous statements about how hard and expensive it would be are annoying. (Office has filters for WordPerfect files, and MS had to reverse-engineer WordPerfect to make them; the OpenDocument format is public, which means it's available to MS too. Since WordPerfect filters were much harder than OpenDocument would be, and MS already made them, they are an existance proof that MS could do OpenDocument filters if it wanted.)

Not unlike how Microsoft Office XML filters could be written for OpenOffice? Why would Microsoft implement OpenDocument, it is just the default format of a minor competitor rubber-stamped by a small standards organisation.

b) The Microsoft solution isn't even available yet for testing; OOo has finished testing and released.

True, if you live before 2003 for some reason.

c) The Microsoft solution will not run on old computers.

Microsoft Office is overall considerably lighter than OpenOffice.

d) The Microsoft solution costs money for the upgrades.

This really is true.

e) The Microsoft solution, being a new XML-based format, will cause users to have to deal with document format change anyway. Now is the perfect time for MA to do this.

That's not an argument to change to OpenDocument in any way.

f) Blind users will not be locked out of the new format, even if Microsoft holds firm on the refusal to make a filter for the new format. Someone else could make a filter; OOo already has excellent import and export of Word documents; and if OOo has inadequate support for blind users, that can and will be fixed. The short-term annoyance of the blind users is NOT a good reason to stop a change that in the long-term benefits everyone (including those same blind users).

I think the short-term problem is more significant than the supposed long-term benefit. The only thing I can see that is really a decent argument is the cost, but it is a drop in the bucket. This argument just reads to me as; "Sure OpenOffice is worse in a variety of way than Microsoft Office, but it has only been in development for 19 years, it will blast right past Microsoft Office any time now! Open source power!".

g) The new format means that all users, including blind users, can choose among multiple competing products. Don't like OOo? Try AbiWord, KOffice, WordPerfect, etc. And I think MS will give in and support the new format once this is a done deal.

Except there is only OpenOffice to choose from at the moment with something that is anywhere close to a complete implementation (KWord has decent support for the word processing part, but the rest is nowhere to be found).

h) I don't think MS is completely evil. But it's clear that OpenDocument is a good thing for the users, better in fact than MS's upcoming new format. OpenDocument can be better than MS XML without MS XML being completely bad.

I think both are a damn crappy way to distribute documents, and this whole switch is a huge waste of time.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[narcc]

How does word viewer help if I need to both view and modify or send a word doc?

Re:Damn Microsoft

[killjoe]

"This looks like a mindless OSS crusade to me."

In your zeal to shill you forgot that this has nothing to with open source but everything to do with open standards. MS could support the OASIS XML format and Mass would have no problems continuing their use of office.

See how simple that is? Just add a "save as" filter and all your problems go away.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[narcc]

I don't know about MA specifically, but I've seen numerous companies and state gov't agencies that require either plain text or MS Word formats.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[Yobgod Ababua]

"Something having been stamped by a standards orginasation does not have much practical impact compared to a well-documented standard from a company at any rate."

Do you really believe that? The whole point of the standards process is to create a practical impact by ensuring at least the opportunity for interoperability and that no single vendor can arbitrarily control future modifications. One of the things MS has very successfully done in the past is to take a "standard" format then continuously release modifications to it (typically branded as 'enhancements') at a high rate and with sub-standard externally released documentation, such that 3rd party implementors are stuck always playing catch-up to MSs own products. Good business sense for MS, but not good for competition or consumers. Standards allow more people to successfully create products that use those standards... see also TCP/IP, Ethernet, railroad tracks, 120V AC current, DTMF signaling, FM radio, VHS, etc etc etc.

And besides, if there's two formats of near identical functionality... one of which has even the remote possibility of restrictions and prohibits an entire large group from creating interoperable software and another that has no restrictions and permits anyone to create interoperable software, the choice should be a no-brainer. Whether or not MS's XML format is 'almost' free or 'almost' a standard is nice on their part, but we can do better, and Mass is requesting better.

"See, here the FUD is showing."

Even -if- there are no weird restrictions on whether a particular implementation can write files in their format (or only read them), or whether a program would be allowed to implement both their format and other formats (both of which legal reviews have put question marks on), it's still not a standard.

"OpenOffice is a piece of crap..."

It's not about OpenOffice. Period. It's about the format, not the programs that exist (or will exist) that support that format. What _should_ happen as a result of all this is that MS will simply add the ability to read and write the OpenDocument format into MS Office (just like they already support ASCII and RTF and plan to support PDF). Then we will be able to meaningfully compare the features of various ODF supporting Office suites, what support they have for disabled persons, etc etc, and the best product will get the most market share. All of those arguments are MEANINGLESS when discussing the merits of document formats.

"...for one OpenDocument's only complete implementation is relativly obscure."

Last I heard there were currently 3 implementations with several more in the works. Massachusetts goal was to pick a standard format to require and publically announce that requirement so that software vendors of all ilks can start adding support for that format into their roadmaps. The search for which ODF supporting software they'll use won't even come up until 2007 or so... and they may not even have to standardize on one ODF supporting product, but might use different products for different purposes.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[InvalidError]

Will the free readers for MS Office XP documents still be available in 10 years?

If they are, will they still be compatible with the current Windows OS of the time? If not, will WinXP or whatever Windows version the viewer could run on still be available and work on available hardware?

And since it is about document submission file format, having only a viewer is of very limited usefulness unless you intend to print, fill in and fax or scan-mail the form.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[jiushao]

Ooooor OpenOffice could instead add Office 2003 XML output (in a subprogram granted), which was my whole point. There is not much to be gained as far as "open standards" go in moving to OpenDocument. Which makes me think that the only reason Slashdot cares so damn much is because of the OSS crusade.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[killjoe]

"Ooooor OpenOffice could instead add Office 2003 XML output (in a subprogram granted), which was my whole point."

IF they did they would be violating MS intellectual property. Not only could they get sued everybody who used OO could be sued for patent violation by MS. MS has so far refused to grant a blanket patent grant despite being asked to do so.

" There is not much to be gained as far as "open standards" go in moving to OpenDocument. "

There is immense good gained from going to open standards. The state of mass needs perpetual access to data they themselves created.

"Which makes me think that the only reason Slashdot cares so damn much is because of the OSS crusade."

I suppose you can think whatever you want. It seems like facts don't really enter into your thought process.

Re:Damn Microsoft

[jiushao]

IF they did they would be violating MS intellectual property. Not only could they get sued everybody who used OO could be sued for patent violation by MS. MS has so far refused to grant a blanket patent grant despite being asked to do so.

The whole point of all the posts I have made so far is that Microsoft has a quite generous license allowing people to write applications against the Office schema.

I suppose you can think whatever you want. It seems like facts don't really enter into your thought process.

Seems comprehending what you read don't really enter into yours.

Getting priorities right

[daeley]

Frankly, they could take a portion of that $45 million cost savings and dedicate it to making those blind- and deaf-user devices work swimmingly with OOo.... and still have enough to pay Manny Ramirez's salary next season, assuming he doesn't get himself traded to the Angels before then. ;)

Re:Getting priorities right

[Anonymous Coward]

If you put a $1 million bounty on braille and screen reader support for OpenOffice ( or other applications that support OpenDocument ), you might end up with _better_ support that what exists in MS Office today. Also, does braille and screen reader software support Office 12 as well as Office 2003? Because of the changes to the interface in Office 12, for some disabled workers, Office 12 might be harder to use than OpenOffice.

Embrace and Extend Strategy

[frostman]

I think the obvious outcome of this and similar efforts will be that Microsoft puts all the actual content of Office documents in some sort of open format, and "extends" that format to support all the goodies such as fancy formatting, macros, Excel formulas, and so on. The extensions will be proprietary and for the most part not accessible to open-source programs, but the base content will be easy to get at.

Since Word is following Pages in its future approach to document formatting, a lot of those extras will be used by people who aren't necessarily trying to do anything fancy.

The end result will be that MS satisfies open format requirements, since you can get at the goods, but anybody who wants to work with the documents in real life will need Office. In other words, what we have today, with more documentation and more bureaucracy.

Re:Embrace and Extend Strategy

[RichiP]

Well, if they extend it in such a way as to break conformity with the standard, then it isn't really standards-compliant and fails the requirement.

There has to be some policy regarding software which start out compliant with the standard then deviate later on.

If MS can improve the format and still maintain compliancy in one mode, then well and good.

Re:Embrace and Extend Strategy

[frostman]

For an example of what it might look like, check out any reasonably complex PDF in HTML format on Google.

You do actually have (usually) all you need there, information-wise, but it's not a lot of fun to look at and you can't do any fancy PDF things with it. But you do get it in an "open" format (HTML in this case, leaving aside whether G's converter is open or not), which has a lot of advantages.

That's more or less what I expect. Not that MS actually locks you in so tight you might lose your data, just tight enough that it will be loads more pleasant to work with their docs in *their* program than in anyone else's.

"Total Cost of Ownership" vs. Sovereignty

[ansak]

Microsoft's position:

* Every new box pre-installed with Windows $100
* Every new box pre-installed with Office $200
* Having the option of following up an OS upgrade with an Office Upgrade that renders old file formats unreadable: priceless.

Everyone else's position:

* Looking for (and finding) tools to make OpenOffice compatible with any imaginable disabled-persons' enabling tool: probably as little as 10 minutes
* Off-sourcing production of a filter to convert current word document files to OpenDoc: a little embarassment
* Having government-provided and -required documents in a format that will never be submerged by near-simultaneous OS and Office Tools upgrades: priceless.

The cost to a society of having a monopolist control the format that its documents are published in is as desirable as it would be to have to continue paying the Gutenberg family for the privilege of having your book printed in the 21st century.

nuff said...ank

Oh, really ?

[James Jones]

"...might be influenced by M$"

What an understatement !

What a stupid thing to say!-Handicapped

[Anonymous Coward]

"I do find it interesting to note that the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science is criticizing the move and I think they offer legitimate reasons for using Microsoft products-- that is, until OpenDocument supports the same braille readers and other screen-reader programs."

We're use to it. Most people (F/OSS included) don't think of the handicapped. Even this forum with it's "if you see this image" doesn't.

Re:Step in the right directions-steady as she goes

[pvt_medic]

oh there not going to go down, and i realize that, but hopefully the money may go to areas and programs that are underfunded.

Public Concerns!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Even as Quinn and Hamel sought to clarify their department's position on OpenDocument, (Sen.) Pacheco said there were still public concerns about users with disabilities and total cost of ownership."

Yup, the general public is *really* giving a flying $^(& about what some office drones, disabled or otherwise, are using...

You've got it backward

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't about Word or OpenOffice or any particular software package. Microsoft has been lying to politicians as they imply this is a fight about Office versus OpenOffice. This is all totally backward.

The issue is the OpenDocument format. Period. Wrap your mind around the fact that MA didn't want to lock themselves into a proprietary document format. They wanted an open format, one that didn't depend on any one vendor, and could be supported openly no matter what companies did or didn't do. If you go with .DOC, you are dependent on Microsoft, and who knows if they will be around in 50 years (and government do think in terms of decades). But an open standard, that will be around and anyone can write software to that standard. Anyone.

All Microsoft has to do to keep Office on everyone's desktop in MA is to support the OpenDocument format. Just like they can support HTML or PDF or whatever. It's just another Save As... option, and nothing more. But Microsoft refuses and so MA said Sorry, we want a format that will be around. This is Microsoft's stubbornness at work, and it is NOT about this software package versus that software package, or this company versus that company. This is about a document format only. And it is PRECISELY the sort of thing a government does best. If left up to the market, Microsoft would buy their way to a "standard" that they broke every now and then at their whim, citizens be damned unless they pony up some more cash.

Complaint about RelaxNG and acceptance

[N8F8]

My big complaint about OpenDocument Schemas are that they rely on RelaxNG that has poor support in developer tools. It also adds another layer of confusion for customers who are veeery reluctant to accept non-W3C standards.

Re:Complaint about RelaxNG and acceptance

[msuarezalvarez]

Well, RelaxNG was developed by OASIS, who developed ODF... Those confused costumers will probably have dealt with the anguish of non-W3C-ness when they decided they wanted to do ODF, which, remember, comes from OASIS too.

Also, there is Trang to do the conversion (and others, actually)

Openoffice system requirements

[QuaintRealist]

I have run OOO 1.1.x on a P-II with 256MB, and it was not particularly slow.
From their website:

Windows

Microsoft Windows 98, ME, NT (Service Pack 6 or higher), 2000 or XP

Pentium compatible PC, 64 MB RAM, 250 MB available hard disk space

OK, I'm taking the 64 MB minimum with a grain of salt, but still this is pretty reasonable.

Re:Openoffice system requirements

[kimvette]

Funny, I have a 266Mhz Pentium II with 256MB RAM here for my bookkeeper and I use the computer every couple of days (at minimum) and while I do have Microsoft Office 2000 on the machine, I much prefer running OOo on it, unless working on 1200-row or larger formatted spreadsheets.

Why? Aside from the crappy Spreadsheet file i/o issue, OOo actually runs faster. File I/O is a big bottleneck, but for most documents performance is great. Personally were I in charge of OOo it would not have shipped with that major I/O issue (I'd mark it as a fatal defect; as in showstopper, actually) but let's be reasonable here: aside from a few problem areas OOo's performance is pretty good, and for those problem areas I have M$ Office 2000.

We also have Office 2003 licenses but around the same time we purchased those we started trying the OOo suite. On windows 1.1.x/1.2.x sucked (and was only marginally acceptable on Linux, IMHO) but when OOo 1.9(2.0 beta) was released, our general opinion of OOo changed. Mine did totally, actually. I used to hate running OOo but I'm glad I gave it a try, because the move from 1.2.x to 1.9.x was a great experience and now I prefer it to Office XP or Office 2000.

Oh, and why did we not install Office 2003? Because unlike Adobe Creative Suite 2, Microsoft does not offer de-activation for license transfers. Adobe implemented a fair and reasonable Activation scheme. Microsoft implemented an anti-consumer "every customer is a crook" activation scheme.

you fa2Il it

[Anonymous Coward]

a BSD box (a PPII the developer knows for sure what I8sisted that

Microsoftbot

[MightyMartian]

Microsoftbot hate Open Document! Microsoftbot eat Open Document and shit out Word97 pellets! Microsoftbot angry with Massachussetts, and funny name state will suffer wrath of Microsoftbot, just like South Korean smarty pants will! Microsoftbot fucking kill Open Document! If you use OpenDocument, Microsoftbot come and tear your computer into many pieces! Microsoftbot unstoppable! Someday Microsoftbot will rule world, and all will bow to Microsoftbot's creators, and burn open source demons and Steve Jobs, because Microsoftbot think him weirdo hippy.

It's good that government is a bit inefficient

[Safe Sex Goddess]

Inefficiency is a safeguard of democracy.

If things were too efficient and easy to change, you could waking up in a police state overnight.

Open Doc?

[max born]

Wonder why they don't use HTML?

Re:Open Doc?

[smcavoy]

same reason your not making the decsion

NOT DUMPING MICROSOFT FOR OPENDOCUMENT!

[brigc]

Sorry to shout, but come on guys, it's tough enough getting past the FUD from the Friends of Microsoft without mis-stating things...

The guidelines do not ban Microsoft's Office product, they merely state that the state of Massachusetts will need to use products which support OpenDocument.

If Microsoft decides to support OpenDocument, or a third party makes a Microsoft Office to OpenDocument converter which works well, the state of Massachusetts will still be able to use Microsoft Office.

They're just expressing a very appropriate interest in non-proprietary file formats, not saying they won't use the software.

Pretty important difference. ...brig

Re:NOT DUMPING MICROSOFT FOR OPENDOCUMENT!

[RatBastard]

I smell astroturf, personally. Too many people saying exactly the same thing every time one of these stories gets posted. They've been corrected again and again and yet they spew the same drivel every time. Either they are stupid, fanboys or shills.

The format choice does not effect me at all. I do not live in Mass, I do not use Open Office or MS Office, I don't run Linux, and my word processor of choice doesn't even support Open Document Format yet.

Re:NOT DUMPING MICROSOFT FOR OPENDOCUMENT!

[imemyself]

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if MS chooses to support ODF or lose a big customer. I think MS is being rather stubborn on this, I'd have to think that it would cost them less to implement ODF in Office 12 than they would lose if they lost Mass. as a customer(atleast for MS Office). Personally, I hope MS continues being stubborn on this. If someone big like the state of Mass. is using OOo(or are they considering Star Office?), then there could be a lot of improvements to make OOo more attractive to businesses. Especially as far as managability and stuff goes. I will have to say though, that the prerelease versions of Office 12 have some nice stuff in them. All the apps seem to have really nice integration with Sharepoint, especially Excel and Access(can import lists and such).

Er, no

[Prof. Pi]

So the *only* reason someone might think that sticking with a product that is used by 90% of market (formats included) is that they were influenced by Microsoft?

TFA said "might be influenced" -- you're the one trying to change that to "the only reason."

Yes, but thats clearly what you wanted to imply isn't Linda?

There are big differences between being "influenced," "bought" and "owned" by someone. Microsoft could target certain influential groups, and take steps to ensure that their position is heard in preference to all others. This could be done without any kind of direct payment. "Bought" implies some kind of payment, and explicit or implicit quid pro quo. So turning "influenced" into "bought" is putting words into someone's mouth.

desperate.

[CDPatten]

She is either desperate or a rookie. The comment about the groups opposing her influenced by MS was a newbie remark. No savy official would say something like that about a company that spreads its money around across the board. Also MS donated more to Romney's campaign then Obrien's (referring to her boss and the former governors race a few years ago.) As far as the specific groups complaining, she didn't sufficiently address their handicap needs. MS influencing them? Did MS give them a physical disability?

She still han't make a good case for the move. I've posted previously why it isn't a good case. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166793&cid=139 08812

Sorry to disappoint the OSS crowd, but it looks like the elected senators in the committee are going to squash this appointed official's unilateral decision.

Re:desperate.

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Well, the list has such fronts as the Initiative For Software Choice, Progress And Freedom Foundation and Americans for Technology Leadership . So she is on the right track, if you ask me...

If you haven't seen these organizations before, read the Reg or SourceWatch

Re:desperate.

[WhiteWolf666]

/catch

Looks like I found another Microsoft employee ringer!

Don't feed the trolls!

Re:Step in the right directions-steady as she goes

[Bob_Robertson]

the money may go to areas and programs that are underfunded.

Non-sequiter. There is no such thing as an "underfunded" government program. Since all money is taken at gun point from taxpayers, there are only degrees of extortion.

To argue that something is "underfunded" would require an entitlement to the labor of others. Being entitled to the labor of someone else has a very specific dictionary definition: slavery.

There is something being done for disabled

[vyvepe]

Citation from a blog of Andy Updegrove (http://www.consortiuminfo.org/newsblog/blog.php?I D=1696):

Quinn: Let me talk about the disability community issue. The disability community has been denied access in many ways for many years, and we are committed to making sure that they get the consideration they need. Now I have had someone spending a significant amount of time since September 1 reaching out, and also working with the w3C, and we are just a few weeks away from announcing that we will have an answer to create accessibility. I have committee three times, first, to create a memo on the subject, two, have priority, and three [couldn't catch it]. Sun, IBM and others are working to create global accessibility standards. The structure has already been built into StarOffice, Mozilla, other products. We are a couple of weeks away from being able to put this in front of the disability community and the state.

Why do these people complain, after all?

[tchernobog]

I don't see the problem; OpenDocument is royalty-free, thus everybody can implement it without having to pay anybody. This lets everybody compete; the contrarywise of excluding someone from the competition just because he _can't_ race without following some oligarchic rules.

If paying zillions of dollars to those Big Companies isn't enough to have them snatch in a new feature, I wonder what shore we landed ...

... oh, well. Marketing & lawsuits' dep. People that are even able to _use_ handicapped people to reach their filthy targets.

CAGW statement

[srobert]

FTA: "CAGW has issued a statement that said the move to OpenDocument would incur unnecessary costs as the state government would be forced to convert 'more than one million current files to the new [OpenDocument] format.'"

I presume CAGW refers to Citizens Against Government Waste. But their statement on this doesn't jibe with the fact that most past documents in other formats would have to be converted to be compatible with newer proprietary formats as well. Also, it contains no comparison of the unnecessary costs incurred by not converting to an open format of some sort.

Re:CAGW statement

[Anonymous Coward]

Given Microsoft's history, they rewrite all their document formats and applications every 3 years. Any organization that has to rebuild their communications more often than the policy makers are elected is an excellent example of government waste and poor planning.

First things first

[msbsod]

Nice that Massachusetts' officials are thinking about the future. But how about those things they can fix now? Why do they produce so many PDF files? PDF is as proprietary as any Microsoft Word format for print documents. Every time when Adobe comes out with a new PDF version we all have to install a new PDF reader. How about the people who chose not to use a PC? Ghostscript or XPDF? Read what the authors of these free tools have to say about PDF. And why should we constantly update software. I have better things to do. How about printers? Which ones support PDF? Why do I need extra software to print a file? Shouldn't a plain PRINT (or whatever it is on your favorite system) do the job? Plain PostScript Level I has been working since more than 15 years, except on Microsoft Windows which STILL cannot print a PostScript file on a PostScript printer with a simple mouse click. I do not care what editor people use. But the output has to work for me. Let's fix the obvious mistakes first.

ed is the standard

[amightywind]

Word processing is Word but ed is the standard text editor!

How very /. of him!-RTF.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Once MA stops buying new Word licenses, MS *will* add OpenDoc to Word, and MA can buy Word again. But MS will *only* do that if they are absolutely forced, as it sets a precedent, and once that ball starts rolling it will mean an end to MS lock-in. Word may still be popular, but no one will be forced to use it."

There's just one tiny flaw in your lock-in argument, RTF.* You'll note that the reason Word's primary format got to were it was is because it was the default. Not because Word didn't have other formats it could save it's documents in. Now with that being said, here's the other shoe. All those "locked in" documents presently sitting in Word format, and not an easy way to convert them over to an open format. So open source has won a minor long-term victory. But let's not get too carried away.

*I didn't include TXT because you lose formatting there.

Re:How very /. of him!-RTF.

[Risen888]

All those "locked in" documents presently sitting in Word format, and not an easy way to convert them over to an open format.

File > Open > thisdoc.doc
File > Save As > thisdoc.odt
File > Close

Re:How very /. of him!-RTF.

[aaronl]

Actually, OpenOffice includes a mass document converter. I'm sure that there will be various other tools developed in short order once this becomes more common, too. If MA actually follows through on this, there'll probably be other software developed just for doing this.

Microsoft Office == Legacy System

[daveewart]

I was happy to read someone describing Microsoft Office as a 'legacy system'.

Re:Microsoft Office == Legacy System

[msbsod]

So what about slashdot's favorite operating system? Linux is just another clone of Unix - technology from the late '60? Do you expect the Linux community to make standards work? Your guru Linus said that standards are for the birds.

MS true nature of openness shown in Mac products

[Been on TV]

One of the things one should consider when evaluation Microsoft's true openness is the company's willingness to support their own technologies on competing plattforms. More than often - virtuall allways in the public debate, Microsoft seem to forget that they actually do supply products for another operating system: Mac OS X, and one metric for testing their willingness to share their own technologies outside of Windows is to take a closer look at their Mac products. For instance both Microsoft Messenger and Microsoft Windows Media Player significantly lacks in functionality and features compared to their Window versions.

Microsoft states in their response letter to MA:

...Microsoft has been deeply committed to supporting XML within Microsoft Office for a number of years and continues to work hard with many governments around the world toward these goals.

In the case of XML support in Microsoft Office:mac 2004, only Excel supports the MS XML format, where support for XML formatted Word 2003 documents produced on Windows are completely lacking. It is also not possible to write XML documents from Word on the Mac. I blogged an article earlier this fall that explains in more detail how Microsoft's XML support is only Windows deep and what they have stated on this in relation to Office 12 for Mac OS X. Repeated questions to Microsoft on the fact that this "openness" is only Windows deep remains unanswered.

I have also posted a question to Microsoft's latest blog on the ability to save as XPS format in the upcoming Office 12 for Mac -- a question that remains unanswered.

Microsoft has been very active on Norwegian discussion boards lately where Microsoft employees have been operating under nicks posing to be normal discussion partipants rallying against the OpenDocument formats and promoting the openness of the MS XML formats well knowing that the country in Europe closest to follow follow Massachussetts is Norway. This following a public hearing where the government wants to standardize on open document formats in all communication with, and within the public sector, in addition to promote the use of open source code. Microsoft's response to this has been surprisingly vague compared to the response to the Commonwealth of Massachussetts.

You're the one who is ignorant here!

[Anonymous Coward]

1) They're specifically authorized to use Microsoft software if they need access for the blind. This is provisioned for *explicitly* and all Microsoft has to do to make Office a viable choice is to support ODF or PDF. This can already be done with 3rd party software, anyhow. In short, the concerns they have were already addressed, so they don't have *anything* left to complain about. They have unspecific worries left, I guess, but any actual need they've been able to bring forth has already been taken care of as best I can see.

2) The group that showed up claimed to support mostly small businesses, but also a wide range. It was founded by Microsoft and two other companies. It mysteriously showed up with a copy of Microsoft's talking points. Funny that. It DOES cast doubt on their credibility for a few reasons:

a) Microsoft "innovated" the notion of astroturf campaigns. These are fake "grassroots" campaigns with a corporation's best interests at heart. I refer you to the DOJ trial where the findings of fact showed that Microsoft abused its monopoly position. These findings of fact have *not* been overturned, whatever happened to the rest of the case.

b) The "independent" organization presented here, without any disclaimers about conflicts of interest (which *should* be stated if they give even the appearance of impropriety), has always supported the Microsoft position. Both here, in anti-trust issues, etc.

In short, this strikes me as another astroturf campaign. What better way to get negative PR than by putting out stories of the poor blind users? And which of the blind users' concerns haven't been addressed already? What is there left but FUD?

Nothing about ODF prevents access for the blind. If anything, it enables us to make more programs for it, because we can access the documents directly for programs such as screen readers, braile boards, magnifiers, etc. and we can even GPL or BSD license them (something that can become thorny when code must interface with MS Office) to make them even more available to the disabled.

Now, no, merely being a Microsoft representative does not disqualify their arguments. Being an unannounced one *does* make them look sleazy, but their arguements have already been dealt with above, on Groklaw, and from a variety of other sources. There's nothing but FUD about the blind left to argue over, and I have yet to see even one single concern they have that has not already been addressed, even explicitly so in the plans. And yet people *still* go on complaining about it as though no one else had ever thought of it!

Which Word Viewer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Word Viewer 95? Word Viewer 97? Word Viewer 2003? Word Viewer XP? Word Viewer 12?

Or do I need to continually uninstall and install the various viewers in order to view the various format correctly?

Re:Which Word Viewer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Simply install the latest, just as you would for PDFs. Works with all prior formats.

The BSA is another $2 mil reason

[ScrewTivo]

"-rant-"
I don't read much in the TCO studies about the cost/risk/liability of lawsuits from this team. Can I buy insurance for this? :) Notice the $2 million Tuesday software audit. Any disgruntled employee can cause havoc. They can audit my winxp desktop but keep your grubby hands off the servers they are ALL GPL! Now beat it! They can pull out all your computers in an instant and you have to fight to get them back.

BSA
$2 million dollars

The GPL is this organizations worst nightmare. So HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I just got a thought, I am going to make stickers for every monitor and PC that uses only GPL software. NO BSA (circle with slash BSA in middle). It will make the others careful about what they install and give me great satisfaction as I do my Walk About. Then I'll add a line item to the budget for each machine without a sticker. I'll let accounting figure out the rest.

Of course I FULLY agree with and support about MA's responsibility not to store public records in a proprietary format. 3 Cheers MA! You are fighting the right fight.

"-/rant-"
Whew that felt good

OpenDocument/Braille Readers

[16K Ram Pack]

I'll step up to the plate here and ask any blind computer users what their requirements are with regards to Open Office, braille printers and the interface to them.

I'll gladly contribute some time to help towards filling the gaps in.

You mean Open*Office*

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have OpenDocument and OpenOffice confused. OpenOffice is an office suite, OpenDocument is a file type. Anyone in the world is free to implement an OpenDocument reader/writer (I could go away now and do it). The point is that Microsoft are *refusing* to support ODF, as it will remove their office monopoly. As such, MS Office is not eligible for use in MA for goverment documents. Microsoft are taking this refusal, claiming that it means they *cannot* support OpenDocument (as they dont have time/people/the inclination) and therefore they are being discriminated against.

Turn the arguement around, MSXML is selected (Office 12 format). Oh look, MS Office is the only eligible choice. Tell me that isnt shutting out the competition.

Important accessibility question

[gr8_phk]

If you have Microsoft Windows running with screen reader software, can you use that screen reader with OpenOffice.org? How about Abiword? Can you use it with any other software, or just Microsoft software?

They ought to use LaTeX instead

[Pausanias]

Want less bloat than opendocument? Why not save everything in LaTeX format?

Deaf? er...

[J_Omega]

The blind users having problems using OpenDoc formats I understand.

Did you mean {Blind and Deaf} together, as in people have both of those disabilities?

I do not I understand the problem with OpenDoc and being (only) deaf. If there really is one, can someone explain it, please?

(and if "deaf" shouldn't be included in the parent, no problem, mistakes are made. I'm curious, not trolling.)

Re:OpenDoc (it's OpenDocument!)

[Creepy]

Please don't interchange OpenDoc® and OpenDocument -

OpenDoc® was Apple's answer to Microsoft's Object Linking and Embedding (OLE, which migrated to COM, DCOM, then strayed into being ActiveX) in Documents. It's a registered trademark of Apple Computers, Inc. It died many years ago (you can probably get the history in those Wikipedia articles - I didn't really read them), but I'm sure Apple still owns the trademark.

OpenDocument is an unrelated document format that came out of OpenOffice and OASIS, though again, read the Wikipedia entry for more, 'cause paragraph 1 is about as far as I got in it.

hmm probably shoulda tm'd Microsoft and Apple, as well as all those component models MS used, too... nah - too much effort

BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Later versions of Word claim to work with older versions of Word formats. The reality is if your documents are simple, you're probably in luck. If they aren't, documents in older formats can even lockup Word never mind not displaying right.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Same with Acrobat. So why isn't everyone making a big stink about that?

Re:Requirements

[symbolic]

>>Linux: 128 Mbytes RAM

Recently there was an article that spoke disfavorably of OpenOffice because of it's enormous memory footprint, and slow load times. In light of that, I don't see how in hell someone could get away with 128MB RAM - even if it is all allocated to OpenOffice. Try loading a document of any but the most basic 2-3 page memo, and I think you might start running into problems.

openofficeorg 2.0 bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

if you think MS office is bloated, openofficeorg 2.0 is a blimp AND its SLOW.

er - no it doesn't

[SimonInOz]

"OpenOffice.org uses less CPU, less RAM, and far less Hard Disk space."

Have you ever actually RUN OpenOffice?

I have. It's excellent - but the startup time is really, really long. It takes up heaps of memory (something like three time MS if I recall). There are plenty of reviews elsewhere telling the details.
Disc space - OO - 188M, MS Office - 217M (I'm sure there is a lot in shared libraries somewhere, though). Hardly a point heavily in OO's favour.
Don't know about document size - one might hope OO is a lot smaller.

Using untruthful arguments to support a rant is silly, and self defeating. Don't do it.

The OpenOffice folk (Google, Sun .. gosh) need to spend a lot of time on getting that memory footprint - or at least the startup time - down.

Re:er - no it doesn't

[cheesybagel]

With the preloader in OOo 2.0 the startup time has gone down. Way down. I was pretty amazed when I saw it.

Re:er - no it doesn't

[SimonInOz]

Not on my system it doesn't - still way over 20 seconds.

Re:er - no it doesn't

[WhiteWolf666]

Well, I wouldn't know too much about OO.org on Windows; but on my SuSE system, with SuSE tweaking the OO.org install, it starts up in ~4 seconds, from a cold boot.

Try the following on Windows:
1. Change your Tools->Options->Memory. Graphics Cache to 30 MB. Memory per object: 3.3 MB.
2. Close OpenOffice.org
3. Start and stop OpenOffice.org TWICE.
4. Defrag your disk. This will hopefully layout the prefetched DLLs correctly.
5. If that doesn't work, disable Java in OpenOffice.org. This will disable some features (like 3D word art), but save some ram/speed.

These are tweaks that need to occur by default, and whatever needs to be done to encourage Windows to prefetch OO.org should be done during the install. I'll grant you that ;-)

What's your system, if you don't mind. I'm curious; the quickstarter should make things _nearly_ instant. As in under 5 seconds, even on a slower box. Are you running OpenOffice 1.1.5, or OpenOffice 2.0 release (final)? If you are running anything other than these two, you'll experience slow startups. A lot of tweaks went in re:startup between 1.9.75-1.9.79

Other than that, you can run the openoffice.org quickstarter, which is sadly occupies a fair amount of ram, but no more than MS Office's Find Fast, and Indexing services.

Oh, and by the way, that 217 for the install of Office XP, right? Without the full outlook, or the full access, right?

And 188 MB for the full OO.org 2.0, right?

Keep in mind that Office 2003 requires 400 for the base install, and nearly 900 with the kitchen sink. Keep in mind that Office XP is being end-of-lifed within 9 months.

I'm not really sure that I'm being that untruthful. I did list these things in my post.

Re:er - no it doesn't

[Bob_Robertson]

Make sure to uncheck "Use Java Runtime Environment" under Tools; Java

Load times are substantially improved. As far as lost functionality, I haven't found any myself.

Bob-

Just Contacted My Reps

[Agilus]

Mass is fighting the good fight on this one. I'm not sure who exactly is behind it, but, as a resident, I decided it would be best for me to contact them and let them know how much I approved. I just contacted the ITD (Information Technology Division) and let them know what I thought, and asked if there was someone better to whom I could send my thank yous. Our leaders need to hear from us when they're doing a good job.

Count me out as a MAC user!!

[riversky]

I support competition and standards but OpenOffice for the Mac is SLOW, loads X11, unstable, doesn't use the Mac interface at all, and causes kernel panics on my PowerBook and iMac!! I use MS Office for the Mac and it IS good software. But unless MS adopts the opendocument format as an import/export option I will not be in the game. This is horrible for us Mac OS X users.

Re:Count me out as a MAC user!!

[Agilus]

What about NeoOffice/J or Abiword? NeoOffice/J worked just fine for me.

Also, there might be some hope that Apple's Pages might support the format in the future.

Re:Count me out as a MAC user!!

[ScrewMaster]

This isn't about OpenOffice. It's about OpenDocument, which is nothing more than a file format. If you're going to complain about something, that's fine (this is Slashdot, after all) but it helps the Slashdot hive-mind function properly if we all complain about the same thing.

Re:Requirements

[SoSueMe]

Will slashdot ever drag itself into the year 2005 and provide the ability to edit posts?

I hope not. Then responsibility for what you say is lost.

Ignorant Slashbots: Please Read

[Anonymous Coward]

The trolls and astroturfers are out in force on this one. Everybody should read this clear analysis of what OpenDocument offers MA that they can't get with MSXML.

Also, you can find out about the meeting too.

Step in the right directions-Slavery

[Anonymous Coward]

And how many "slaves" voted their masters into office? Or can vote them out?

the real biggest word

[Anonymous Coward]

>Why do you think the longest word you can spell on the top row of letters on a keyboard is "typewriter"?

I know it was supposed to be funny but I got curious
$ perl -e 'while () {$bigword = $_ if /[qwertyuiop]+/i and (length $bigword length $_)}; print $bigword' /usr/share/dict/words
electroencephalograph's

Re:the real biggest word

[gtwilliams]

I think you really meant:

perl -ne '$big=$_ if /^[qwertyuiop]+$/i && ' \
-e 'length($_)>length($big);END{print $big}' \
/usr/share/dict/words

Re:the real biggest word

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, a lot of letters there not from the top row. It's easier to Google to get rupturewort. There are a couple of other eleven letter 'words' that are a bit dubious.

Re:Step in the right directions-steady as she goes

[Anonymous Coward]

To argue that something is "underfunded" would require an entitlement to the labor of others. Being entitled to the labor of someone else has a very specific dictionary definition: slavery.

No, that's being entitled to the unpaid labor of others.

You are not a slave, because you are rewarded very handsomely with the privilege of living in America. In return for your tax money, you get one of the world's highest standards of living, protection from the world's most powerful military, the guaranteed freedoms of one of the world's most liberal constitutions, access to some of the world's best education and medical treatment...

And you're not a slave. Really, you're not. Slaves were tied to their masters and could be executed if they tried to run away. But you're not a prisoner. Any time you get tired of all the benefits that paying taxes brings you as an American, you're absolutely free to go live somewhere else.

Does OpenDocument support this feature?

[that_xmas]

Does the format support secret capturing of changes so government documents can be sent out with easily recovered redacted text?

Controversy...

[cnerd2025]

This is outrageous. Who is behind the contraoversy? The borg at the top of this pane. M$ is the only one to lose, because M$ Word documents are supported by OO.o. The fact is, competition should force M$ to innovate, but competition seems to cause them to bitch. When Linux started gaining some ground, M$ did nothing to improve Windoze, it just attacked Linux. Of course it is their perogative to say that they are the best, but don't write a check if you can't cash it. The only somewhat good response from the Giant is that they restarted the IE project after Firefox was introduced. Of course, they ignored it for a great deal of time. Now the growth seems to have "stagnated", but the data is very inconclusive as of yet. Growth on par with Firefox is rare if not anomolous. Back to OO.o. Massachusetts is jokingly referred to by some of its constitutants as "the People's Republic of Taxachusetts". With a Republican Governor who inherited a bad economy, cost-cutting measures were needed. So, ditch the expensive, erroneous, bloated software in favor of a free Open Source solution. Hell, I'd move for a bill to make all government software to be open source. You can still buy and sell software, and it is still able to be profitable, it is just that no one has developed an outstanding business model. I applaud the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for upholding their title and supporting the citizens over big business.

Re:NO CONVERTING

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you busy discovering your 'special purpose' when they handed out brains? NO FUCKING CONVERTING NEEDED

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has issued a statement that said the move to OpenDocument would incur unnecessary costs as the state government would be forced to convert "more than one million current files to the new [OpenDocument] format." However, an entry in the online FAQ on the Massachusetts Web site addressed this complaint, stating that only those documents created after January 1, 2007, must be in the OpenDocument standard.

Don't you just love Massachusetts?

[Bushido Hacks]

Ah, Massachusetts. Home of the Big Dig, the Red Sox, the Free Software Foundation, M.I.T., and most importantly NO MICROSOFT!
The day Microsoft puts their foot in the door is when they can move that big GNU out of the way.

Huh?

[cbiltcliffe]

When the hell did that happen? I guess I haven't used any really recent versions of Office, then. Although I've installed 2K3 on a customer's machine recently. Guess I just wasn't paying attention.....

Re:Huh?

[YU Nicks NE Way]

It happened in 2K3. FastStart did not do what people believed it did...or, at least, not for the reason that they thought.

DLLs have a "base address", and loading a DLL at other than its base address makes the process of using the DLL very slow. All FastStart did was load the DLLs to make sure that they were placed at their preferred base addresses. For technical reasons, this was necessary on Windows 9x and ME. It is not necessary on any of the NT-derived versions.

(By the way, no, this is not some "black art secret". It's well-documented in the platform SDK. It's also one of the ways that Windows made different tradeoffs than *n*x, and it's one of the reasons that most cross-platform applications perform so poorly on Windows: the developers don't know that they should rebase their DLLs. If you doubt me, look at the boot speed for Mozilla or Firefox, and learn why it is that it suddenly dropped.)

Now that the older versions are not supported for install, that particular feature is no longer necessary, and is no longer installed by default.

Its all in a name

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, a lot of punters will make the same mistake. Those who Microsoft recruits against open source in general, will flame that.

I read Sun's response saying "[OpenDocument is] on its way to being an ISO standard" and I just realised, that if it was called ISODocument rather than OpenDocument then that misinformation would loose traction. Many managers who really dont know much about this wierd "open" stuff, have been comfortable for a long time with ISO.

Re:Its all in a name

[mink]

So they just need to create ISOOffice and ISO Source software ;-)

In Lieu of Red Tape - BuSab motto

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever read any of Frank Herbert's stories involving the Bureau of Sabotage? That is exactly the premise of the stories. Because efforts to eliminate red tape made the government far too effective (and powerful), a government agency is set up to sabotage the efforts of the other government agencies. Instead of red tape keeping the government tied down, they have their efforts sabotaged from within. The ultimate separation of powers, as it were.