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OpenDocument Gains New Fans
An anonymous reader writes "The OpenDocument format is gathering steam, as several influential companies seek an alternative to Microsoft Office." From the article: "The ODF Summit brought together representatives from a handful of industry groups and from at least 13 technology companies, including Oracle, Google and Novell. That stepped-up commitment from major companies comes amid signs that states are considering getting behind OpenDocument. James Gallt, the associate director for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, said Wednesday that there are a number of state agencies are exploring the use of the document format standard."
Unfortunately, under the terms of MS licensing these companies are prohibited from using MS Office to draft documents or emails discussing using an open document format.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
Goo' ol' ASCII for text and figures.
as government customers show more interest in open-source alternatives to Microsoft's desktop software.
That's because those alternatives do not charge you for a new visual theme.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Three years from now OpenDocument will be pervasive (the momentum is getting too great for it to fail now, especially when organizations face just as big of a transition to OfficeXML if they decided to go that route), and the #1 implementation, by far, will be Microsoft Office. All of the state governments will be running Office 12+OpenDocument SP1, and interacting just like they did previously. Of course a document opened in OpenOffice, or others, will be slightly different, and users will attribute it to quirks of OpenOffice, further marginalizing it.
Sidenote: That bloody PIX SPORTS ad does more to encourage ad blocking software than any counter-commercial advocate.
Ha! Yeah, they have nothing to gain from being anti-Microsoft.
I know this has been speculated on many times before, but I'm convinced that Apple is going to pull something out of the hat with regards to this, may be as soon as next year.
Perhaps an Apple version of openOffice 2.0?
They have to really -- their reliance on Microsoft to produce a Mac version of office has had them in a vice for years, but their agreements are coming to an end and Microsoft's grip is slipping.
Who is James Gallt? Him? Why he's the associate director for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers.
Oh, JOHN Galt. John Galt. It's, "Who is John Galt?"
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
... then you spelt "Googol", when I think you meant "Google."
We all know that any mention of Google in a post equates to +5 Insightful.
Red Hat would be Doc Holiday.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
is this story posted in the Linux section?
First rule of getting moderated: Don't talk about getting moderated!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Millions of dollars saved from purchasing copies of Microsoft Office. Instead of concentrating money in the hands of a few (*cough Microsoft cough*), poor or even mid-class people can spend that money in more important things.
It is amazing to see the reactions a certain group of people have to the surge in OpenDocument adoption.
This is one of those no brainer moves that would be unremarkable in any other industry. Technology makes the inevitable move to commodity status over time so companies can focus on competing in areas that actually give value to consumers.
But with Microsoft there is a strange group of people who can only be described as "Microsoft Is Always Teh Winner" believers. The computing world standardizing on OpenDocument in no way negatively effects them and the continued use of the proprietary Microsoft formats in no way benefits them, but they have become so emotionally attached to Microsoft they see it as a personal affront that anyone would ever dare to not use the obvious choice of whatever the Microsoft solution is.
That would be better than the current situation. It sounds like you're describing a situation like the current one with Internet Explorer. I agree that this sucks, but it really isn't that bad, and it certainly allows for competition (for instance, Firefox). Similarly, even if MS Office read/wrote ODF with quirks, it would still allow plenty of room for competition (or at any rate, more than there is now).
The first ever MRI image produced at Nottingham Uni. was an ASCII image!
"including Oracle, Google and Novell"
Come on seriously, is the OpenDocument in that much trouble you have to list these guys. How could you forget to say IBM and Sun aren't using MS Office too? Sure they offer competing products, but hey, they aren't using MS Office.
From the article: " Red Hat, Adobe, Computer Associates, Corel, Nokia, Intel and Linux e-mail company Scalix, in addition to Oracle, Novell and Google"
With the exception of Intel, these are ALL hard liners against MS. My god, they listed LINUX outfits!!!! They can't even use MS Office. Intel sends reps to ALL of things on both sides of the isle, but at the end of the day, they will go MS.
This is complete fan boy press for the open document... and another example of how the quality front page posts on slashdot are dropping. Go ahead and flame me, but you know that this is just a fluff piece for Open Document, and a poor attempt to make it look like it is gaining support. Intellectually dishonest.
If you really would like to see Linux of any flavor, Apple, or any alternative to Microsoft's strangehold flourish, do what you can to open the eyes of management folks to open source software. Make a spreadsheet of the number of office employees in your office, multiple the number by the cost of the OS (XP Pro is ~$150) and the cost of MS Office (basic is ~$300), add it up, and show them what could be saved while retaining the functionality (and gaining in some places such as not giving certain employees copies of office on their computer to cut cost when they really need it).
Install Open Office on your workstation and show your boss how visually its similar to Microsoft Office so retraining for basic tasks (spreadsheets, letter documents, etc.) will be minimal. When the question comes up (yes it will) asking about opening attachments on e-mails from people still using Microsoft Office, show them it works and that you can even save in Microsoft's format to send to others.
Review the upgrade frequency of the software used in your office. If you upgrade operating systems every 3 years, explain the benefits of switching to another operating system such as SuSE or Ubuntu as far as your finances go.
I'm sure there are other ways to open eyes of management. If you can think of some, please reply to this and add it.
On a side note, not only will this open people up to alternatives to Microsoft, but the fact that they have stepped back and made a change will only make it easier to change if there is another alternative out there that would better fit the bill. It'll get them thinking.
Get paid to code OSS
Well, at least we're really getting steam to go away from microsoft.. cause i don't know about you guys, but i see microsoft's eyes getting greener and greener as days go by. Every product they are comming out with finds new and more agrivating ways to need money for updates and support. Eventually we'll probably see microsoft putting adware into the OS source code. I really hope we get some better alternatives to microsoft products, and this could be a major step headed towards a less dominating microsoft eviroment.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
Sorry, that money will still be taken by government from the poor and mid-class people who would otherwise use it to improve their and other peoples lives.
Software upgrades are already figured into the budgets, and a government agency will spend their money on anything, not matter how silly, before they will let their budgets be cut by even a penny.
Near the end of every fiscal period, any money left over in the budget is very quickly spent, because if there is anything left over at the end the auditors assume that the department obviously didn't need the money and the next years budget will be reduced by that amount. This punishes efficient management and rewards sloth, abuse and waste. But this is government, and thereby I merely repeat myself.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Fair competition is always good for the consumer. A document created by a poor child for school under a freely available word processor on an older used computer will be accepted by the teacher. The idiot teacher will not be able to force the child's parents to trade a coat for a wordprocessor. Think I'm kidding, my niece had a science project fail because the document produced in Open Office didn't produce on his MS Word a lower margin of 1 inch, it created a lower margin of 1.25 inches, yes the idiot used a ruler. When he was told that the document was produced in Open Office, his response was "What's that? I said to use Microsoft Word!" and my sister who was an Airman Basic making $800 a month paid $399 for it!
Is there a reason that all OpenDoc stories must be filed under Linux?
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Museum studies programmes are currently heavily focuesed on digital preservation.
...
And unfortunately storing a document is very complicated. It involves knowledge of software version, compatibility issues, bugs, etc
Many of these programmes are leanning heavily towards open document standards. Simply because the people involved are not, and have no desire to learn every issue regard software excuatbles and how to make sure they will run in 20 or 30 years.
While it's nice that state governments are interested in OpenDocument, IMHO, this initiative will not seriously gain steam until the big companies around the world begin to adopt them. If GE, Walmart, Citigroup, GM, etc, etc, etc, made an effort towards OpenDoc, it will take off very quickly.
However, most of these big companies are locked into multi-billion, multi-year contracts with Microsoft, so I would be surprised to see anything happen soon.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
I (foolishly) purchased a stripped down educator's copy of Office when I bought my iBook a few months ago, and Word has all ready corrupted five documents, screwing the formatting and replacing the quotation marks with funky looking i's. I used to run OpenOffice when I had a pc, and despite it's slow load times (which, really, who cares if you have to wait an extra second and a half), it was an excellent piece of software. Might be time to go through the trouble of installing X11...
So several of microsoft's direct competitors are choosing to use a competing product instead of Microsoft product. How is this news? Would you REALLY have expected anything else?
I agree. It would be very interesting to see how much money our government spends on Microsoft products.
Get paid to code OSS
Stop dreaming people, nothing will change. Companies will continue to use MS Office with whatever new document support, won't care if there is OD support or not. Some companies will use OO and others won't, some suites will support OD and others not. Get over it, it's the capitalist world people.
Does anybody imagined if all companies started using OO? Do you really think it would still be free with all the support and investment they would have to do in it?
Nevermind, you probably stopped reading this and labelled me in your microsoft for the win group, or whatever the hell you called it, right? I mean, if someone disagrees with you, why bother thinking about what they have to say when you can just put a label on them so that you don't have to do any thinking.
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
The problem with open document and one thing that may keep organizations from adopting is the fact that it's not stable yet. I mean, as people try to improve the format new XML things will be added into it and existing ones change for the better and then backward compatibality will either have to be broken or you'd end up with a bloated document format. my 2 cents
Does it matter when anything say gets you Auto-modded to +5
No wonder I could get rid of my MOD points!
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
There's a culture of corporate paranoia at Microsoft, and it's been written about before in books and essays. Everything is seen as a threat, everything requires a drastic response. For instance, Netscape and gave rise to tying Internet Explorer to the Windows shell and offering it for free. At Microsoft, you're always self-critical, and you're always paranoid about losing your market position.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Do we really want a standard that enables DRM? Is there such a thing as acceptable DRM? Why is this a good thing for OpenDocument?
As others have pointed MS will just make OpenDocument one of their output formats and those who care will use it. Few will switch from MS Word.
Alternatively MS may just marginalize OpenDocument by publishing the Word/Excel/etc document formats. They used to, they could do so again.
I have worked in local governments for the last 8 years. This is exactly what they do and why open source has a hard time making inroads here. The thinking here is that we have to spend money or we lose it next year. So around here, we have the latest copies of Windows XP and Office 2003, but we don't seem to have any money to buy a decent office color laser jet that prints duplex. Where are there priorities? Obviously, not on production.
There is one group of people who do not fit into that category.
MS shareholders.
Last time I checked, MS's office software accounted for about one-third of their revenue. Even a modest hit to that revenue stream is going to have disastrous consequences for Microsoft and its share-price. MS has just barely been hit street numbers over the past year as revenue growth continues its downward slide - I think it is all the way down to %6 this last quarter.
If the OpenDocument momentum continues, MS revenue growth has a good chance of turning negative very soon. That will be momentous event for the company in a very, very bad way.
That, as Hunter S. T. put it, is the nut of the matter. And what *is* this? Do people develop emotional dependence on Texeco gas and get all zealotous when somebody mentions Chevron? Does KMart have loyal customers who sneer at Target shoppers as "communist"? Do HBO viewers stick to their "chosen" channel and deride Cinemax? Yet bring up operating systems, web browsers, programming languages...anything at all related to computers, down to such trivial choices as text editors: instant Jihad! I think we'd better add "computers" to "politics and religion" in the list of topics not to bring up at a table.
Man, I always figured if I'm going to put all that love into something, it's got to love me back. I just use what works for me, and don't really care what anybody else uses. Pity we can't all be shown the same courtesy.
Ahh.. I see the problem. You might not be the MSFTW group, but you're still committing a logical fallacy. A perfectly understandable one that almost everyone makes. the "is-ought" fallacy. You are describing the way things are as if that is the way things should always be. The parent was describing the way things ought to be (according to him). The mistake is in assuming that just because those are the conditions that exist now, that they are the best possible conditions.
Pragmatism is all right when you consider all the ramifications. There are certain possibilities which some might weight more heavily than others that lead to Open Document as soon as possible being the more practical and pragmatic solution.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Remember that the industry has ties with the government. If the govt. isn't required to use Microsoft Office, companies (and their workers) can save that money, too.
unzip mydocument.sxw
emacs content.xml
zip mydocument.sxw *
Million Dollar Screenshot
The real problem is "embrace and extend", which means MS will officially support OpenDoc but it will work differently enough in MSOffice from what the standard intended that institutions will still require that documents be produced in MSOffice. This is exactly the problem we have with HTML and IE.
To their credit it's been true up to this point. What's different now is that the rest of the IT world seems to be diverging away from MSFT and in some cases collaborating against them.
MSFT has a choice of stubbornly staying the course and continue trying to hang on to their monopoly, which they'll eventually lose but will make more money until they collapse into a nitch market player. The other option is to support open standards where their products aren't the only choice available to users. In which case their business will decline gradually to a nitch market player.
Same result, but they have a choice how to get there.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I agree with your sentiments, but the educational version of Word (for teachers and students) can be had for about $25. The entire Office suite is ~ $125.
That assumes that the money saved would result in a tax break. Politicians are nothing if not spendthrifts.
Perhaps the way MA and other states could squash some of the arguments against ODF would be to create a web service to convert the documents to and from ODF. The web service would take as input either a URL to a document on their web site or a posted document, in addition to the format the document should be converted too (using existing OpenOffice filter code), and present the user with that document. Then, a user (some state constituent) won't need to install OpenOffice if they already have MS Office installed. They could have little icons on the web site that offered the documents in different formats (ODF, PDF, DOC, etc.), and the web service would take the ODF master and convert to the other formats as needed.
-mls
"To their credit it's been true up to this point."
Actually it isn't true. Outside of things directly tied to their OS, Microsoft has been a gigantic failure across the board. One of the reasons they are fighting so desperately with against the open office format is for the very fact that they have been so completely incapable of 'winning' at anything outside of their OS and office suite products and creating significant new revenue streams.
I agree that Microsoft's inevitable place in the market is a niche player mostly doing legacy support of their software. And from the actions of the execs at Microsoft over the past few years, I am pretty sure they feel the same way and are most focused on extracting as much cash out of the company before the stock price moves from slow decline to outright freefall.
We can cry all we want about MS's Office formats ruling "the office", but personally, I feel the real tyrant in office file formats is .PDF. IMHO Adobe PDF is the Josef Stalin of formats.
And let me preface, this is on Windows, so you Mac and Linux desktop admins need not respond with tales of wonder about PDF.
I spend more time troubleshooting, upgrading, downgrading, converting, tweaking settings, etc; for Acrobat than anything else our Data Specialists use. What a friggin headache this program is. And whats worse, everyone not only requires PDF, they demand it.
I think OpenOffice has the ability to convert to PDF, but I haven't tried it. I assume that on Windows I would run into the same problems. Back before Acrobat 6, it was a fairly stable and reliable program, but since 6 it falls into the POS category.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
A common module in enterprise applications is the 'produce word document' - for whatever use it is applied to. Thing about this is, it's a bitch to produce a word document, what with OLE and the file formats and the pain and the death... My guess is that a huge number of Word documents in the world today are not actually produced by Word at all, but by the API components of Word through automated batch processes. With OpenDocument document format all these document will be produced by a much simpler process and won't require the Word API or consequent licensing. On top of that they can be processed after they are written. I'm sure you're right about MS marginalization, but it might show up some flaws in their assumptions about market share.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
>Just like there are acceptable uses for weapons, wars, Windows, and alliterations
To quote Micheal Franti "they can bomb the world into pieces, but they can't bomb it into peace". Some rearrange this for something about windows and puns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Franti
Normally, IBM, Oracle, et.al. wouldn't be so bold, but when they see the big alpha dog showing signs of weakness, the rest of the pack suddenly turns on it.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'd take it a step further and mention that MS Office has also been the killer app that has kept people using their other software offerings, namely windows.
There are plenty of business that are already using web based and/or cross platform applications. If there was no need for MS Office there may also be no need for MS Windows.
It won't happen over night, but losing office suite dominance would be a huge blow to MS in more ways than one.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
Delphiki is making the EXACT same MISTAKE as most of the politicians and reporters(sic). Open Document Format DOES NOT EQUAL OpenOffice.org. If a government body chooses to adopt and enforce an OPEN file format STANDARD, that does not mean that you have to use an open source application to open/read/modify files created in accordance with the standard.
If Microsoft gets off their petulant selfish ass and chooses to support an open file format standard, then Delphiki can continue to use MS Office to work with files created under the Open Document Format. More power to him/her, that is his/her choice. I personally don't care what application you use to open a digital file, but I do demand that that file format is such that I have a CHOICE of which application I use to open that file (free or paid for).
The Open Document Format is about CHOICE. It gives the public the right to choose which application they wish to use to open the file. As another person pointed out, there is no reason a financially strapped family should be forced to spend $400 for MS Office just to open/view/modify a document that is freely available from their state government.
Just my $0.02
Todd
"With OpenDocument document format all these document will be produced by a much simpler process and won't require the Word API or consequent licensing"
!!!
This is something that is HUGE for our company and OpenOffice/OpenDocument.
Not many end users know about this aspect of office document use in companies since it usually is transparent and just works without their involvement. But our company has completely embraced OO / OD across our entire tool chain/ software suite. We now have the full source for and complete spec for something as powerful as an office suite at our disposal that is totally free and works on every platform we want.
Only someone who actually is involved with the implementation of these type of tools or workflows can fully grasp how desirable OD is and the zeal to purge any traces of proprietary Microsoft products from the company or any company you deal with.
Let me explain it to you. You can go down to your local courthouse right now and look at deeds, birth certificates, etc., from 1905, or 1805. A hundred years from now, people will need to view documents from 2005. Open document formats facilitate that in a way that proprietary formats do not.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Where's Corel in all of this? Isn't this a great time for WordPerfect to make a comeback? Great UNIX and OASIS support etc...
e .pdf
(PDF) www.corel.com/content/pdf/wp12/WPO12_eWeek-Enderl
Office maintains is monopoly due to control over the format. If MS loses control of the format, then they will require a superior program at a much lower price to control the market. In addition, if they lose the Office monopoly, they will probably lose the Desktop Monopoly, but at the very least, will be forced to drop their prices all over (not just in targeted markets).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Wow, that was an Insightful remark! Pity I don't have mod points!
-- Cheers!
I never could get the hang of Thursdays....
stupid question time... why don't they use html with inline css for a document format?
... if Oracle moves off Office and to OpenOffice.org/StarOffice. Sure, they don't have the features of Office, but who cares? Oracle sure as hell doesn't. Oracle doesn't run Exchange, they use their own backend mail server (based on Oracle) that is absurdly slow (I can download from the net at several thousand k/sec, but it takes me >30 secs to open an email w/ a 500k attachment), tends to lose mail, doesn't always let you know that there is new mail, has the worst webmail interface I've ever seen, and is just generally horrid (my previous two employers used Exchange, and it didn't have problems even vaguely approaching these). All because they don't want to send money to the enemy (MS).
Most employees access the Oracle mail backend through Outlook 2003 and the Oracle Outlook Connection Service (OCS), but they also pseudo-support Thunderbird, and they're paying for development on Sunbird (calendaring front end to complement TB). I suspect that once TB/SB are mostly reliable a corporate mandate will go out ending the use of Outlook and OCS.
Based on this, I'd expect that the next step after that would be to ditch MS Office all together. It doesn't matter that OO.org/SO won't read/write MS format docs perfectly, or that there are some features missing -- Oracle is the #2 software company, and sending revenues to the #1 software company doesn't make much sense. Particularly when you're in direct competition in several market spaces.
-- An Oracle employee
I have one question for those people who decide which category stories go into:-
Why is this article about OpenDocument format in the Linux category?
The OpenDocument format can indeed be used by software which happens to run on Linux but it's a *FAR* bigger thing than that. The OpenDocument format is architecture neutral and as such if you could equally choose to classify the article under the BSD daemon or the MacOS or even Windows.
So, surely, this should be under some other, architectural neutral label to do with digital freedom or open standards in general?
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
The commonwealth of Massachusetts has two big choices out of which it can choose. One is to stick to the ITD decision and be seen as LEADERS at a moment in IT history, while the world was at a "fork in the road" as for as document standards. They will be written into IT History as such.
The other option is to delay and dilly dally, wait for the rest of the world (cities, states, countries) to pick up the ball on Open Document format and eventually have it imposed on them either formally or by the market and go down in the IT History as "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" as for as document formats go, and be a Harvard Business School case study on leadership (on what not to do), inspite of all the excellent work done by their ITD.
Choose carefully, MA!
I think the teacher should be hung...
Simply put the parent of the kid should of looked after her and taken it too the next level, i seriously doubt the is a requisite set down in the education system stating that students must use Microsoft Office. But if it was the case that the margin was making the assessment illegable to the teacher then i hardly see how OpenOffice is to blame, the same behaviour can be just as easily replicated by Ms Office as it can be done by OpenOffice.
I agree with your sentiments, but the educational version of Word (for teachers and students) can be had for about $25. The entire Office suite is ~ $125.
I can't seem to find Word for $25. There's a Student and Teacher edition of Office ($125 or $130, depending on platform), but no corresponding edition of just Word. The Student and Teacher Edition page doesn't even mention the product: I guess it goes without saying that only all of Office is available this way, today.
When I bought Office a couple years ago (when I was at a university), I bought all of Office. And I remember why: because all of Office (with the educational discount) wasn't much more expensive than one piece. It was something like $100 per program, or $125 for all four. I only needed one, but I could imagine that I might need two of them at some point in the future, so I splurged.
If you can show where to find Word for $25 (legally), I'm sure a lot of people would be interested.
I have an idea. The Goatse picture should paint "open" in a very graphic manner. Change the icon!
HTTP/1.1 400
Wrong. If OpenDocument/OOo benefits in no other fashion, then thier mere existence and adoption puts competitive pressure on MS to create better software and offer thier software for lower cost. Unless of course you have large stock options in MS, then there is purposeful bias for us to ignore your rants.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Do HBO viewers stick to their "chosen" channel and deride Cinemax?
Excellent point!
I think it really comes down to flipping through the channels and checking whether skinemax is showing some good soft core stuff or HBO is showing one of its "documentaries" at any giving point in time.
Not sure why anyone would use brand loyalty over price/quality just for software.
to: ceo@oracle.com ; ceo@google.com ; ceo@novell.com
subject: pissing in Microsoft's corn flakes
Dear sirs.
Would you like to lend your names to an initiative that will annoy Microsoft, and may eventually cut into their gigantic MS Office revenues? (Revenue they use to subsidize the parts of Microsoft that *your* company competes with.)
This initiative involves a segment of the software industry that none of you compete directly in.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely - Open Document Guy.
Do people develop emotional dependence on Texeco gas and get all zealotous when somebody mentions Chevron?
Yes. They will also argue for months about which brand of motor oil is the best.
anything at all related to computers, down to such trivial choices as text editors: instant Jihad!
That's because you're hanging out with computer geeks. Hang out with the EAA geeks and the argument will be over aluminum vs glass vs wood or whether the big wing goes in the front or the rear.
Really, though, if no one really cared enough to defend their position, things would get boring fairly quickly.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
The dominance of Microsoft formats is the biggest reason that M$ Office costs $500 per seat. If there were one file format that could be read and written properly by all office suites, then OpenOffice (free) and StarOffice ($70/seat) could be evaluated on technical merits instead of being rejected as 'I might not be able to exchange files with the rest of the world'. Then you would see the price of M$ Office drop. Still lovin' those proprietary formats?
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
So OpenOffice no longer is able to open Microsoft Word documents?
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
> I've never had a problem with incompatibility
> between version of MS Office
Ah, I see you live in that portion of society where things are upgraded in a timely fashion, so that you have not experienced the pain of attempting to take a document someone sent you that was created with Office 2003 and help a colleague open it on a computer that still has Office 4.3. (If you suggest an upgrade, said colleague gives you a dirty look and commences ninety solid minutes of bemoaning the horrors the previous upgrade, with all the user-interface changes it entailed, and extolling the virtues of Lotus 123 for DOS. Eventually you tell the colleague to just save the stupid document on a floppy diskette, so you can take it and print it on a computer that's a bit more up to date.)
With that said, there *are* some concrete benefits to the OpenDocument format, not least of all because it's *much* easier to generate with custom software. For instance, if you've got a database on your intranet containing names and addresses with a DBI/CGI frontend, it's easy to add a "generate mailing labels" feature that returns an OpenOffice document to the user; you can easily spend more time choosing the font so forth and setting up the formatting in your template than it takes to write the code that plugs in the data and returns the result. No, I don't expect the average home user to appreciate this sort of thing, but IT departments might think it's pretty cool.
> The continued use of the proprietary Microsoft formats
> benefit me because that's what just about everyone is
> already set up for.
That's either circular, or more likely you misunderstood what the other poster meant by "the continued use". Perhaps you thought he was talking about *your* continued use; he wasn't. He was talking about the continued *widespread* use, i.e., the continuance of the overall situation wherein just about everyone is already set up, more-or-less exclusively, for proprietary document formats. If this situation changes to the extent that just about everyone is set up for an open format, the only *potential* inconvenience that could cause you is that you would need to upgrade to stay compatible, but that would happen anyway with a future revision of Microsoft's proprietary formats, as has happened numerous times in the past; indeed, it is already poised to get underway again with Microsoft's XML-based formats, which are intended eventually to supercede the binary ones, assuming something else (like OpenDocument) doesn't supercede both first.
The argument that the other poster was making, although perhaps he wasn't sufficiently clear, was to the effect that there is no benefit to you if the next format that "just about everyone" upgrades to (and you therefore need to upgrade to as well) is a future version of Microsoft's proprietary format, versus some other format. If you only use the existing MS format because that's what everyone else uses, then you are not part of the group he was arguing against. He was talking about people who specifically don't want any non-Microsoft format or technology to gain widespread adoption.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
And where in the store is it sold? You would only know it if you went to a college bookstore or maybe their website. You won't find it at CompUSA. Then you need a student ID, or teacher credentials. Middle schools in poor small Mid - West towns do not issue student ID cards.
Yeah, that'd be super, if the question was making OpenOffice "The One True Document Format", but splitting the world between Microsoft's format and OpenOffice format isn't going to provide that benefit. Microsoft Office has huge advantages especially for corporate use over OpenOffice or StarOffice, so corporations will continue to pay more for Office (though certainly not $500 a seat, if you think that then you clearly have no idea what you're talking about), and unless Open Office gets a hell of a lot better, I'd keep Office too. I'm pretty sure most people would, since businesses can afford to pay for quality and personal users mostly get it with their PC at a big discount or pirate it anyway. So you have a few organizations who screw themselves by making sure they can't trade documents with people, and the rest who keep using Office, meaning Microsoft doesn't have to lower their prices.
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
I can tell you this I looked at the paper in both Word & OpenOffice. It was perfectly legible, it just didn't follow his written instructions, again he used a freaking ruler. The teacher excuse was that he would allow "special case students" to use the classroom computer after school. But he never told the kids this, he only said it after the issue was raised by several parents at the PTA meeting. Anyway, what middle school child is going to volunteer that they are "special case"?"
No, because all gas is pretty much the same.
Does KMart have loyal customers who sneer at Target shoppers as "communist"?
No, Target shoppers are the bourgeoisie. You pay a lot more than KMart prices for the same crap in freaked-out colors.
Do HBO viewers stick to their "chosen" channel and deride Cinemax?
Skin is skin (see Texaco comment).
Yet bring up operating systems, web browsers, programming languages...anything at all related to computers
Unlike entertainment (where more is better), it really makes sense that there will be very few operating systems, word processors, etc. The cost of training and incompatibilites between similar packages will very likely result in one dominant package in each category. And that one package should not come from Redmond.
down to such trivial choices as text editors
Use a text editor for 6+ hours per day for 10+ years, and you will not think that it is such a trivial choice. Your choice of text editor will have more impact on your life than your choice of: car, toothpaste, spouse, or gasoline. And to make matters extremely clear, emacs sucks.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Open Document doesn't cook you're breakfast for you, so you assume that their is no way it will benefit you?
How does having multiple gas stations in my town benefit me when I always buy from the same one anyway? I should get the city council to shut down all of those other stations.
Even better, if I can get them to switch all the school busses to a specialized fuel that only has one supplier. Yeah, then there would be a whole industry that would just go out of business. We only need one supplier, right? Why do we have to have multiple supplier all selling the same thing? It's ridiculous, and doesn't benefit me.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
As to the second part of you argument, I don't actually care what format is used in the future, but I still fail to see any benefit to OpenDocument. If by "continued use" you and the other poster mean in the distant future, it's fine with me if there is a gradual transition to open formats.
On the other hand if a government I had to deal with mandated that OpenDocument was the only format they would work with, I would be pissed off. Even if Microsoft supported OpenDocument in their next version, the government would be forcing me to switch to an inferior open source program compared to software I've already purchased or upgrade immediately. Yes, I would have to upgrade eventually anyway, but when? I'm currently still using two versions back, and am not planning to upgrade to the new version as soon as it's out.
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
And where in the store is it sold? You would only know it if you went to a college bookstore or maybe their website. You won't find it at CompUSA. Then you need a student ID, or teacher credentials. Middle schools in poor small Mid - West towns do not issue student ID cards.
Er, yes, you will find it at CompUSA. You've never looked, have you?
Coming soon - pyrogyra
The requirement here sounds like it was to be X pages with Y formatting. You can change the formatting on OOo. The formatting should have met the specs.
MSW was not the requirement.
It's still legal for OpenOffice and other programs to open Microsoft Word documents, yes. It looks like that will change with Office 12. You are allowed (!) to open and read government documents in the new MS format, period,
Oh mommy look! It's one of those "Microsoft Is Always Teh Winner" people!
Sorry clown, your precious little Microsoft utopia is coming to an end. What a wonderful time we live in, the computing world is in the process of dumping a useless proprietary format saving billions each AND we all get to watch retards like you freak out about it and throw tantrums while we do.
Thanks!
Haha, yeah, Microsoft is going down the toilet. I love how people on slashdot find out some piece of open source software might creep up to 2% market share and predict the doom of Microsoft.
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
> Think I'm kidding, my niece had a science project
> fail because the document produced in Open Office
> didn't produce on his MS Word a lower margin of 1
> inch, it created a lower margin of 1.25 inches,
> yes the idiot used a ruler. When he was told that
> the document was produced in Open Office, his
> response was "What's that? I said to use
> Microsoft Word!"
The office software being used is entirely a red herring here. Requiring specific margins is standard practice throughout academia at all grade levels, from the primary grades through to the post-graduate level, and one inch is by *far* the most common requirement. Students are *continually* trying to get away with slightly larger margins than are required (and slightly larger fonts than the teacher specifies, and slightly more than the amount of line spacing requested, and various other schenanighans) in order to "fill up" page requirements with fewer words; this, completely irrespective of software issues, is *always* grounds for downgrading.
On the one hand the teacher shouldn't be requiring a specific software product, but on the other hand the teacher doesn't want to hear inane and irrelevant comments like "I used such-and-such software" as an excuse for using excessively large margins. His response *should* have been, "You need to use software that supports setting the margins to one inch." (Which OO does support, of course, but the student implied otherwise.) So his response was not worded well. But, if you assumed that the student's bizarre implication were correct, it would ammount, roughly, to a paraphrase. The teacher also should have known better than to assume the student's implication was correct, but if he does take a student's remark at face value, the student really has no valid grounds for complaint.
Getting back to the software: I have wondered for a long time why the default margins in OpenOffice are so enormously large, but really it's neither here nor there. When you're doing a paper for school, you always need to check your margins anyway, to verify that they're correct. Not doing so is always grounds for downgrading, period. Trying to excuse it by explaining that OpenOffice was used is... well, let's just call it something the student needs to learn not to do and leave it at that.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
This format isn't really about Open standards, that is what people call it and some actually saying that is what they want.
The real truth is that they want Microsoft to lose control of their market and they want to do this so that other free open source office projects can kill off office.
See some people don't like Microsoft and don't trust them, so they want to kill off any hopes of Microsoft leading any industry and they start by using Open source and free software as this is what they think will make a dent against Microsoft.
Free and Open source used to be great, but now it's just used as a political statement against Microsoft.
I do love Open source projects, I really do, but this political anti-microsoft crap has to stop.
Who cares if Microsoft owns the Office industry, there will always be alternatives.
There is life beyond Microsoft, but why focus on them? Create your own software and don't worry about Microsoft. I love Open source and I love Microsoft and yes they are competitive, but wouldn't you do the same if you were in their position? YES you would.
It's sad to see liberal anti-microsoft politics muddy a good industry.
Works 2006 includes Word 2002 and is $99, retail (meaning you don't even have to be a student to get it).
I'm certain there are even cheaper ways of legally obtaining a copy of word.
of course not, and going by all your previous posts you defend microsoft from consoles to word processing. Hmm, what is that? Your days are limited and don't try to hide under 'i'm just a little ol' regular windows users' shtick. We've converted over to open office here, does everything we want and it's free.
The real problem here is that your niece didn't check the margin on her paper after printing it. OO Writer can set margins just like MS Word.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I work for a large fortune 500 company and we're seriously considering switching to open office in the next year.
Of course it is a stable format. The specifications for it are written down. On the other hand changes will eventually be made, but these will be written down in a new specifcation e.g. OpenDocument 2.0. Every file format will have the same evolution where things are eventually added. The base file format will be the same. In fact the MS formats seem to be currently worse for this sort of format creep.
ZDNet has said that a French tax office (80,000 desktops) is planning to move to OOo. MSOffice upgrade cost 29.5m, OpenOffice 200,000. See here.
THE HORROR!
goatse guy's even worse in ascii...
"MY APOCALYPTIC TENOR HAS NOT BEEN DISPELLED!" - T-Rex, qwantz.com
Boobs!
This sig sucks.
By seriously considering do you mean you as a lower level employee are seriously considering making a suggestion to do so, which nobody will listen to?
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
That people actually believe that :( Sure, OO.o is LGPL (NOT GPL!), and OpenDocument (which is abbreviated ODF, NOT OpenDoc--an abbreviation which means something else) is a document format, not a software suite.
...
But the sad thing is that, even here on SlashDot, some of the underinformed seem to think that it would "stifle competition" if MA couldn't also save things in formats that are control points for Microsoft lock-in, rather than having to save them in a format fully specified which anyone can read (and use--you need licenses from MS to use their XML, which is under-specified, and which cannot be used in FOSS)
Even MS can impliment ODF, if they wish to, without any having to make all their software free (or libre) or anything of the sort. They just want to continue their lock-in, because that's how they make money. If everyone used ODF, they'd only need Microsoft Office if they actually wanted to (which many of us do not).
As in I am a VP and there is enough interest below to warrant seriously considering OpenOffice as a replacement for Microsoft Office. Right now there is buzz and a desire to move away from proprietary and expensive solutions given the cost cutting we want to do. If it can do the same job and is cheaper, why not. Hell I'm using it right now and it does everything I expect for a word proc/spreadsheet application.
The 'intarnets vise squad' is currently seeking a white male in connection with alleged violations of proper spelling.
The suspect is described as oveweight and pimply, with white wires hanging from his ears.
And I wouldn't call MS's claim that they'd have to open-source MS-Word to implement ODF FUD. It's an outright lie .
Even more than that, OpenOffice is LGPL, which means that a company could compile in proprietary extensions to OpenOffice, (like SUN does to make StarOffice), and not have to open-source their extensions -- an opportunity that a small company would never have with Microsoft Office.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Dropping thier price was how they got that monopoly in the first place. Word and Office took over from WP because they cost $99 while the competition cost $250. When they go back to $99, they'll just be going back to where they were. At that price, they'll still be making a profit, but only 25%, not 85%. Wall street will be upset. Nobody else outside the company will care.
but they have become so emotionally attached to Microsoft they see it as a personal affront that anyone would ever dare to not use the obvious choice of whatever the Microsoft solution is.
Maybe. My personal guess is that MSFT has made astoturfing in the web part of the job description.
Cheers,
I enjoyed the article, but I think I saw an error there. The article says:
At the moment, Sun's StarOffice suite and the open-source product OpenOffice.org--which is based on StarOffice--support the standard.
This used to be true on the first version of OpenOffice, after that, it's the other way around. StarOffice now takes a snapshot of OpenOffice, spices it up, and releases a new version of their software. I.e., StarOffice is now based on OpenOffice.
Cheers,
Sergio Sousa
The real question is, did the teacher say that the margins should be 1" in the assignment? Or was there a general rule at this school that governed the standard formatting conventions for all the classes? If so, then the student is at fault for not adjusting the margins according to the assignment. Otherwise, the teacher is at fault for failing to provide unambiguous instructions regarding the formatting of the paper. The GP's post did not say whether 1" margins were a known requirement; perhaps the teacher simply expected that the students would use Word, which (presumably) uses that margin setting by default.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The margins set properly to print in open office did not produce the same bottom margin in the Word 2000 in windows. The problem was not the user it was compatibility. And as a side note, the file displayed and printed correctly on my MAC's version of Office. The teacher didn't take already printed versions, he had to have them on a floppy. This was about 3 years ago, open office is heck of alot better now. The paper also was longer than required. This teacher was an idiot, (still is) he is just indicative of the larger problem. People assume a computer to be windows with microsoft software on it. And anything different from what the school, government etc. uses is not acceptable. I had a powerbook about 5 years ago, and a previous employer would not let me use it on the network. Because one MCSE, 6 month technical school idiot said it causes noise on "his" network.
I don't think that people do this over gasoline (well, somewhere, somebody probably does) but they sure do it over other products. There's the never-ending, epic battle between Ford and Chevy enthusiasts, for one. I've met photographers who were as zealous about Nikon camera equipment (and eager to convert everyone else) as any Mac or Windows user. (Not to mention Kodak film vs. Fuji...) Videographers go back and forth on whether Panasonic cameras are a better deal than Sony, or if the latter are worth the price. In most gun clubs or stores you can get a spirited argument going by suggesting that Smith and Wesson handguns are superior to Colt's. At a cooking school you could probably get your ear talked off as to whether German or French chefs knives are better, and within those which brands are best. I could go on and on.
The quick answer to your question is 'yes.' Whenever you get people who spend a large percentage of their life in one industry, they develop preferences that seem obsessively odd to outsiders. It is our own fixation on computers that makes us think that people aren't just like this about other things; but being a "geek" isn't restricted to computers, we just don't use that term for people whose interest goes towards other things.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I've told lots of people about how easy it would have been for me to write a little shell script to unzip each open document, do a search/replace on my employer's old and new name (this is at least the 3rd time it's changed since I came to work here in summer of '01) and zip the contents back up without ever launching an office app.
One of the big reasons that Google is behind OpenDocument is that they already have the largest HTML-producing server farm in the world. Those same servers can produce zipped XML with very little additional work. In fact, zipped XML should use less bandwidth than HTML does.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
You do know that pdf is open and implemented in lot's of different programs. You do NOT have to use any Adobe SW.
Help fight continental drift.
While 20 years ago Smith and Wesson was a topic of argument, most (but not all) of their former defenders feel betrayed. Most gun nuts, no matter what their preferred and hated brands are feel Smith and Wesson must die!
You better bet that RMS announced software patents were a good idea, it wouldn't just be the BSD camp that hates GNU, it would be most of slashdot.
It probably had to sent in on a disk.
---------- Open Source is capitalism applied to IP.
6+ hours? Is that all? For a mere ten years? Try 16 hours/day for your whole life! I use Emacs/vi - and love 'em both!!! For different reasons... - and wrote my own text editor once just for fun. That kinda happens when you know C, C++, Visual C++, BASIC, QBASIC, Visual Basic, Java, Perl, Python, eLisp, Common Lisp, Scheme, Tcl/Tk/Expect, DOS, Bash, POVray (my current workhorse - results posted daily in the blog in my sig), yada yada yada.
Yes, it's still trivial. See, people start out not knowing *any* text editor. Then they pick one up and learn it. Most people stop right there. They may try another one, but it isn't like theirs, so it's seen as "bad"...the user remembers an impression of the "foreign" editor's learning curve, forgetting that the learning curve for their first editor was just as steep...it just didn't seem that way at the time, because you approach your first model with a clean slate and no expectations. The negative impression is all that is retained, in most people.
Yeh, given proper motivation, I work with equal efficiency in many different editors for most tasks - in programming only, I choose Emacs, because it was nursed with the milk from the titty, and when I'm coding, I need my whole brain for coding and none for remembering the keymap/feature set for the current editor. That, and I can use my set of Lisp macros. Had I not discovered Emacs until after OpenOffice, Microsoft Office, Macintosh Write, Microsoft Wordpad, KDE kedit, Gnome gedit, or the others, 'twould not have been so. Such objectivity I take with me into all pursuits, and it meketh of me a pain in the ass.
(-:
I predict that MS will just fork OO.o and call it Microsoft Office.org change the splash screen to something microsoftie charge $300 for it and change the default file format to .doc and you know what? People would be stupid enough to buy it.
It was perfectly legible, it just didn't follow his written instructions, again he used a freaking ruler.
If this is the case it is so far away from open offices responsability, heck if it was an instruction set by the teacher and it wasnt followed there isnt anything that can be done. The teacher sounds like a dick for instantly failing the student that shows lack of patience and tollerence with students and he is just using his position to walk all over people, but again i fail to see how openoffice is responsible for this...
I'm not all that familiar with OpenDoc and don't much care about it. To me, it's just another 'proprietary' file structure accessible by weenies who understand where and what the proprietary bits are and how to use them. What I do know is that file structures in Office 12 are far more accessible to open access than any office-type suite ever constructed. How so? There is no proprietary code in the Office 12, it is all plain vanilla XML. Now who is most 'open'? Not OpenDoc, I think.
this is not only done at government (IT) departments, but also in a lot of corporations. well, i know they do it where i work, and i'm guessing we're not alone (oh, don't mind trying talking sense to them, most managers have lost the capability of logic thinking a long time ago).
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.