Trimarco Confirms Mass. ODF Support

Andy Updegrove writes "After Peter Quinn resigned, only two brief statements -- both from spokesman for Governor and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney -- were made to the press regarding whether Quinn's OpenDocument format policy would survive. Both were vague, and both spoke only of the "rules not changing", leaving ODF supporters worried that ODF would be swapped out for Microsoft's XML Reference Schema, even before its expected approval by Ecma. But today, in a private meeting with ITD General Counsel Linda Hamel, Secretary of Administration and Finance Thomas Trimarco assured her that Peter Quinn's departure "will result in no change to the Administration's position on the ODF standard." Trimarco is the public official that will supervise whoever Quinn's replacement will be until after the deadline for the new Massachusetts' policy is to become effective."

Comments

Govt Is The Place It Should Start

[oirtemed]

While I know that it is unreasonable to expect companies or even individuals to actively persue open formats, I feel that it should definitely be considered in the best interest of the people for governments at all levels to make such efforts. People comparing this situation to defense contracting or the use of other closed products are making bad analogies. This is not like hiring a private contractor or purchasing a commercial product. This is more like making codes and regulations that can only be followed with the use of a certain company's product. This would be like if the electrical code said that you could only use wire from a special company or that it had to be assembled in a certain way that only said company has the information and patent for. I'm lost as to what grounds anyone could argue for closed formats anyway - any takers please fire away. There is nothing preventing MS from implementing these formats in Office - this seems to be a case where there is only one logically right option and those that try to push the closed format option look ridiculously silly.

Ummm..no..open formats are bad...because...ummm...just trust us...Office doesn't use them...and office is so popular so it must be ok!
I mean, seriously, what is the logic?

Re:Govt Is The Place It Should Start

[mattwarden]

If governments start to use ODF, MS Office will certainly support the format (either natively or via importing and exporting). It will have to or it will lose revenue. However, I'm sure MS will do what it almost always does with open formats, which is fsck it up just enough to make its output incompatible just enough with other readers to keep those readers from being valid replacements for Word.

Probably the easiest way to do this is to allow importing of an ODF document into native Word DOC format, and then exporting to ODF format. In this way, people will not be restricted to using only features which ODF supports while editing the file in Word. Then, when exporting, they will get a warning message about how features will be lost if they convert this file to ODF. All of a sudden their clip art is grayscale, their title is no longer in 3d and written on a curvature, meta information like comments and 'track changes' is lost or corrupt, etc.

Just enough of a nuisance to keep the status quo and get the user to send their version of the document in Word DOC format.

Re:Govt Is The Place It Should Start

[judabuddhist]

When I heard RMS speak earlier this year he mentioned that a lawmaker's support for open standards and non-proprietary stuff in government makes a good litmus test of their integrity. It's an issue that's pretty straightfoward, since no reasonable government should be locked into proprietary formats and whatnot, but your average Joe couldn't care less, and isn't going to be basing any votes on the subject. There's so much money being thrown around by software companies, and so little political incentive to resist, that it's a wonder any polititian would be on the side of free software. This is why the whole Massachusetts thing is so important, since it's very much an exception to the rule and could raise public aweness even if it's not entirely successful.

Re:Govt Is The Place It Should Start

[brw12]

New York City agreed to a proprietary, closed design for their bus/subway card, "MetroCard." Only the company that designed the card knows the information storage format (although hackers have deciphered some of the unencrypted information, like some users' social security numbers!)

The result? As the Village Voice revealed in several investigative pieces in 1997/8, The state (which administers the city's public transportation) is forced to pay an obscene $125,000 for each full-sized MetroCard vending machine they buy. They've lost millions of dollars (money which, for example, might have prevented the recent strike) just because they misunderstood the difference between "proprietary" and "secure."

What about 'em?

[Anonymous Coward]

Macros are scripts: they manipulate data in ways the data processing application wasn't originally designed to. Macros run within the context of said program, because you, as consumer-user, are not permitted to know either the structure of the data in memory or self-similarly, the layout of the data in the output and input files. Macros are a direct result of you not being allowed to know the secret sauce of the memory structures or file format.

Not so in the case of an Open Format. Both the input and output formats are fully known and so: one can write a program outside the context of the original data processing application in whatever language one chooses. There is zero need for macros when anyone with sufficient skills can write processes to evaluate input data and transform it to useful output data.

Oh, don't be naive

[btarval]

I'm sorry, but there's nothing good to see here. If Microsoft can get Peter Quinn to resign, what makes you think for a moment that "what makes sense" is going to happen? Do you really believe that what some State Official is saying right now is going to be what really happens?

Mr. Quinn resigned because he had "become a lightning rod", and that was getting in the way of his work. Anyone who fills his shoes is going to be a similar lightning rod, and that is one thing successful bureaucrats don't like being. Far more likely is that the next person will attempt compromise in order to smooth things over. And that compromise will end up being far more (if not completely) Microsoft centric, unless people stand up and make their voices heard.

This battle is far, far from over, despite what State Officials are now saying. It kind of reminds me of the claims made by Saddams' Minister of Information in the closing days of the Iraq invasion. Personally, I'll believe what I see when this battle has ended.

And IMHO, the odds went way up that closed formats are going to end up ruling here. What was indeed needed was a lightning rod. A pity that Mr. Quinn found the presure to be too onerous.