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Romney Continues ODF Support With New Appointee
Andy Updegrove writes "There is a major new development in the ongoing saga in Massachusetts over implementation of the OpenDocument Format (ODF). Governor Mitt Romney has named a permanent successor to former State CIO Peter Quinn, utilizing the entire press release announcing his appointment to underline the fact that the new CIO, Louis Gutierrez, would not only be charged with implementing the ODF policy, but that his past experience was uniquely suited to that task. Moreover, the press release goes out of its way to note that implementation of ODF is still on target for an effective date of January 1, 2007."
A headhunter in Boston sent me an email today. In the past Boston has not ranked terribly high on the list of places to which I would consider relocating. With the apparent commitment to ODF, I am taking today's email more seriously. Being able to interact with the state gov't using my primary workstation makes a difference.
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Wait and see -- if MA is *really* following the plan and using ODF exclusively say summer 2007, then you can celebrate. Up to then there's definitely going to be around a gazillion attempts to derail this.
A year to the actual implementation is a long time.
Not to be cynical, just don't give you hopes up. I'll celebrate when it is followed through on. Not a minute before.
For you and me, you're right, it doesn't make any difference. But for a company, buying a word processor that relies on a hack to read the accepted standard file format is not an attractive proposition, so they buy MS Word / Office which means that MS can raise the price of Word/Office and the competition have to lower the price of their offerings to compensate for the "hack" compatibility.
Sales droids at Sun, IBM et all must be over the moon. The ODF file format just became "the coming thing", "the future", "the smart choice". No longer the "brave choice", "trend setting choice". Nail biting in Redmond.
Massachusetts is a USD297billion economy with a population of 6.3 million people. Big deal.
But driving to NH to avoid the sales tax is illegal, mind you. Remember to file your Use Tax for any purchases made OUTSIDE MA, but used in MA.
I for one can't wait to get out of this state. Having my car's suspension system depreciate daily because of the crap roads and the outrageous rent ($1600/mo + parking) to live in Boston doesn't really cut it despite the warm fuzzy feeling I get from the state-supported ODF.
Parent has not read GP post...
Arghhh!! How many times do we need to point this out. You may not feel like there's a problem with compatibility but for a government department who want to *guarantee* accessibility of documents, the MS formats are not currently suitable.
You say anyone who wants to write a good WP package will be decoding word. Sure, many programs do this, but they've all had to reverse engineer the format. This means they cannot guarantee that they're importing the document correctly. MA correctly take the view that they cannot afford to be giving out documents for the next 100 years that *may* be correct, they need to be sure.
That is why MA are insisting on an open spec. They're not anti-MS by any means, they are just clearly defining their requirements and inviting companies to demonstrate how they can meet them. That's a normal tender process. The fact is that MS don't like having to make their programs suit the needs of the customer, they'd rather the customer changed their requirements to suit MS.
This is not a MS / Open Source issue, it's a question of whether there's an open public standard for saving and reading documents. MS have options of making their formats public, or of making their software compatible with a public standard. Neither of these are things MS are keen on doing since they both open them up to competition, but both are quite possible.
PS. I'm not anti-MS, in fact I'm very Pro-MS. I run a domain of 100+ computers and 11 servers, all running MS software, and I wouldn't want it any other way. I think some of the work MS are doing is superb and I'm waiting for their next generation operating systems with baited breath. But despite all that, I can see the sense in the decision MA are making.
Current non-MS word processors already have a hard enough time implementing Word 97 import, particularly for any really complex documents. Why should time make it any better?
Let's look back to the most popular word processors from ~20 years ago: WordStar. According to Microsoft, Word can only import version 3.0 and higher. OpenOffice appears to have no support at all (that I can find). Nor does Apple's Pages. So if you come across a WordStar v1.0 or v2.0 document, you're SOL -- and that's after not even half the 50 year figure you quote.
How about WordPerfect? From the same reference, Word can import WP v4 and higher documents. So anything created in WordPerfect v2.2 (from 1982) or v3.0 (from 1983) is likewise not importable. Again, I haven't found anything about WordPerfect v2.2 or v3.0 support in OpenOffice (it does support WordPerfect import, but I can't find what versions this includes), or in Pages.
And that's just the two most popular PC-DOS packages from the 1980's, and doesn't include documents generated for other systems (like the Commodore 64 -- Paperback Writer anyone?), or from dedicated wordprocessing terminals.
And it gets better. Check out the entry in the above link for Word 6 and Word 95 support -- not even MS Office supports importing these anymore ("Retired - no longer available"). Word 95 isn't even 10 years old. And what about Microsoft Works format? Nada.
If you think that in 2056 you'll still be able to import Word 97 documents in popular word processing applications, you're living in a fantasy world. It's not going to happen. Will they be able to read ODF? Perhaps not -- however if necessary someone could write whatever sort of importer or converter they want, as the official recipe for such documents will still be around.
Less than two hundred years ago, Egyptian Hieroglyphs were virtually unreadable. It took the finding of the Rosetta Stone to make it understandable again. ODF is the Rosetta stone we get to leave for future generations. We already have unreadable document formats, and we're not even 30 years into the Personal Computer revolution. Thinking that we're going to be able to read modern day Word documents 50 years from now is overly idealistic, and seems highly improbable.
Yaz.
But the major M$ formats have stabilized in the last half-decade or so, and we're not gonna see decoders for them disappearing anytime in the foreseeable future. Everyone who wants to write a good word-processing package is going to be decoding Word 97+ for the next 50 years at least, and most importantly, when they stop including that compatibility, why should we think they'd be including compatibility for a similar standard?
Visual Studio 2005 format is incompatible with 2003. It doesn't even seem to have an export function. That's just a 2 year separation. Do you really think Microsoft formats will remain stable for 50 years?
It's precisely because you have to decode -- reverse engineer -- M$ formats that the push to ODF is being made. At the very least, it's a major reason. ODF is a public standard. If we need to read 50 year old docs in 2056, the worst case is we write a new reader, but the format spec will still be available.
Excuse me, wtf r u doin?
and if something delays or complicates the process, the whole world will hear about it.
if groups in the MA govt. start complaining that they are losing documents, having problems with maintaining multiple versions of the documents, etc.,
then this effort will be known as the biggest boondogle in history.
and anybody who recommends this path in the future will be sharply reminded of this failure.
i give the initiative about a 1 in 20 change of success.
Well, it's not quite that bad from an archaeological point of view: many word processor files contain text encoded in a standard character set in roughly the order it should be read - the text just has extraneous mark-up. I'm sure future civilisations can do without knowing exactly which bits of the text were originally rendered in Comic Sans. From a legal and administrative point of view, though, it's worse - you'll need an accurate and reproducible record of the contracts you've made for the lifetime of those contracts and any liability arising from them. I wouldn't want to find myself in court arguing about who had to pay for the consequences of a collapsed bridge on the basis of "the most likely reconstruction of the original contract we can come up with"... Or indeed the blueprints, which are another aspect of the same problem.
I'll grant that your cynicsm, in the general case at least, is well founded. However I don't think a quick chorus of "three cheers for governor romney" is entirely uncalled for.
We're quick enough to complain when Orrin Hatch proposes a mandatory death penal for whistling the latest Britney Spears, or somesuch abomination. Should we not also encourage the rare individual who does something right?
You never know, if politicans get to thinking there's votes to be had, it might just catch on...
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
The reason that Massachusetts has insisted on a Free and open document format is not just because other software isn't 100% Word-compatible. Another big reason is people who -- for one reason or another -- can't use Word. For example, blind people. Screen readers for Office uniformly suck, partly because they have to hack Office and reverse-engineer the Word format to work (just like OpenOffice). ODF's free spec will allow people to build screen readers that actually work properly.
And yes, this is important -- it's the government we're talking about, so using Word effectively disenfranchises people and turns them into second-class citizens. That's just not acceptable.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
While what you say may be true for your typical inter-office memo, it may not be true for complex documents.
.doc file, it doesn't usually screw up on which bits have what fonts. It does tend to screw up on things like pagination and placing text boxes or images correctly. This could result in reference figures being put with the wrong text for example, or in pieces of text being transported to the wrong parts of a document. This not only obfuscates the original document's meaning, it may actuall alter it. I've actually seen this happen when working with other people who had different versions of Word, when preparing proposals that had to be submitted in .doc format. Nothing like staring down a deadline and finding that your proposal has been thrown into a cuisinart and randomly pasted back together.
When Word reads and old
There's a reason universities require that theses be submitted in LaTex.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Mitt Romney, as governor of my home state, has been somewhat ineffective as governor, only because Massachusetts is about 80% has a union-funded Democrat state legislature. He is, however, a savvy and smart businessman who has surrounded himself with some very smart people. He may not be a techie, but he has received good advice from his staff about ODF. Any good business person should know the pitfalls of a single supplier of anything. It's good business and hopefully, more states will adopt the standard. Most already use PDFs for downloadable documents, and, while not quite open source, at least there are a few other applications that can create and open PDFs.
For those who think living here might be close to nirvana, keep in mind housing costs. It's true, the taxes here have been brought somewhat under control, but they are by no means low. The town next to where I live has a property tax nearly double what I pay, and they are still struggling financially. The cost of a basic 2- or 3- bedroom house, anywhere inside the Interstate 95 (Route 128) beltway is staggeringly high. The lowest price is around $350K, where the hight end is nearing $1MM! And, if you want to live in anything bigger or newer, expect prices in the high $500s to $800s; in a few places, over $1MM.
Massachusetts has a lot to offer in terms of history, geography and business, but my wife and I agree, that when our kids have completed school, we're outta here. The politics of this state are an embarrassment. Remember, it's the two Ks that represent us in the Senate - Kennedy and Kerry. The Mass congressional delegation is a collection of clowns and the state politics are rife with corruption and cronyism. I'm not sure where we'll go, but almost anyplace with a two party system would be better.
I'd like to see Mitt make it to the White House, but he has a tough road. It's not unlikely that he'll accept the VP nod if the 2008 Republican candidate is someone like himself.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
I agree that current screen readers suck, but it is not because they have to reverse-engineer a proprietary format. Freedom Scientific, the largest maker of Screen Readers in the world, is a close Microsoft partner and has full access to the Microsoft Windows and Word specs to develop their product. Screen readers suck because turning a 2-dimensional graphic interface into 1-dimensional speech is practically impossible, not because the document structure is proprietary.
ODF's free spec will allow people to build screen readers that actually work properly.
I believe it may be possible to build a better screen reader with ODF, but where is it? Where is the robust screen reader for ODF? Saying that something may be better than the Microsoft solution some day is no different than the vapor-ware claims that Microsoft makes all the time. Bad as it is, at least Word has a screen reader right now, ODF doesn't.
If you think you can build a better screen reader, then do it. The ODF specs are fully available, and Blind people the world over will thank you. But the problem with screen readers is not the availability of specs. The problem is it is impossible to squeeze two dimensions into one.
Well, so far, most Microsoft supporters (mostly programmers, users, etc.,) I've met don't actually -pay- for Microsoft software (well, besides getting a Dell system that bundles Windows).
One way or another, nearly -everyone- of the Windows users I know, still somehow manages to run MS Office, Visual Studio, Photoshop, etc.
On the other hand, the government -does- pay for software; with our freaking tax dollars!
Now, how would folk's support for MS Office change if they had to pay for it (or even realized that a good chunk of their local gov taxes (city/state) goes to installing Windows and MS Office on all the gov workstations?). I'd imagine most wouldn't fork over $400 per copy every few years and would seek alternatives.
this is why the MA initiative makes sense.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
I'd say the fact that Microsoft is pouring a lot of money and effort into stopping this proves that they think it's a huge deal. They've spared no effort, from heavy lobbying of politicians, to generating a smear campaign via the Boston Globe, to get this stopped. Is there anything which they haven't done?
They well realize that once one state falls, others will go along. And they will start to lose their exclusive vendor tie-in for their core Office business.
I salute Governor Romney and his efforts here. May this new CIO continue this effort, and not end up side-tracking it.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
It would seem like a bigger deal if there were a serious problem with document compatibility, but it doesn't feel to me like there is. The main reason given for the ODF switch is to ensure that documents will be readable indefinitely
No.
The primary immediate and future reason for the switch to ODF is to be able to find pertinent documents in the archives using search techniques that are thorough and efficient. The archives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are not static things: there is a constant need to refer to old legislation, case law, and agency policies and procedures when evaluating new situations or considering policy or procedure changes. A deliberately obfuscated and proprietary set of formats like the Word .doc formats do not serve this function well, especially when the owner of the formats insists that they remain black boxes. An open format like ODF will allow MA state agencies, and people who have to deal with MA state agencies, to develop efficient and thorough search techniques with tools that already exist. Such as Perl, Python, etc.
Going to ODF will result in an immediate decrease in the costs of accessing the MA archives when you don't know exactly which documents are pertinent to your current need. That is a savings for MA government, and also for every citizen or business that needs to deal with MA.
Who actually needs embedded video in their document?
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?