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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."
Wow, the first time in a long time that a politician has done something that made me happy. I think I would vote for this guy for president, just based on this alone.
What does it say about him? He isn't blinded by special interests. He is not swayed by all the bad press and slander microsoft can pull off. He has enough moral backbone to make a stand, even in something relatively minor like this. In a political environment where any lobbyist with enough dough can get a law, that means a lot.
Qxe4
Poor me, living here in Virginia, where I don't necessarially have access to the algorithms used to encode state documents, even though all commercial algorithms can handle it.
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, and this is certainly important. 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? And there will always be people implementing decoders on their own, for either standard. It just feels like we have bigger problems; it's good OSS PR, but not a huge deal. Though of course, I could be wrong.
And on a side note, Romney's presidental prospects are dismal. As a Virginian, let me warn you all about Mark Warner. He's gonna sweep y'all away. Romney, with this, is setting himself up as a pro-tech president. But I was working on a VR project at the NASA research center down here, and in one demonstration at the Southern Governor's Conference, Governor Warner tried out the equipment. He looked around in the simulator for a while, then took off the glasses and started asking some incredibly hard-hitting technical questions about the engineering behind the system. He really knows his stuff. So he's a moderate and charismatic southern Democrat with a strong fiscal record, and definitely strong on the technology front. I'd like to see Hillary run myself, but I think Warner's gonna take the nomination. And Romney doesn't have a chance.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
You have no idea what this is about do you?
.doc format. And not even that is complitely true, because of different versions. MS locks it's formats to it products and with it the user. Have to write a .doc document? Yes, OpenOffice can write one too, but it's not 100% compatible and might fuck up. Now if MS would open the specs that would be different, but knowing MS they'd do that only if they were made to do it and even than they'd probably give old specs (like in the EU incident)...
Only MS's office is 100% compatible with MS
Now odf is all about free market and competition. You want a very good word processing program and have money? Suite x is for you! 100% compatible with odf format. Looking for something cheaper? How about Suite y? 100% compatible with odf. Not good enough to meet your needs? Than consider Suite z... 100% compatible with odf. Get the point? More competition = more choice = better products.
And I bet you use a pirate copy of MS office...