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."

Comments

Hooray!!

[phantomfive]

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.

Re:Hooray!!

[NickFortune]

Not to be cynical, just don't give you hopes up.

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...

Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no idea what this is about do you?

Only MS's office is 100% compatible with MS .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)...

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...

Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate

[AnotherDaveB]

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.

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.

Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate

[myxiplx]

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.

Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate

[Yaztromo]

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?

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.

Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate

[voidphoenix]

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.

Romney, Massachusetts and ODF

[SkyDude]

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.