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MA Senator Decries OpenDocument Decision
An anonymous reader writes to mention a ZDNet article on Massachusetts senator Marc Pacheco's OpenDocument study. The report blasts the decision to switch to the OSS-friendly document format, saying the state's IT division didn't have the authority to make that decision and has disregarded the needs of disabled citizens. From the article: "'The process, quite frankly, was driven by one individual in a very powerful position (Kriss) issuing a memo to an individual in a less powerful position (Quinn). Then he was told to get it done and forget about any obstacles,' Pacheco said. Although OpenDocument is not yet widely used, other government entities, including Belgium, have expressed interest in OpenDocument as a standard as well."
Bet you'll see a contribution from the industry, perhaps laundered through an astroturf organization of some kind. Or maybe they've gone back to the old fashioned envelopes full of $100 bills.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
You are absolutely correct that the Senator is talking about a red herring.
You can also argue with him, claiming that those who cannot afford the money to purchase either OSX or Windows and a copy of MS Office are effectively 'disabled' and incapable of composing compatible documents.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Question: Did microsoft contribute money to those that did not oppose the plan also?
Further, why shouldn't someone contribute to those legislators that agree with your position> That's how all campaign finance works. You support those you agree with, either financially or with voting or both.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Come on! Give the guy a break. He's a politian who actually got an issue related to technology correct. Thats something you don't see every day! Sure his terminology was a little off, but I'm sure most of the /. crowd could easily mess up political terminology like contribution, kick-back, bribe, soft money, etc. We cannnot all be experts in everything. I at least have to give him credit for this issue with the change being correct (at least for now) even if he did make a small slip in terminology which I've even seen made here.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Marc didn't give a crap till MS made it worth his time with a couple mil in free licenses.
Seems to me that Senator Pacheco wanted to make the decision himself -- just in the opposite direction!
And this whole more powerful/less powerful discussion sounds like an overdose of Politically Correct thinking, which makes him a danger as anybody's senator.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Actually - the proposal that included moving to ODF as the official format also included continued use of MS Office as required until a full migration could be made for everyone. That is, assuming Microsoft insisted in to providing a method for MS Office to use ODF. Which, honestly, is a funny thing to do when a major customer has a set requirement. Zealotry, indeed.
You're right - that would be ridiculous. Since the OpenDocument Foundation released an OpenDocument plugin for Word, at least Massachusetts won't have to deal with any bizarre scenarios like that with their word processing.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Without a doubt Microsoft is a for-profit company, good or evil being the decision of the individual consumer.
Is Microsoft Office (to include its file formats) an open standard. No, however they are a 'de facto standard'.
ODF while an open standard, true will gain more users overtime, but to simply dismiss proprietory software companies
simply because they won't 'open' their standards is foolish. The question of how Microsoft gained their 'de facto' standard,
I'll leave to others, I simply look at it like this, their software works, I've never had a problem getting other document formats
to work in Word or any other MS application, (or for that matter any of their applications / operating systems). Some people do have
issues with them, true, I've fixed / patched enough computers with their software to know that. I'll even be so bold to say a lot of the
problems, are user generated, though some have been squarely on Microsoft's shoulders. Be that as it may, considering the investment (or
loss of investment) a lot of the Anything But Microsoft crowd is advocating is highly significant. Accepting open standards, just because
they are open, sometimes is not the best way to proceed (think of the too many chefs in the kitchen theory).
Not saying I'm right, but I am saying dismissing a Microsoft solution, just because its Microsoft sometimes is kinda stupid I think.
Regards,
MBC1977,
(US Marine, College Student, and Good Guy!)
Regards,
MBC1977,
Here is the MS list of accessibility features in Word. Which of these are not available in OO?