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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."
You are witnessing ignorance when someone claims a format is insufficient because a suite of applications supports more functionality.
The real irony is that someone will probably write a plug-in for MS products to use OpenDocument anyway.
Microsoft's eager to offer plug-ins for nearly any other proprietary file format. It just seems that the second someone tries to give something they worked on away for free, Microsoft starts criticizing it as being too slow for the user.
And what's wrong with that? Happens all the time. You put a person in a powerful position and they make executive decisions. They are busy so they delegate it to someone else. I'm waiting for the reason that this was a bad move. Do you expect a board to discuss and delegate on every issue down to what file format is used by the government? Do you want the process to require that much time and resource?
Nobody's crapping bricks when the sewage administrator is mandating standardized units being used on reports for the city's waterways and sewers now, are they? Won't somebody please think about the vertically disabled people that like to report their height in centimeters, not inches so that it's a larger number and they feel taller?
<sarcasm>My god, the state's IT Division is trying to advise the state government on what file format to adopt. What is this world coming to?</sarcasm>
After delivering his speech, John Winske shook hands with Steve Ballmer & was seen struggling to drag away a visibly overladened burlap sack with a giant green '$' on the front of it.
My work here is dung.
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.
Microsoft Office has built-in help for people with disabilities, such as voice synthesizers, special screen readers and enlargers, Winske said. But he said OpenDocument-based products do not yet.
... but when it does ... it will be standardized ... reusable ... and in the long run more useful than the crap MSFT slapped together.
Keyword being yet
Campaign finance records show that those state officials who most vocally opposed the plan received campaign contributions from Microsoft lobbyists. For instance, state Sen. Marc Pacheco, who held hearings on the move to OpenDocument Format at which he voiced opposition to the plan, received $600 in campaign contributions from Microsoft lobbyists over the past three years.
? action=print
-- http://www.cio.com/archive/040106/opensource.html
Sure, $600 is only a token, but its the thought that counts.
My apologies for copying ideas of another poster I've seen post on this subject before, but here it goes. When it comes to reading computer file formats we are all disabled. No human can easily read a computer file format. That's why formats with actual standards are so important. So that we can all have equal access to the information stored within those files. Sure there may not be screen readers available right now, but if there is a market for them (and there is), then they will come. Especially if these formats come into wide use. Also, these accessibility tools will be much better because they know how to read the format. They don't have to struggle through and hack like crazy, just to make them work. They could even make an entire word processor specifically for the disabled, made to work with the abilities they have. A blind person doesn't need an interface like everyone else does. They need a completely different tool to compose documents than the rest of us. A standard format would make these tools easier to develop.
Another note. I thought screen readers just read the text on your screen, regardless of what program is displaying them. I guess I was wrong about this, since Accessibility seems to be a big issue.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The process... was driven by one individual in a very powerful position (Kriss) issuing a memo to an individual in a less powerful position (Quinn).
Um, isn't that how everything gets done? A superior instructs a person lower-down on the totem pole to complete a task? In theory the person in the "very powerful position" is the person with the authority to make such decisions. So... what's the problem?
Developers: We can use your help.
Not only should we select a document format that supports speech, but that should be embedded into the file format as a wav. I think that this will make it easier for applications to play it for the user.
Also embedded in the document will be a massive bitmap containing high resolution images with enlarged fonts for our users hard of sight.
We're not sure, either, if the people will all have the same true type font so we'll go ahead and embed that in the file too. Wait, better include the codecs for the image and sound snippets. Oh, and I guess we can't be sure the viewer can read them so we'll include the viewer too.
My, oh my, this is much better than the crappy OpenDocument format I used in my prior ideology.
I just opened up MS Word and typed "Hello World!" and saved it to my desktop. 24,064 bytes. Why? What in God's name is that bloated app bloating in it's bloated files?
Arguing for MS Office is not a "valid bitch."
My work here is dung.
you gotta be kidding, there's all kinds of problems reading across word processors, at my company we get plenty of unreadable documents from our government clients using Wordperfect and other non-MS stuff. We've had to install old versions of other software just to cut and paste. For legal documents, this is not acceptable, an open document specification is long overdue.
So because OpenDocument can't help everyone, it shouldn't help anyone? What kind of moronic politician -- sorry, I repeat myself -- thinks this is an intelligent decision?
You know, Boston's "Big Dig" doesn't do me a bit of good here in the West, so why the hell should I pay for it? Oh yeah, I forgot, government is supposed to reflect the will of the majority, not just the vocal minority. We all make sacrifices -- and in this case, a very small one -- for the good of society as a whole.
Pacheo has been on the wrong side of this for a while. I guess he figured it was time for another headline.
-- Alastair
saying the state's IT division didn't have the authority to make that decision and has disregarded the needs of disabled citizens.
How about poor citizens who can't afford the Microsoft Tax?
Marc Pacheco used to be my Senator when I lived in MA. I didn't like him. He was entirely dismissive when we disagreed with him about a proposal to allow more dirt bikes in the state forest (he was ferit, we were aginit).
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
To say that Opensource programs don't offer benefits to handicapped people -- a group who continuously gets short shrift when it comes to state and government budgeting -- is a little ironic.
Why not transfer the cost savings of switching from MS Office to OO.org to a budget for handicapped services. I'm sure the handicapped population would be more than happy with that.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
As an employee of a state's executive branch, I can assure you that for us, cost is far and away the most important aspect in making any sort of A vs B comparison. Our entire system is driven by the lowest bidder. (And if you save $50 on something you don't care about, that means you get to spend $50 extra on something you do. Governors are very, VERY specific as to what they do and don't care about.)
And ODF = free.
In fact, I'm fairly certain that if Massachusetts wanted to hire 5-10 developers to create a program to deal with ODFs in a disability-accessible manner, it still wouldn't cost as much as using proprietary software.
Marc didn't give a crap till MS made it worth his time with a couple mil in free licenses.
By searching google: http://www.followthemoney.org/database/StateGlance /candidate.phtml?si=200419&c=410033
Looks like most of his money came from unions.
"Massachusetts Senator" == (Edward "Ted" Kennedy || John Kerry)
Marc Pacheco is a "Massachusetts State Senator", i.e. one of 40 members of the upper house of the bicameral Massachusetts state legislature.
Big difference.
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."
Besides this guy's confusion of data format versus application as others have mentioned, why does he think that all disabled people (and abled people for that matter) have $399USD kicking around for a copy of Microsoft Office? Bizarre.
You're confusing the document format with one of the many applications that can read/write that format. The state mandate was for Open Document. You're complaining that Open Office - one of 15 applications that can read/write Open Document - is inferior to Microsoft Office.
Microsoft could quite easily write a plugin to read/write Open Document. Microsoft Office already support dozens of other formats of dubious quality and relevance. Open Document is clearly relevant and IMO of very high quality. Why is Open Document such a problem for Microsoft? I think I know why. Do you?
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?
You've hit on exactly the problems that ofice suites like OpenOffice.org and KOffice, etc. run into when trying to import or export Word files. You're right that there's nothing stopping anyone from supporting one format or another... However, as an example, Microsoft changes the format of Word files with every version of Office, adding and removing features and changing the binary signature of the file. This requires more effort spent at every new release, reverse-engineering the file format and hopefully finding that one critical detail that defines this text is bold.
Microsoft has come out with an "open standard". OpenXML. They're pushing it through ECMA with the hope that it will become an ISO standard. They were a bit slow in the motions, as OpenDocument has already become an ISO standard: ISO/IED 26300.
The problem is that Microsoft's definition for their XML document standard is so complex and over-engineered, and its licensing so damn confusing, that it's impossible to know whether your implementation of an OpenXML reader or writer is actually legal. The license requires that the implementation be complete, and the definition for that term is so vague as to make it unclear if a conforming implementation will even work along side Microsoft's Word.
On the other hand, OpenDocument is clear enough that it's easy to see whether a conforming implementation is complete, as it's guaranteed to be compatible with any other implementation.
And Microsoft has stated that they will not implement or distribute an ODF plugin for Word. Ever.
Wrong. Settling on one standard ensures total compatiblility across all platforms and in all circumstances. This means that one computer in a Mac OS X office will be able to exchange documents seamlessly with a Linux computer in another office and those two legacy Windows boxes in another. Seamlessly being the key word.
Because Microsoft has comitted to not supporting ODF, this creates a bit of friction in that suddenly there is guaranteed incompatibility between Microsoft's Word and any other office suite that supp
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Since when did Belgium lose it's status as a sovereign state?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
... and although my own disability doesn't restrict my computer use in any way, I still find this kind of ideological abuse totally disgusting. Open standards are, in the end, beneficial for access by everybody using any chosen access means. This includes not only the disabled, but everyone else as well. It is immaterial that things like screen readers may not exist yet.. they can be produced, and will be, if the specs are available. Anybody with even slight programming experience will know that in this case existing software is probably easy to modify to just read the new format into the program's internal representation. Contrast this with whatever limited access proprietary formats' owners choose to grant -- and to whom -- in order to look good.
Not to mention these same guys at this end of the political spectrum in general typically won't give a shit about disabled people's rights in anything, as mostly, we're just "bad for the economy". Apparently we can still be "useful" in some situations.
They should just speak for themselves and not get all caring and compassionate all of a sudden when it serves their own interest.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
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,
the version of xml being called odf is only a means of saving a document, presumably the original. how many times has microsoft made changes to word that made documents generated by older versions unreadable? so the solution is fairly obvious; save the doc in odf, and when a copy with more features is needed/wanted, simply use the office suite to add them. access for the blind/handicapped exists for even plain text, so that's a bullshit argument.
anyway, microsoft can add that format option easily from the published specs, they are only dragging their feet because they want to get paid for holding information hostage.
anti-odf people are not helping anyone, not even themselves.