Slashdot Mirror
Texas Bill For Open Documents
Ditesh Kumar tips us to a blog entry by Sam Hiser noting a bill filed in Texas that would require state agencies to conduct their work in an open document format. After Microsoft's grueling battle against ODF in Massachusetts, bluest of blue states, it must be galling to face te same fight in the reddest of the red. Hiser notes that the bill includes a rigorous and sound definition of an open document format, which ODF would meet but Microsoft's current OOXML submission would not.
Come by Austin sometime. We're a pocket of blue in a red state. Sort of like West Berlin during the Cold War. Lots of bikers trying to save the Earth getting run over by Republicans and their lobbyists en route to the Capitol or their posh homes in hill country.
But seriously, our state legislature can easily be depicted as a herd of clowns riding a fire truck. And anyone who thinks that our office of Governor gives someone the experience needed for higher office is just clueless. It's really just a figurehead position. G. W. Bush usually spent his days as governor playing video games or on vacation. Much like now.
Keep Austin Weird!
Well, I'm not a Texan, but since it's a bill in the Texas state Senate, I figure you probably ought to contact your state Senator.
Also, since it's going to have to get out of committee before anyone else sees it (unless your state government is unusual), you could contact the other Senators who make up whichever committee it goes into -- which, based on a 10-second scan of the list of committees, I'm guessing is this one. But I could be wrong.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Unfortunately, it's in the form of a recommendation, but it's better than nothing. In a nutshell, it directs Texas state agencies and higher education institutions to consider OSS for all IT procurements. I believe it was originally the brainchild of a Dallas-area senator named John Corona.
I referenced it quite often while pushing for OSS-based IT implementation at the college I was teaching at...most administrators were ignorant that this even existed.
Microsoft went for ISO fast-track approval which allows only one month for dissenting countries to speak out (and with 6000 pages in the spec it's not enough time -- there hasn't been any public standardisation prior to this fast track as is normal with fast-tracked standards).
Anyway, as I understand it there only needs to be one single vote against in order to force a fast-tracked proposal down the long and arduous path of open evaluation, analysis, and justification. Canada and Britain have voted against Microsoft. Thanks Canada, thanks Britain!
OOXML is now considerably more shakey with governments around the world, and other countries, like Texas.
-- Matt Carter
It may be Texas, but the bill was filed by Rubén Hinojosa, a Democrat representative from the U.S. House. They'll shoot it down.
...and that's why George Washington said to stay far away from political parties. I love how well America listened.
Okay, then I will instead:
OpenXML doesn't meet the criteria because parts of it are patented. Besides, even if it weren't patented parts of the "standard" essentially say "re-implement the behavior of Word" which, for obvious reasons, is entirely unreasonable and should also disqualify it.
If this post above yours is accurate, no it won't.
No, you're wrong. Patents qualify as restrictions.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I am currently working for the Queensland Department of Education, we are working on implementing a whole of government initiative to move all documents and standards to PDF. I have no news sites to quote or anything of the sort. There is a group called CorpTech that are pushing this initiative. It is a project that is due for completion this year.
- paul
http://www.paulpichugin.com.au/
Pmp @ DeviantArt
The Republican Party (note: not just Bush) currently favors the interests of large corporations. Texas is controlled by Republicans. Microsoft is a large corporation. Therefore, Texas supports MS.
Maybe it's not that cut-and-dried, but that's the logical train of thought that would cause people to reasonably assume such.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
At the Congressional Internet Caucus last week there was a group from tux.org (affiliation of LUGs) with a table demonstrating how thanks to open standards like for the web, Linux, Mac, and Windows computers can all communicate just fine. They were there to push for open standards. I hung out with them for a lot of it (though the digitalfreedom.org people were cool too), and there were a lot of people from the Senate asking about why open standards are important (though it WAS in the Hart Building). There were also quite a few people asking about Linux in education, ease of use for students, what to do for commercial support, etc.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
Say what you will about the political climate here(very red) but a lot of stuff is online and sped up by computers. Last year when I incorporated I used the online website, paid the $300 fee with my debit card, and the paperwork was done and I was sent everything with the seal and all the appropriate numbers within two hours via e-mail in PDF format, completely official and everything. Paying corp taxes couldn't be easier(few that there be), ditto with unemployment. If I have to do anything that affects my corp, pretty much everything is online and an option to be filed. And it's all done by the state.
Getting my federal EIN meant going through a third party company, paying a fee(only $20, so I figured might as well instead of waiting for the feds to get it to me in a few weeks by doing it on paper). It works really well. I renew my drivers license online(every other renewal only, gotta get new pics at some point) and my vehicle registration is always done online. In terms of computing it's a very progressive state. Much of it is very basic HTML so it works in whatever browser you use it with.
That story along with the study is a little misleading. If you look past the sensationalism and to the meat of it, you will quickly find that the intercultural Development Research Association is only concerned with students who recieve a diploma in public schools and compare that to enrolment from a previous set of years back to 8th or 9th grade. On the surface, this looks sound but it doesn't count the students who leave the state and finish school somewhere else nor does it count the student who leave the public school system and enter a private or charter school.
In fact, the organization apears to be centered around develpoing way to keep kids in public schools so leaving the student who recieve a diploma from private or home schooling seems to be on purpose. You can find out all about the study and the details from thier website and all you need to do is google fo it. It will be one of the first results. They don't try to hide the fact they are doing this. But they don't neccesarily advertise it either.
Now, I'm not going to say that there isn't a drop out problem because I really have no way of knowing how many student went to home schooling, charter schools, private schools in general or even out of state to finish schooling and recieve their diplomas. I tried searching for the number to see how they compared to public school and they apear to be tracked and reported differently. To skip the details about all the different numbers, I did find a site which seems to include most of the alternative schools wich shows to be about 17% of the number of students attending traditional public schools.
And we might ask why this is important. Well, if the obscenly large number of drop outs don't include the alternative schooled kids, then the numbers aren't as bad as they seem (might still be bad though). And this information is most interesting considering that in texas, there has been a grass roots movment for private, charter, and alternative schools as well as vouchers to help student who wouldn't neccesarily afford them attend. In 95, a law was passed setting the stage for an explosion in charter schools and home schoolong. In 96, houstan set a program in place that allows student to tranfere to private non sectarien schools on the cities dime becuse it was cheaper then the fix for the overcrowdingof the schools. In 97, th charter schools laws were expanded to enlarge the cap allowing more to be dommisioned. It took the cap away for districs marked as at risk. In 98, it is reported that the school vouchers idea had at least 54% of the public supporting them. In 1998, the Texas CEO Foundation who had been providing scholorships for private schooling since 92, has made a scholarship available to every low-income child in the predominantly Hispanic Edgewood Independent School District to attend a school of choice. And finaly, although the vouchers never recieved finding by the state, A number of private organizations have step forward with scholorships to students wishing to leave the public school system.
I'm sure this didn't just pop up over night either. It is something that has been building momentum for quite a while. This could account for some of the missing students in public education that are considered dropouts. This could also be a key reason why the article you refrenced stated that the study showed the drop out rate as beinghigher then the stats reported dropout rate. The article claims The statewide dropout rate is about 33 percent -- or 20 points higher than what the Texas Education Agency reports. , the numbers I found of students who are in private schooling are 241,674 in 2003 were the public schools are 4,259,823. And that seems to be around 17% or so percent. And a larger portion of the target audience for the scholorships seem to be minorities which reflect the drop out rates too.
The resulting rates after taking these into account might still be alarming. But it definatly isn't as bad as it first apears.
The author made a mistake, which has been corrected. The bill was submitted by Juan Hinojosa, State Senator from District 20
"Microsoft's covenant not to sue means that you can use all of those patents freely in any way without any restrictions and it also means that no other company can go ahead, patent the same stuff and make you pay for it. What do you want more?"
Microsoft's covenant not to sue applies to the OOXML specification, in and of itself.
There is no such covenant from Microsoft for Microsoft-proprietary components that teh OOXML specification invokes: such as WMF format for graphics, or ActiveX, or Visual Basic, and so on.
Therefore, no-one can implement an application to handle OOXML documents and all that they may contain without violating Microsoft proprietary formats for which Microsoft have not offered any covenant.
I am writing to ask that you will vote in favor of bill (SB 446), introduced by Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, which would require all electronic state documents to be stored in a format described by an open standard
As an IT professional, document formats play an important role in my work (and, consequently, my contribution to the Texas economy). Open standards and open formats ensure that critical information will always be available to citizens, but they also make it possible for government operations to be more efficient. When government functions are not tied in to closed formats and specific applications, competition for the government's IT contracts is freer.
Additionally, open formats make it possible for government to use local contractors, so that monies spent on IT go back into the Texas economy instead of to an external vendor.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love