California Joins Open Document Bandwagon

Andy Updegrove writes "A legislator in California has decided that it's time for California to get on the open formats bandwagon. If all of the bills filed in the last few weeks pass, California, Texas, and Minnesota will all require, in near-identical language, that 'all documents, including, but not limited to, text, spreadsheets, and presentations, produced by any state agency shall be created, exchanged, and preserved in an open extensible markup language-based, XML-based file format.' What type of formats will qualify? Again, the language is very uniform (the following is from the California statute): 'When deciding how to implement this section, the department in its evaluation of open, XML-based file formats shall consider all of the following features: (1) Interoperable among diverse internal and external platforms and applications; (2) Fully published and available royalty-free; (3) Implemented by multiple vendors; (4) Controlled by an open industry organization with a well-defined inclusive process for evolution of the standard.'"

Comments

<xml>we should do this too</xml>

[wwwillem]

<user="wwwillem">
<subject>we should do this too</subject>
<content>
    What is good for government documents is also good for Slashdot posts. :-)
</content>
</xml>

What type of formats will qualify?

[tttonyyy]

Format is irrelevant - since these documents will contain legal-speak, they'll be unreadable anyway. ;)

Re:Dominoes

[RichMan]

> The dominoes are beginning to fall.

Are they being hit by flying chairs, perchance?

XML panacea

[Gothmolly]

N00b: Hey we have this data representation problem, we'll use XML!
Greybeard: Son, now you have two problems.

Re:You must not have got the memo

[maxume]

I can write a text to text converter in about *0 lines* of perl.

Criteria n3

[DrYak]

As long as the format meets criteria 1-4

In other news, Microsoft is quickly subsidizing 3 small companies to write quick and meaningless stupid plug-ins using OOXML as input, just to pretend that their format is "Implemented by multiple vendors" and on "diverse (...) platforms" (ie.: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP *and* Windows Vista)...

Re:You must not have got the memo

[Anonymous Coward]

I can write a text to text converter in about *0 lines* of perl.

Which truly is the perfect amount of Perl to ever write.

Is Arnie still governor?

[Bazman]

What next? Hasta la vista, Vista?

No brainer

[electrosoccertux]

I don't get what all the hoo-haw is and why we need courts or lobbying for any of this. I find it very difficult to write anything when my term paper or [insert your document here] isn't open. Sounds like a bunch of people just need to learn how to double-click.