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Microsoft Opposing California Open Doc Bill
ZJMX writes "Microsoft is going through its email and phone lists asking people to support their opposition to California A.B. 1668 — 'Open Document Format, Open Source' — by writing to the California Assemblymen involved in this bill (contact info in the link). Apparently they fear that California will join Massachusetts in wanting documents based on open standards in their government. Let's see if this community can raise as much support for the California ODF bill as Microsoft can raise opposition."
This is what I read:
"Blah blah blah politics. Bitch bitch bitch IBM did this so now we do it."
I read this hoping for some key points in distinguishing the functionality or benefits versus costs in using either format.
Nope.
The closest they get to that is "ODF is tightly tied to OOo." Oh, no! Not that! You know, that argument is null and void, right? Because these document formats are supposed to be open, like the names of both of them imply. Who cares if it's not yet integrated into your product, either format should allow that. It is, in fact, confusing to me why they don't let both formats exist and allow the government bodies to pick whatever the hell the want to store their data in. That's all this is, a political issue which is why it's filed in the politics section I guess.
If Microsoft truly believed their product to be superior to the alternative, they would sit back and let California make the mistake. Then, when everything falls apart, they could step in and save the day, while at the same time setting a precident for one format being better than the other. But, we all know that's not going to happen because I haven't heard Massachussetts hurting due to their choice. So, I guess Mr. Ballmer is going to have to set his fears aside & simply come to the harsh realization that another community developed format is just as good or better than their format. Heads up, ODF community, he just may fucking kill you.
And I certainly don't appreciate them demonizing IBM. "Big bad evil corporation launches national campaign to force their consumers into using something!" Pot calling the kettle black, in my opinion. If you could track the amount of money I have paid to a company--directly or indirectly--I would wager that I've paid IBM far less than Microsoft and I feel that IBM has done far more for me than Microsoft.
Shut up and let the consumer decide, Microsoft. Nothing's wrong with unbiased comparisons in helping them decide but you've got a conflict of interest here so I highly doubt anyone will swallow your tripe.
My work here is dung.
The benefits of avoiding vendor lock, true interoperability fostering competition among the software vendors etc will ulitmately benefit the consumers. No doubt about it. Among the consumers the biggest block is the corporate America and these big companies that spend billions of dollars. But they dont seem to care much for OpenDoc and are, persumably willingly, paying whatever MSFT is billing them. What is going on? Bigname PC vendors all compete on price and not single one of them is trying to differentiate themselves from rest of the pack by pre loading the windows boxes with OpenOffice or FireFox or Gimp. Corporate America is not demanding true interoperability and a level playing field for their vendors. Either there is some serious wrong doing by MSFT like bribing IT managers and giving kick backs to PC vendors. Or these people are really dumb. Still I think the time to celebrate is when corporate America decides not lock up their data in a format owned by someone else. Politicians are fickle. A few thousand in campaign contributions they will sing MSFT anthem and betray their voters.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They can't get their foot in the door of the government, so now they resort to spamming?
home
In the letter Microsoft talks about the importance of their customers having a choice. But apparently they don't want their consumers to have the choice between using Open XML or ODF in their product. Besides, using standards always implies lack of choice, and in the case of standards that is in principle a good thing. I don't really care wther Open XML or ODF prevails als THE open standard, but please let ir be really open so I can use whatever Office suite I want!
-- Cheers!
It's rather interesting to see that Microsoft publicly says: "We want to stop peoples freedom of choice". Cause that's what they're doing. With an open format you have the freedom to choose application, but with being locked down to closed formats, you don't have a choice.
Of course, no one is surprised of Microsoft's behavior, but it's actually very grotesque and anti-democratic, anti-freedom, anti-[everything good].
It's like opposing peoples choice of telephone. If you have [phone-line company A], you need a phone A, and you can't call a friend with phone B... Disgusting.
And perhaps SOS got phone C... Poor bastard.
Microsoft seem to have become a very large and well funded political lobbying group.
Sure they buy in lots of software and rebrand it, they also copy a load of stuff and then try to bundle into their existing products. However, have they actually developed anything in the last year or two that did not suck and then disappear?
My little Linux and tech blog
...Microsoft knows that the one and only thing that is preserving their monopoly is Microsoft Office as a standard. If that ever goes away, so does their monopoly. Anyone can run a Mac or Linux and have 75% of their needs happily met via these (or any other) operating system. The one piece missing is fully compatible office software. So, Microsoft needs to hold everyone hostage with proprietary Office formats.
Thanks,
Mike
Excel is the only thing they know. Manager cred is based on the beauty of your spreadsheet programming. If they saved the chickenfeed which gets spent on windows and MS office then they would have to save the larger amount they spend on junkets and bonuses. And that is never going to happen.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
on the other hand, one might think there shouldn't be any need for the phrase "legacy purposes only" when discussing the first version of a new standard.
Any conversion of such things should reasonably be done in the tool doing the file conversion, not in the file format itself.
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
Sure we can, but can we pay off as many legislature people as Microsoft can? Nope.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Dear Representative Smith:
One of Microsoft's innovations is our ability to help millions of customers with our proprietary file formats. If large purchasers, such as your state government, wrongly conclude that an open standard is in their best interest, Microsoft's proprietary file format becomes substantially less valuable to all Americans, and indeed, the world.
So let us describe to you what will happen if this proposal becomes reality:
(1) Microsoft will need to compete with other products based on attributes other than file format. In turn, Microsoft products will rise in price by millions of dollars, leading to riots in your neighborhood.
(2) This will forever make the USA a 3rd world country. China will be willing to step in and take over Microsoft's responsibility as the engine of the American economy.
(3) An American innovator and icon will no longer be the richest man in the world. Americans will no longer be proud or patriotic; most, if not all, will end up voting against you. Microsoft will no longer be a name loved by millions of children - instead, it could be "Al Jezerra".
Please make your decision carefully. We have included a check of $50,000 to put towards your next campaign. See you at the golf tournament next week!
Consider that I have documents in WP5.1 format, a text-editor from Clarkson University, Yeah Write files, some IBM PC-Write docs, and both MS Word and, lest we forget, MS Works files.
Now, if any of these were in Open Doc format, I would have full access to them.
Finally, consider that in the past I have said some really stupid things, and I'm not even a politician. I certainly don't want anyone to be able to figure out what I have said. Thus, I am in favor of closed source formats that go way, way out of date just so I can be sure that what I say today will be rendered even more incomprehensible in the future.
Thank you.
--
This post best read before July 18, 2015 when it will become unreadable.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
Either there is some serious wrong doing by MSFT like bribing IT managers and giving kick backs to PC vendors.
I think that the major PC vendors are in bed with MS for the following reason: it gives them a huge advantage against small VAR PC vendors and/or people who would build their own PC.
My company used to build workstations for our customers; we didn't make a profit on them (it's all about the service) but could price them competitively. At this point, with the prices and availability (or lack thereof) we get from our distributors, we would lose money on each PC sold. It's bad enough that we could buy a PC from Dell, take the components out and put them in our own case and sell it for the same price, but Windows pushes us over the edge. Ingram Micro charges us about $132 for XP Pro or Vista, which is far above the price that they charge Dell.
The same goes for home computer builders I imagine. Once one figures in the cost of a MS OS, there's probably no way that one could build a Windows machine for the same or less money. I'm sure that someone will post a response with links to prices for ten different retailers (probably with rebates), but that's just trading time for money.
When contacting people, please remember what is crucial:
Be polite - this will make them much more likely to listen. If you are feeling angry, take a walk outside, have a nice snack then come back when you are calmed down.
Make personal contact - fax or phone where you can; reinforce emails by calling up to check that they got them. Write your own letter, based on somebody elses template if you need, but with your own information. If they promise to look into it, call back later to find out what they found out.
State clearly your relationship to them - resident of the state / local business / supporter / floating voter etc. Always find a reason why they should take notice of you. Identify yourself clearly and let them call you back later (better to give a business phone or mobile so that they don't call you at home during election campaign time though)
Give information - links to pages about problems - specific links to ODF sites or the Wikipedia article etc. to show alternatives. However, read through those pages yourself and pick out and explain specific points from them that you think are important.
Be efficient. Make your point early; don't drown them in extra information; Say only things which you think are important.
Be original. Give specific information about your position and how you will benefit from alternative solutions. Show that you care about it and why.
Cant you guys sue MSFT + DELL + HPQ under antitrust laws? If you can band together and sue get upto discovery process and find the true price MSFT is charging the big name vendors. Still please do hang in there, a class action law suite will come eventually and you may be able recoup the losses you suffered by paying full reatail price for WinOS. Right now MSFT looks invincible and no one is willing to take a at it. But someday the logjam will break and the pendulum will swing so far that we might even pity MSFT! Just 10 or 12 years back, the tobacco companies looked invincible. No one thought they could be taken in court. Such a fate is looming MSFT too. (warning: IANAL)
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"The same goes for home computer builders I imagine." No it doesn't, unless you want to upgrade your OS of course. A homebuilder will just transfer hers/his license to the newbuilt computer and s/he can get a lot more bang for the bucks.
Yes, I do know girls who build their own computers...
--
Ideal woman is redhaired, got green eyes, 6 feet tall, have at least a C-cup...
...and IQ above 145, and that makes her too smart to marry me...
Surprise, _yes_, Microsoft lobbies IT managers and even managers from higher levels. And they have done it some much that managers already have used to it and assumes it as "natural" right to have "gifts" from Microsoft. Not to blame only Microsoft entirely, it is common "marketing style" of lot of companies who produces so-so products.
It is corruption? yes. Corruption is still corruption, whatever government or shareholder's company is involved. However, you will have hard time to convince those managers not to accept these presents. Because overall atmosphere and dignity in such jobs are long gone. Only if you inform heavily shareholders you maybe will do something.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Big business leaders don't know IT. For that matter, few people in IT really know IT, but that is another rant.
Someone who can run a transport company successfully and knows that only a fool would allow your company to be totally dependent on one vehicle supllier will NOT realise that the same thing applies to the computers controlling the fleet of vehicles.
Standard example, every truck fleet owner has a favorite brand, yet they always got a couple of trucks that are of a different brand. The reason, simple, it makes negotiations a bit easier. Sure out of the 500 trucks in company 490 will be say Mercedes BUT on the day the Mercedes rep comes to talk about a new order you can bet that the 10 daf trucks will be proudly parked right outside the office. Just a hint that the order does not have to go to Mercedes this time.
That is because trucking company directors understand trucking. They do not understand IT. So when the MS salesrep arrives he will have confirmed via outlook, using documents created in office and be assured of seeing nothing but windows machines as he visits the office.
Offcourse he still gives a nice discount. That is easy. Establish the true price, hike it by a couple of hundred percent, give a discount of 50% percent and you got MS record profits.
And the really odd thing is that all those directors who wouldn't trust a truck maker who reported the same kind of profits as MS think it is a good sign that MS is making such huge profits.
People do NOT understand fields that they are not experts in and this goes triple for IT.
Couple this with the old maxim, nobody has ever been fired for buying Microsoft and you got the current situation.
It is changing but you are going to have to fight a bloody struggle to get anywhere. Remember, if you introduce linux into a company and suddenly costs plummet and productivity soars you will have made an awfull lot of enemies, every single person who said that MS software was the way to go.
I was in this situation once. A company had two websites belonging to different divesions. The one I was responsible for ran a webshop and services for customers and offcourse ran on linux cheapo hardware. The intraweb was purely windows and was run by the internal IT department but it also contained some sites available to our resellers and such. My divesion was brought back in under the umbrella of the mother coorperation, our website sold more products then all other sales efforts combined, so rather then being an experiment we turned into the biggest sales channel.
Anyway, oneday a director asked the question of why the intraweb was down once again, and for some reason the question was asked NOT to the internal IT department but to the web department (probably the doofus didn't realize the difference).
So what was I supposed to do? The reason the intraweb sucked was simple, it was run on windows, with IIS (or ISS, what ever acronym stands for steaming pile of garbage, was run by windows admins, and just wasn't designed by anyone who cared.
Yet for some reason, the idea seemed to be that since the director new that we used linux and windows and that the intraweb sucked that linux was used for the intraweb. And since everyone knows I run Linux I was told to convert the site to windows to fix the troubles and get help from the internal IT department.
Can you guess how many seconds it took me to reactivate my CV on monsterboard?
It was not that the guy in question was an idiot, he knew his business. It just didn't happen to be IT. And what could I do? My department was supposed to merge with the internal IT department and since they wore suits it was pretty clear to me who would end up as whose boss.
So I arranged some job interviews, and just told them that linux sadly wasn't up to the job and that switching the external site to windows was the best way to go, but sadly I did not have the qualifications to do that so the internal IT department should handle it, and handed in
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If the tide turns, and some big customers demand ODF support, will Microsoft have its business depend on some weirdo hackers in a sourcefourge project? I think not. So 50$ sais ODF support in MSoffice is already built and tested, as a compile line option currently switched off by the marketing department. Apply some pressure and witness the fastest patch in history...
By the way, if your neighbour or your PHB asks you the difference between ODF and the MS XML thingy, summarize like this: The ODF spec is 600 pages, the MS spec is 6000. Intelligent people will be able to figure out the rest.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Office is the best spreedsheet, email and word processing platform on the market... Thats why.
My company is "only" 2000 people. Every PC gets wiped as soon as it comes in the door, and is then loaded with a standard setup. It doesn't matter what Dell puts on there, that is just important for smaller companies. What does matter is that we have tenthousands of documents in our internal knowledge base. Many of them are powerpoints where slide 3 contains an embedded Excel sheet, itself containing an embedded Word document. How they will ever get out of that mess is beyond my imagination.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
This ODF stuff is just another shitty typewriter document to go with Word documents. Ugh. You might as well call it SHITHTML it is another useless HTML replacement. Think of how useless XHTML has been and it at least attempted to be as similar to HTML as it could be. ODF is more shit that has to be converted into something else before it can even do something useful. It is like you are saving your word processor's cache file to disk and then expecting someone else to do the rest of the job to make something that is sharable, and you excuse that by saying that you'll publish the cache file spec. Ugh.
What is the point of unleashing countless office workers to make countless documents that are not even sharable? The Web is 17 years old. The standardized Web is 7 years old. I can generate sharable documents just by going to Flickr, but with Word or ODF, no. It is painless to generate HTML 4.01 programmatically using DOM methods or manage word processing styles with CSS. There are two mature open source Web browser engines that can be used in a word processor product and countless other developer resources. It is not a programming problem.
At the UI level a word processor should do all the little tricks that people want. At the data storage level, it should be generating ISO HTML with CSS and JavaScript that can be either natively displayed on the Web or reliably converted to PDF for printing. You can store that and you can always read it. In other words you are storing something finished, not just the arbitrary bullshit that some word processor uses for pseudo-synaptic function. As people work, instead of generating unmanageable "word processor documents", users generate manageable Web content.
It's ridiculous to suggest that the typing of office workers should be stored as anything other than HTML. Microsoft Word is not the king of the making and sharing of documents, that is the Web. Base your new word processor standard on the Web and it will be successful. Ignore the Web and you are just being another Microsoft, stuck in time.
Look how hard it is to get a programmer to use UTF-8 instead of Latin-1 and the same programmer expects the office worker to use ODF instead of HTML it is crazy.
You can avoid gender specific language by replacing he/she/s/he with they/their: A homebuilder will just transfer their license to the newbuilt computer
Unless of course you were countering the male domination of computing. If so, good one.
Did the email even originate from Microsoft? As far as I can tell, all we have is a single email received by a single person. Perhaps it's a delayed April Fool's joke or something of that sort? It would be incredibly stupid (even for Microsoft) to send out official emails like this.
Even if several people receive such emails, that doesn't prove it is from Microsoft. Is there any official reaction by them, or proof that it came from an official Microsoft email account?
Regardless of this matter, the push for ODF is a great idea.
You must be new here. :P
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Who is 'Open Doc Bill' and why does Microsoft oppose his going to California?
;-)
No time to RTFA but lots of time to post and read replies!
Give a man a match: warm him for an instant. Douse him in petrol and set him aflame: warm him for the rest of his life.
Apparently, it happened in Florida also. State Representative Ed Homan added the use of open standards to a bill in state senate. A day later, he was visited by three people from Microsoft. The bill about the open standards was rejected. http://uf.freeculture.org/2007/04/01/legislature-2 007-state-of-florida-it/
This isn't about vendor preference, it's about freedom of public access to public documents.
For the public to allow vendor lock and depend on a single vendor for future access because they accepted a vendor standard is "just plain stupid".
No vendor whould be forced out, but the product the public entities buy would be standardized.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
And you must fix your sarcasm-o-meter.
The State of California is a customer and, like you, has to right to choose what it buys based on measurements of price vs. performance. If California says it requires software for its bureaus that uses neutral file formats, then the expression of that requirement is no more legislating people out of business than a requirement that paint bought for state buildings meet minimum performance and environmntal standards. As California, the great state where I reside, is spending taxpayer money, there are occasional efforts towards ensuring that the money isn't being spent in stupid ways. (I shall not be reimbursing any one for keyboards lost while reading the prior sentence.)
Something I'm really curious about: where are the Microsoft shareholders on these questions. Why do they think that when large customers start to evolve different requirements, the proper response is to spend money on publicity, lobbying, and advocacy advertising and to play chicken with the customers, rather than evolving with the market?
This is about allowing choices to consumers.
Erm, I know we shouldn't feed trolls, but you clearly don't understand a couple of key points here.
Firstly - "chickenfeed" on Windows and MS Office? Are you insane? Have you ever been involved in procurement for the Microsoft tools? I'm guessing not, as then you'd realise just how expensive it is to provide Windows, Office and a few other bits and bobs for a 10,000+ strong userbase. Either that or you're Bill Gates and several million dollars is chickenfeed to you.
Secondly - yes, Excel is a popular platform, but not just amongst managers. It's one of the few tools that most office based employees use on a regular basis, far more so than Word, Access and in quite a lot of cases even more so than the web. I know plenty of users who don't have a clue how to use websites and find them intimidating but are still comfortable with Excel, as they have to do their reporting through it and use it for home accounts etc. As such, while it's not an ideal platform for developers, interoperability and much more, it is pretty damned useful for putting out straightforward productivity tools that don't scare the general public.
--- Band: Joey Ultra
Compare it to payroll, which is going to be about 30x more expensive, to start.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
And, of course, run your missive through a spelling checker before you send it.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
While it's true that legislation shouldn't directly dictate purchasing decisions as that would provide an unfair disadvantage to certain businesses, it is nevertheless perfectly alright for a government to create legislation in order to protect the public trust. Legislation can't and shouldn't say only buy X from company Y, but it can surely say only buy products which have characteristics A, B, and C which prevent certain detrimental consequences. The bill actually states: "This bill would require all state agencies, beginning on or after January 1, 2008, to create, exchange, and preserve all documents, as specified, in an open extensible markup language-based, XML-based file format, and to start to become equipped to receive any document in an open, XML-based file format, as specified." And: "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. (b) Beginning on or after January 1, 2008, state agencies shall start to become equipped to accept all documents in an open, XML-based file format for office applications, and shall not adopt a file format used by only one entity. (c) The department shall develop guidelines for state agencies to follow in determining whether existing electronic documents need to be converted to an open, XML-based file format. The department shall consider all of the following: (1) The cost of converting electronic documents. (2) The need for the documents to be publicly accessible. (3) The expected storage life of the documents." The questions to ask are: Why does Microsoft's file format not meet these criteria? What, if anything, prevents Microsoft from using a format that does meet these conditions? Are these requirements important or relevant enough to the people for governments to mandate their use? It is important to note that Microsoft does not have to meet these conditions. They can simply sell to others who don't see that fact as a limitation. It's just that they won't be able to sell to the State of CA and any business that follows the state's lead. Still, I am a little wary of this kind of bill myself though I have little sympathy for Microsoft's position. Most of the conditions seem like reasonable things to ask for to me. But will XML really last forever? Or will there be something better and greater down the line that will require this bill to be rewritten?
I grant all that I write to the public domain.
Sorry, personally I don't buy this... Even if they documents were published in Word format there are free readers available (even for Open XML) which may be used to view content. However these documents are not published in ODF or OXML, they're published in PDF which again, there are free readers for..
No comments needed - you all know the score..
Insert
If the people Microsoft is calling out to had half a brain, they'd realize that open formats are a great thing, even if they want to use Microsoft products. You know, so you, as a sysadmin, can easily dump your data into microsoft word/excel/powerpoint for the boss's monthly numbers or whatever. Yeah, there's better ways to do it, but then it'd be more easily possible for those who must use those products for whatever reason.
If MS can guarantee and be bonded that documents that are archived now can be accessed in 50 years time, and can be accessed and processed from today until then with software they provide for free (and I mean zero cost), well, then I agree - there's no issue.
For a democratic process to function, there should not be a price tag on public information. If the data is stored in a format for which you have to pay to access it you are in principle harming democratic process. I do realise that the opposite is harming commercial interests and I thus believe (cynic that I am) that it will take a bit more time before sponsorship of any kind (campaign contributions, golf trips, conferences in exotic places,"targeted charity") will no longer influence that vote.
In that context I find the ever increasing "yes" votes to ODF interesting - it appears that Massachusetts set in progress something of an avalanche. Give that man this years' Open Source Champion award..
Insert
In the 1600s, 'they' and 'their' were used both for plurals and gender-neutral pronouns. Then prescriptivists got hold of the language and told us that it was wrong. We still use them in that 'bad' way, and it's in our mental grammars, but people try to make us feel guilty about it.
Or you could use Timothy Leary's SHe and Hir, if so inclined.
Why should I care about ODF vs OOXML? Both are so complex that they can only be implemented by big corporations (and Ok, big Open Source groups). Give me something for which a moderately computer-educated citizen can write a parser to, for example, find inconsistencies or unusual items in a state budget spreadsheet. Plain HTML will do nicely and there is no reason government documents should have formatting needs that exceed that.
Either there is some serious wrong doing by MSFT like bribing IT managers and giving kick backs to PC vendors. Or these people are really dumb.
I think people buy Microsoft products so if something does go wrong they can blame Microsoft.
And by the time the company realizes they can't open 10 year old important documents the person who had made the decision has left the company.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
A long time ago, in a past decade
... GM, BigBlue... and said fyck the customer |
... my wife's calling ... Microsoft could have developed an ODF long ago, but was greedy. ODF is required for business, law, research, government, military ..., and we can no longer afford proprietary bullshit products that fyck US every other year and create a black-hole of data files for future generations and everything.
(~1982~1992), in the early days of home HS/ADP technology, When microsoft was but a baby corps, there were many many operating systems (OS) and file formats for each and every OS/application. Then microsoft said
(~1989~1994) lets provide file format conversion for all our big competitors file formats to microsoft file formates. As microsoft fed on conversion converts and got to be the biggest, fattest, and dumbest OSD (original software developer) they chose the path of other failures
(~1995~2000) requirements we will force them to accept what we deem best for our captive paying market and even provided templates and formats that would always change with every update to compel their hostage customers to by another fix for their addiction more microsoft product upgrades.
(~2001~2005) slowly businesses and institutions were forced to convert to microsfoft dogma and sustenance, or die.
(~1985GNU~1991Linux~1994W3C) However, a small rebel FREEDOM alliance [AKA: F/LOSS, GNU-Linux, "Open"...] began a subversive offensive in the interest of the oppressed high-TEK public and exploited low-TEK countries globally across the W3/Internet. In services to everyone, the rebels would openly and blatantly, like Don Quixote tilting a windmill evil giants, fight honorable and heroically as "Knights of the WoeFolk Continent" until victory for all.
Anyway y'all get the point
MS FYCKED U, US, and themselves.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Don't you mean Microsoft Office OpenXML( MS OOXML )?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I'm against any law designed to force out any specific competitor from any market...
I guess you don't realise that not only is there no reason Microsoft couldn't produce ODF documents, but the open source community is already stepping up to the plate with free ODF plugins for Microsoft products?
It's ridiculous to suggest that the typing of office workers should be stored as anything other than HTML.
//--></script><table><tr><td><P> ...
If by HTML you mean something like:
<DIV id="section" name="environment">
<DIV id="section-title">Environmental considerations</DIV>
<DIV id="section-head">...</DIV>
<DIV id="paragraph">...</DIV>
[...]
</DIV>
With appropriate CSS... OK. That can move the meta-information required to produce typeset quality documents into the CSS defined for that purpose, as well as good online documentation with a suitable CSS file...
If you mean something like:
<DIV style="..." onClick="..." onBlur="..."><IMG SRC="inline:6sta52" ALT="Environmental Considerations"></DIV>
<script type=javascript>//<!--
[...]
</td></tr></table><p>...<p>...
Then, no...
Errrr....maybe it is just because shareholders who holds majority share of company are several people who are known with their "I want to rule the world" attitude not with caring about customers want?
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
The embrace of a fully open standard will lead to innovation within a stagnant industry. This will lead to an improvement in Office-related products, as there will be more than one vendor that will be able to create complete, accurate, and fully compatible standards-based documents without the burdens of agreeing to Microsoft's licensing terms.
The acceptance of a file format, such as OOXML, that can only be fully and correctly implemented by agreeing to terms with Microsoft will lead to same situation we have now - you can either go with Microsoft, or you can go without sharing compatible office documents with your colleagues.
I'm against any law designed to force out any specific competitor from any market ...
The charitable assumption is that you posted in the wrong thread, then. The bill everybody else is talking about here doesn't say anything about whose software to use; it just requires support for a specific file format. ODF is an open standard, which means that everybody is allowed to use it, and they don't have to pay anything for the privilege. Nobody is being excluded, unless they exclude themselves.
The other big example of that kind of influence would be the pharmaceutical outfits. They've been using such tactics on doctors and hospitals for decades.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Point taken but where I come from, one would get their grammatical knuckles rapped for that sort of thing. My Hacker Guide (Diana Hacket, not computer hacker) indicates no such use for their in that context.
In any event, I think that English needs a huge makeover anyway, especially as it pertains to pronouns. Along with gender-neutral pronouns, we need an obvious third-person plural, such as y'all. This is a glaring flaw that causes many misunderstandings.
One of the things that I found recently is a total misunderstanding of an important Bible passage, Luke 22:31. In this passage, Jesus says to Petter, "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat..." Almost everyone I talked to thought that the third person pronoun "you," was singular--it is not. Since I read and write in Spanish, I noticed that it isactually plural ("ustedes").
A law that dictates that ODF is used for the state's documents does not exclude any vendor from the market. Microsoft is welcome to add ODF support to its office suite, but refuses to do so. In other words, they are excluding themselves from competing by not supporting ODF. Instead of adding support for ODF, they try to push states to standardize on their format instead.
Indeed, Microsoft is a member of OASIS and was invited to participate in the development of ODF. They had their chance and they refused.
Because if bob smiley in IT made the decision to standardize on Microsoft products to get his raise is underminded then its all out political war.
Business is very conservative and do not like change and view change as a way to increase TCO. ALso like I said earlier its politics. If you rock the boat you make enemies in the corporate world
http://saveie6.com/
RMS opposes proprietary software, the GOP opposes the election of Hillary Clinton to the US presidency, and the PLO opposes Israel's bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. security council.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Quick recap: on Feb 23, Assemblyman Leno (Sacramento) introduced this bill, aka AB 1668. It's a short bill so far, but at this point it has not yet been amended.6 51-1700/ab_1668_bill_20070223_introduced.html/
? committee=131
.doc format (the angle here is 'so-called public documents I can't access without paying Msft!')
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/07-08/bill/asm/ab_1
The bill has been referred to the California Assembly Committee on Jobs, Economic Development and the Economy. The first committee hearing is scheduled for April 17. Any recommendations from the committee, including modifications to the bill text, have a good chance to be approved by the Assembly at large.
There are six members of this committee. Their names, contact information, and more can be found below.
http://www.assembly.ca.gov/acs/newcomframeset.asp
Take a minute to read up on each member's district, personalize your message, and keep it short and to the point. It would help if you're a constituent, or at least a California resident.
It may be helpful to point out that this committee's own publications page (linked on above page) is available only in
One convincing argument may be that anything less than an open format will create vendor lock-in, which will remove the possibility for healthy, job-stimulating contract competition for State of California IT contracts. This will have a negative impact on the state budget.
While open formats can be supported by all current proprietary customers (ie, Microsoft), closed formats eliminate competition.
And remember: as tempting as it may be, no swearing, l33t 5p34k, or sending tubgirl links to the Republicans.
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
Wait. .M$ isn't open source friendly??? I would never have figured.
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
For most business, the cost of office is a non event compared to.
1- The need to have outlook anyway (in most cases).
2- Historically OO would not 100% convert ms word files correctly. (not sure if that is still the case)
3- Running their business
The last one is very important, because running business is hard work. Running MS office barely appears on the radar compared to a zillion things like
how many sales I have I made
why is that product late
have I ticked my corporate governance boxes today
have I insured this and that
Office in the mind of business people is a commodity like a car, an office desk, or a computer.
They really don't care that much.
46137
You know how Coke can dictate what a supermarket can put into its refrigerators, or next to their products on the selves? Microsoft probably does the same to the vendors in regards to installed alternatives.
What?
If California passes this, I imagine Microsoft will put people to work on a patch to office, so that you can "save as"(open format)... of course the .doc format will remain the default, making it a pain in the butt to use... but I think this is what will eventually happen. It's just a matter of time. It's possible it may even already be written and they are just waiting until a major development such as this happens.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
I have a webcam that is very nice. $35, and well worth the price. Now, their software is an entirely different matter..... But their great little webcam is certainly not disappearing from MY desk, where it does a great job showing pictures in Ubuntu!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Yes, of course I am.
Dear Corporate Lobbyist and Dogmatist with spin-magic and revisionist-bullshit;
... GM, BigBlue... and said fyck the customer |
... my wife's calling ... Microsoft could have developed an ODF long ago, but was greedy. ODF is required for business, law, research, government, military ..., and we can no longer afford proprietary bullshit products that fyck US every other year and create a black-hole of data files for future generations and everything. Civilization requires communication archives/recordsfor everything; therefore, anyone proposing a proprietary solution, to our historical/archival global civilization requirements for knowledge, legal record, general information... must be a self-serving, corporatist-communist, politician or dogmatist fool/
... China, Russia...) are Luddite institutions, happy promoting corporate-welfare laws to prevent free/open-economic and human development.
(~1982~1992), in the early days of home HS/ADP technology, When microsoft was but a baby corps, there were many many operating systems (OS) and file formats for each and every OS/application. Then microsoft said
(~1989~1994) lets provide file format conversion for all our big competitors file formats to microsoft file formates. As microsoft fed on conversion converts and got to be the biggest, fattest, and dumbest OSD (original software developer) they chose the path of other failures
(~1995~2000) requirements we will force them to accept what we deem best for our captive paying market and even provided templates and formats that would always change with every update to compel their hostage customers to by another fix for their addiction more microsoft product upgrades.
(~2001~2005) slowly businesses and institutions were forced to convert to microsfoft dogma and sustenance, or die.
(~1985GNU~1991Linux~1994W3C) However, a small rebel FREEDOM alliance [AKA: F/LOSS, GNU-Linux, "Open"...] began a subversive offensive in the interest of the oppressed high-TEK public and exploited low-TEK countries globally across the W3/Internet. In services to everyone, the rebels would openly and blatantly, like Don Quixote tilting a windmill evil giants, fight honorable and heroically as "Knights of the WoeFolk Continent" until victory for all.
Anyway y'all get the point
MS FYCKED U, US, and themselves, let's not allow MS continued servicing of US, EU, and others to continue for another decade.
MS and many corporations and governments (US, EU
Personally, I thank CA, MA, and many countries (not the USA/EU) for getting beyond Luddite-dogma control. It helps us all to move further into our future.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Actually, far more than 30* the licensing cost. We generally take a figure of $80k per head p/a when we look at internal costs.
But get it in perspective - we're talking about a contract worth several (toward tens of) millions of dollars per year. This is not a cost that is just accepted and it is not insignificant. Saving a million dollars on that contract can easily provide for either significant savings on the bottom line or the provision of an extra 10-15 sales people, who would each be expected to bring in $250k+ per year in sales.
I get the feeling that a lot of people don't realise that big companies pay for the Microsoft tools and think that they just use them because they feel they're "supposed" to. They cost a hell of a lot of money and when used properly, they do a rather nice job.
Personally, I've just requisitioned a PC so that I can put some distro of Linux on there (not sure what yet) and evaluate the Open Source offerings. I already use Apache, MySQL and PHP as my standard prototyping and personal development tools, so I'm interested in seeing what's on offer on Linux for "normal" PC users, as I haven't used it since 1999 when I was at university (Red Hat and IRIX on SGIs, at the time).
--- Band: Joey Ultra
Whoever modded you flamebait for saying this is wrong (it's not flamebait), but so are you (you're just not correct).
If a state passes a law requiring that any software it uses support ODF, that is not preferring one technology over another. It makes no comment on the technology to be used. It just says that whatever technology or technologies we use, they must be fully interoperable with each other by way of using an open document format. ODF itself is not FOSS. OSF is a standard used by some FOSS programs and which can be used by Microsoft Office as well. If California requires that all state documents be saved in ODF, the only requirement this places on Microsoft is that its products must support ODF to be eligible for state purchase.
This law is not designed in any way to force anyone from the market or to favor or require any particular technology, such as OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Office. If Microsoft Office has full support for ODF, then California could make a business decision to use MS Office as its office suite. It could also make a business decision to use OO.o. Or both. Or leave it up to each individual department.
Requiring ODF for all public documents does not favor any technology over any other. Rather, it provides a level playing field on which each technology may and must compete on its merits. If Office 2007 is as good as Microsoft says, it will still win on its merits on a level playing field. If its merits do not justify its price, then it may fail. Either way, requiring the use of an open standard does not favor any product over any other. Indeed, requiring, or even permitting, the use of a closed standard is what does this. Allowing or requiring MS Office format as the format for public documents gives an unfair advantage to MS Office b/c its closed nature makes Microsoft better able than anyone else to support that file format. You've got it all backwards.
You seem to be under some misapprehension that Corporate America isn't run by a bunch of morons.
... of course theExcept that ".doc" is neither a single format nor are any of them documented. The extension, of course is the same all these years, but changes both big and small make each new version of MS Word format incompatible with older versions of MS Office, thus forcing another round of purchases.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Interesting. Thanks for the clarification. I knew the full name of the OpenDocument standard, but I didn't realize the short form collided with something else.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
First off because I do NOT disagree with you that there are capable windows programmers. The particular company of my past did have one, he left.
On the other hand, I have had to rescue sites from windows to often to have any real confidence in .asp or whatever programmers. Offcourse this NOT fair, after all if the site was running perfectly, I would not be called upon to salvage it right?
There are windows shops, and trying to sell linux (or anything non-MS) is liking pulling teeth, your own. No thanks. I just work for companies/bosses, that get it. Sadly sometimes this changes (in the above case because departments got merged) and then it is time to leave rather then get bogged down in a long battle that you can't win unless you have the support of upper management.
Time is too short.
By all means, use whatever works for you.
But I still like to commment on your points.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.