Pro-ODF Legislation Loses In Six States

ajanp writes "Computerworld discusses the defeat of pro-ODF legislation in the states of California, Florida, Texas, Oregon, and Connecticut which 'would have required state agencies to use freely available and interoperable file formats, such as the Open Document Format for Office Applications, instead of Microsoft Corp.'s proprietary Office formats.' A similar bill in Minnesota was changed to study the issue instead. There was heavy lobbying being done in private on both sides with one problem being 'the jargon-laden disinformation that committee members felt they were being fed by lobbyists for both IBM and Microsoft. Although lobbyists would tell the committee one thing in private, they got cold feet when asked to verify the information publicly, under oath.' However, 'Despite the string of defeats, Marino Marcich, executive director of the Washington-based ODF Alliance, said the legislative fight has only begun.'"

Comments

Big diff between Pro-ODF and Pro-Open Standards...

[ianbnet]

Not that I read the article, but the post seems to miss a big difference between "Pro ODF" legislation and "Pro open standards" legislation, which I would imagine both Microsoft and IBM would support. Microsoft backs OpenXML, which is an open, extensible document standard -- IBM backs ODF. Obviously, each company has preferences, but in my humble opinion, Pro-ODF legislation would do more harm than good. Instead, we should be encouraging all companies to continue to back more and more open document formats, which are extensible and usable by 3rd parties. At the moment, Microsoft Office 2007's OpenXML is just as good as ODF in this regards. As far as I'm concerned, as long as "open" is mandated, and not a particular _kind_ of open, then all is well in the world.