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

good

[larry bagina]

while government documents should not be locked away in a proprietary format, I think we can all agree that ODF is a turd that can't be polished. The fact that it's "open" doesn't mean it isn't fundamentally broken.

Re:Where have we heard this one before?

[hcmtnbiker]

ODF isn't just a product being shilled by a single corporation and so there's no single company to bankrupt or buy out so victory can be declared. I think this is going to be more like guerrilla warfare than a conventional battle. Last I knew Sun and IBM had lots of stock in ODF and where also the main Microsoft resistance. But neither of those companies will be owned by Microsoft any time soon I think.

In my opinion after reviewing the ISO papers on ODF it was an alright idea but poorly implemented. ODF is about as flawed as the Office specification, except that at least the states are already using Office. It will take roughly the same amount of money to the state to change either now or later, so why change what is already working? When and if Microsoft attempts the back stab that this would be preventing, then change, since it's roughly equal cost now or later. As for usability, I honestly find Microsoft Office superior to OO, although there are some nice other programs that give Office a run for it's money, OO still if the flagship, and honestly it acts like it was written by Sun, much like even the original JVMs. So you also have to factor in the cost of people learning OO, AND the cost of the certain imperfections that Microsoft Office doesn't have(load time, refresh, latency after it has been inactive a while or sitting in the menubar).

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Cant wait to see the comments and moderation on this comment. :-P

But pdf printing it is a reason. M$ Treadmill.

[twitter]

.... there are hundreds of reasons to hate Office and ditch it, no need to make up some that don't exist.

PDF printing shows how slow and greedy M$ is and that's a good reason to ditch them. It has taken M$ till 2007 to get pdf printing and, despite what you say, people are going to have to upgrade to get Office 2007 working. This is the way the M$ upgrade train always "works". They are slow as all hell to add features because they want to sell a whole new stack every few years. Meanwhile, free software has been printing to post script and pdf for a decade. This is part and parcel of the non free suck. The M$ user is supposed to be so happy for this tiny new feature that they don't notice everything else on the treadmill is about the same.

after a few hundreds, Office comes at a flat fee for unlimited licenses.

I'm well aware of the usual double screw M$ gives to all but the largest of businesses and would like to give to everyone. First they are constrained to buy a computer from a large vendor, which also comes with a M$ OS and some kind of PIM/Office software. They don't get their money back for that software nor do they get to use it - they have to wipe it and load it with yet more software by the volume license. Lest you suspect volume deals are cheaper, you should remember these are the same people who sold "software assurances" for software they never released. They would love to have every one on a subscription and have done as much at LSU, where a significant proportion of tech fees goes to Tigerware, where you can get .... all the software that your computer came with anyway. No thanks.