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New York Jumps Into Open Formats Fray
cyrusmack writes "Hot on the heels of the bad news regarding the defeat of all open formats bills, New York has become the latest in an area that has seen a flurry of activity already this year. In the article on InfoWorld, it's pretty clear that this bill is significantly watered down from what other states have attempted to do this year. You can bet Microsoft will be there in force, just as it has been elsewhere."
Cool Stuff that people want.
The rest is all bullshit. Vendor manipulation, marketing, bogus laws are only needed by a company that lacks product. The harder they try, the weaker they look.
The tipping point is here. If Dell makes money selling GNU/Linux desktops, it's all over for M$. If they don't, someone else will. Firefox has proved free software to all the "decision makers" M$ usually courts, and it's only a matter of time before they realize Firefox and much more works better outside the M$ cage.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Increasingly, [open formats] means
"Open formats" is a well-defined term. It means what it has always meant: a format that is unencumbered by copyrights or patents, and is sufficiently well documented to permit interoperable, independent implementations.
Of course, Microsoft has been trying to muddy the waters by calling their closed, proprietary format "open".
using this term is one of the best ways we can bring down Microsuck
Well, yes, in the sense that Microsoft's business model is monopolistic and involves closed formats. If Microsoft adopted open formats themselves, then things would be fine.
Ultimately, this may mean more leverage for one or a group of interests--something that is never good for a dye-in-the-wool open source believer.
Adoption of open formats, in the usual meaning of the word, is not just good for open source, it's good for the industry as a whole (except, of course, for Microsoft).
What is bad for everybody other than Microsoft is Microsoft's attempts to confuse people about what an open format is. ODF is an open format, OOXML is a closed, proprietary format.
Open source/format is such a misunderstood term
Well, yes. Quantum mechanics is also such a misunderstood term. Nevertheless, both "open format" and "quantum mechanics" have important, well defined meanings, and the responsibility is on you to understand and use them correctly.