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Open Standards Initiative Fails in Massachusetts
walterbyrd writes "Massachusetts has decided to use Microsoft's Open-XML standard. This decison: 'stands in sharp contrast to the positions taken by predecessor CIOs Peter Quinn and Louis Gutierrez, backed by then governor (and now-presidential hopeful) Mitt Romney. Both Quinn and Gutierrez insisted on including only "open standards" in the ETRM, and withstood significant pressure from Microsoft to give ground and accept OOXML...'"
I guess the good news is how long it took Microsoft to kill it. They are not as good as they used to be with the FUD.
...that undoubtedly business and politics are tangled together in a bed of money.
Does this really come as a surprise that a change in regime would change the direction of a major initiative? I think we've seen this many times before, not the least of which being the Microsoft antitrust trial. When the old boss moves out, the new boss moves in, waves his hands, and changes the playing field yet again.
*sigh*
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
is no substitute for actually getting up off your fat ass and voting and making your voice heard to the state governments?
Well, I'm sure the decision will be welcomed by the sponsors. The problem is, the original decision has already sparked somewhat of an avalanche and even the "after the facts", "standard that isn't" OOXML will not halt it. Given the kind of tricks MS had to pull out of its hat to make this reversal happen there is scope for some good digging by the assorted press.
Unless they want to keep their advertising..
if you read TFA it says that they are including both ODF and Open XML as acceptable document formats.
So while the original intention to only include really open formats is regrettably given up (curiously by an interim CIO, why does he decide that if he is only a temporary hire?), it is not like ODF got dumped for the Microsoft format.
...if it's rejected as an ISO standard, there is plenty of room for rejecting the present acceptance.
But that said, I am admittedly ignorant of any appeals or reapplication processes that Microsoft would undoubtedly pay... err, uh attempt.
Nutrasweet was rejected multiple time until the company that makes it put someone into the FDA office that would approve it. ("No, we reject it because it's poison... we reject it because it's poison... oh okay, we no longer 'feel' it's poison...") OOXML was rejected by two or three parties in a position to do so (depending on how you count them) until finally, Microsoft got someone in office that they could bend to their will.
This is "competition in the market place?!" This is "innovation!?"
I'd like to hear from Microsoft apologists why they think this is an ethical and acceptable way to do business.
Fuck you, goddamn corrupt motherfuckers!
Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man's world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man's world
Aha-ahaaa
All the things I could do
If I had a little money
It's a rich man's world.
Lobbying: Providing the best government money can pay.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
One could say this was Mass(ive) fail?
"Let's face it, it's a good story. Accuracy would kill it."
How much can MSFT charge for MS-Office? It can price it just a shade under what it would cost you to switch to an alternative. Your switching cost determines the money you need to pay to MSFT. If a company wants to lower the money it pays, it has to lower the switching costs. Slowly ODF will gain acceptance.
Also the ODF proponents should realize that the total money collected by MSFT is just 40 billion dollars. I say just because, for the amount of money corporate America is spending, it is not much. For most companies their core operation is transportation or retail or selling insurance or whatever. Compared to the health insurance, labour costs, office building maintenance and rent, advertising expenses, the amount they spend on Office software is a pittance. As long as MSFT keeps prices that low, it is difficult for ODF to gain traction.
The switch will be very very gradual initially. First companies for whom office software costs is a significant portion of their operating expenses. Then slowly it will spread to other companies. We should not expect any quick victories. Then once the alternative formats have gained enough critical mass, and the backward compatibility issues have become less of an issue, there would be quick upsurge for ODF. But still MSFT will have a significant market share in office software for a long time to come.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
OOXML isn't gay. It's a necrophiliac.
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
This can hardly be called FUD. They destroyed at least one man's career in government -- probably two mens'. Who knows what else they did to get this through, and head off a pan-american shift away from MS products.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Government decision is corrupted and bought by money from big corporation.
Hang on, maybe that's this news!
Just yesterday I was sitting in the relevant meeting of SNV/UK14 (http://www.snv.ch/), that decides how Switzerland will vote. The chairman (Hans-Rudolf Thomann) explained the following rules:
...) vote against the best interest of their customers and theirself!
- we are here to create standards, not to reject them
- if we reach consensus (>=75%) to vote for Microsoft, we will vote for Microsoft
- if we only reach a majority (>=50%) to vote for Microsoft, we will vote for Microsoft
- if we reach a majority to vote against Microsoft, we will vote for Microsoft
- if we reach consensus to vote against Microsoft, we will abstain
The present spin doctors of Microsoft and ECMA managed to convince Mr. Thomann to reject every serious technical and general concern we had regarding OOMXL by pointing to compatibility reasons. At the end we had a majority _against_ Microsoft but which (giving the unfair rules) results in a Swiss vote _for_ Microsoft. Mr. Thomann was fretting and fuming at the end of the meeting how it can be that successful international companies (we had representatives from IBM, Google,
Yes, this is how the democratic system at SNV / ISO works. After the meeting I could not eat as much as I wanted to puke...
Posted as AC for obvious reasons
OK, so they allow the use of either ODF or Open XML - at least simple programs can extract text and style data form both formats. I blogged recently about how I prefer ODF, and included a little Ruby program to process ODF files:
t er-than-microsofts.html
http://markwatson.com/blog/2007/05/why-odf-is-bet
and one of my readers pointed out that by changing a line or two of my code, that Open XML could be processed in the same way - I stand corrected.
Still, I am a member of the ODF Foundation, and don't like Microsoft's heavy handed actions. I sold all of my Microsoft stock a few years ago specifically because I did not like their proprietary file format lockins. I use both Open Source and proprietary software - I have no problem with people (including myself) buying Microsoft products except for their use of proprietary formats: hurts users and could cause expensive data loss now and in the future.
If Microsoft perfectly supported ODF in their release of Mac Office next year, I would buy a copy - but slap on plugins don't count here: I would require perfect native support.
Well, it's not really a massive failure, nor is it a massive success. The article says that Massachusetts has now approved both MS Open XML and OASIS OpenDocument (ODF). Hence, ODF is not dead in Massachusetts. But the issue is that they initially were resisting Open XML (in Aug. 2005), but have now caved in.
My sig is permanently on strike.
Actually, i'm sitting in Hungary where there was a recent raid against the local M$ crime gang. But, Slashdot users just fired cheap jokes about hungary/hungry.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
It's sad so many people instantly think "corruption" when the government makes a decision they don't agree with. Isn't it possible Microsoft made a better case for their standard? A decision like this is like a civil court case, the person with the best argument wins.
Of the top of my head, I can think of a few reasons lawmakers (from their perspective) might want to use Microsoft's standard before any others:
1. Microsoft is a very large, very well known company. They will be around for a very long time to support any of their formats.
2. Microsoft creates a lot of jobs.
3. Most government offices use Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows for word processing, so Microsoft is the best format to use since the government is already integrated with their products.
This is probably what the politicians were thinking about, and from that perspective, Microsoft looks like the right choice. Most decisions in government are not bought and sold, they are negotiated based on the better argument.
Further, he is implying that Microsoft will be less able to slant the media or buy off people than the government?
nt
Except the first one is a good thing, the later one isn't.
Of course gay people shall be allowed to get married if they want to, why not? The spaghetti monster will get upset of some male to male or female to female love?
Therefore, we will be moving forward to include both ODF and Open XML as acceptable document formats.
The Open Standards initiative didn't "Fail" it became more open (IMO). Including both formats and letting users choose seems quite reasonable.
Hope is the currency of fools
Forcing out two capable employees that stood in Microsoft's way is clear subversion of supposedly representative government.
Wikileaks, no DNS
No matter how disappointing, it's not really surprising. Elected representatives aren't famous either for understanding technology or for being independent of commercial pressures.
Rather than repeat the argument, I'll link my JE on the subject.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Microsoft could have adapted their software to fit the business requirements.
Microsoft could have adapted their software to fit the business requirements.
If "play nice" constitutes a poison pill then Microsoft SHOULD be excluded from government contracts.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That's why the majority of people in the US still travel by rail and use AT&T phone service, right?
1. The Pennsylvania Railroad (or insert your favorite) is a very large, very well known company. They will be around for a very long time to support any of their formats (passenger and freight service).
2. They create a lot of jobs
3. Most government offices travel by rail (or they did), so rail travel is the best format to use since the government is already integrated with their products.
That would still probably hold true if the government didn't look at the monopolistic like power of the railroads after WWII and encourage alternative travel methods by building highways and airports to encourage growth and even more jobs.
The same could be argued for phone service from AT&T at one time everybody had them, so using the same logic, we should all still have them, since we were already integrated with their products and system. Again, the government stepped in and recognized that a monopoly wasn't the best solution for growth and now there are even more jobs and choices.
In Massachusetts, it was the monopoly that stepped in and realized that choice was not in the best interest for its own growth and changed the political process.
If the insult fits....
What is far worse than obvious bias is obvious lying.
What I advocated was documents that are fully and openly described. This doesn't mean that old software can access them. This means that any CIS student that cares to can write something to read those documents and to convert them into the "flavor of the month" format.
Saying that manure stinks is not bias.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This makes me embarrassed to call myself a Massachusetts resident.
How did they try to exclude microsoft? The ODF standard is free for anyone to implement without limitations, if microsoft chose to implement it they would have complied with the requirements and been able to bid.
The fact they worked so hard against ODF shows how scared they are of it, and it also shows that OOXML is not truly an open standard, or else there would be no value in pushing it rather than improving ODF.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Just sums up the old sig I used to have
"The best government money can buy!"
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
When mice go to vote for their government, and their choices are white cats, black cats, and the occational rogue spotted cat, they quickly find that things suck no matter who they vote for.
MS is buying American politicians to get this done. But the world is moving in the opposite direction. Once they are on a different standard, it will make life difficult and more expensive for America. It is the exact same issue as metric vs. emperial measurements. It destroys our productivity.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ok, so FOSS lost a high profile case to commercial software & govt's can be persuaded by deep pockets. On the one hand, nothing to see here, move along... On the other hand, it could be taken as an indication of the state of things & an inspiration to advance things further. The fact that this particular case went on so long says a lot about how close FOSS has come to being a viable alternative to commercial solutions (especially when it had to pass before a, theoretically, discriminatory state approval process). So, it's been posited here that FOSS solutions are close to functionally equivalent to their commercial counterparts; I'll refrain from any opinions on that but I think what the MA case might indicate is that it's not enough to be a functional replacement when the entrenched has lots of $ and can persuade the customer. In order to overcome the organizational momentum and deep pockets, it has to be significantly better. Seems like it would just be a matter of time given the trajectory FOSS solutions have taken over the last decade & eventually they'll be enough better that it won't matter what the incentives are to remain status quo.
Including both formats and letting users choose seems quite reasonable.
In this case, the standards process was to be about government storage, retrieval, and disbursement of documents. Mr. Quinn tried to move MA to support a single open standard with guaranteed longevity. This was *not* about individual users, who are always free to choose whichever standard or product they desire.
Having two choices of document format muddies the water more than a bit. Now, different government agencies in MA can choose to use whichever format they desire. Since only one of those two standards is cross-platform and cross-product (ODF), this will eventually force everyone to OOXML and MS-Office, since it will be the only product that will be able to accurately handle these documents.
This does not increase choice. It restricts it, and Microsoft knows it. They have worked hard to restrict choice, and they have one this battle.
Fuckers.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Lol. Where (I ask again) do I buy the tinfoil franchise for Slashdot?
To put this in perspective: for all but a tiny fraction of the time there's been a computer industry, the file formats used by major applications have been proprietary and the common formats, where they exist, are "interchange formats" like ascii and comma-delimited. The industry has thrived nonetheless.
The two top word processors are Word and Wordperfect—they read and write each others' formats and provide free stand-alone readers for everyone else. OOo Writer comes into the game and, no surprise, it reads and writes Word formats. Any bets somebody is working on a WordPerfect extension? Users don't need ODF, they need compatibility.
The rhetoric around ODF, however, makes it clear that ODF is first and foremost about "sticking it to Microsoft". Microsoft has to be aware of this and, with reason, looks at ODF not so much as an open standard, but as the format used by OpenOffice—a competitive product line. Their reaction is consistent with what their reaction would be to Corel trying to get WordPerfect's file format approved as the standard.
The ultimate irony is that if ODF is ever established as "the one", Microsoft will still have the best and best-supported general-purpose word processor reading and writing .odt files, and they will probably not need to lower their prices to hold their market share. In the meantime, all of the time and angst wasted going after Microsoft could have been spent building great open-source applications.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
So in other words, they just pushed out Office 2007 because they got a hell of a deal for some odd reason, now everybody is sending files back and forth using Microsoft's new proprietary file format, and they figure "hey we are already using this new format everywhere now so let's just make it the official standard".
And the Solaris Sunray workstations get carted off because OpenOffice.org can not open all those XLSX and DOCX files. And let's not even talk about where the handful of Macs went.
Note that I didn't say what sort of machine(s) I have at home, because this shouldn't matter for government docs.
Of course it matters.
The important thing is that the information is freely available to the public. It is the responsibility of the government to provide reasonable access to this information, for example by providing facilities for everyone to use at their local library or City Hall.
Whether or not people running on whatever the trendy (or not-so-trendy) hardware/software of the day is at home can read the documents is really far less important. Indeed, you can make a good case that governments shouldn't spend additional public money supporting additional protocols for home use, particularly where these lack longevity and/or aren't widely used.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
And this is news why...?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I think you mean corporopheliac.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
If you think it's just Microsoft, you're sadly mistaken. Most big corporations participate in this sort of shenanigans, and it plays into every law that gets passed and every candidate that gets elected.
M$, as the US Government noticed is a coercive monopoly. They have enjoyed a 36% ROI over the last ten years, an outrageous rate that dwarfs others big dumb companies like Exxon.
Every M$ victory is ammunition for the next fight. The methods and results are so obvious that people are indeed rebelling and avoiding M$ "upgrades". Now that leadership in Mass has failed the fight must be continued at lower levels and in other states.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
n.
An abnormal, often obsessive interest in excrement, especially the use of feces for sexual excitement.
I stand corrected.
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
> Have you ever used Visual studio? I have not found a programming environment / debugger that even comes close.
Our VS developers have been really enjoying Eclipse. VS used to be good, but these days free IDEs are comparable and do not tie you to a single vendor's selection of source control, bug tracking, web servers, etc. We basically pick and chose the best application from each category and Eclipse integrates with all of them. Eclipse is not as useful if you are already running an all MS shop, but you implied that VS was the best. Our development team uses both professionally and disagrees.
We still use VS since MS smart-phones, and PDAs require it for certain libraries and for debugging MS mobile applications. But other than embedded development we use eclipse.
You ought to get out more. I've been using VS for some time now, but the old Borland IDEs were much cleaner, not cobbled together like VS. VS has been trying to imitate those IDEs for years, with their typical bolt-on rather than designed-in approach to things-- they've finally gotten *close* to what the Borland IDE was like years ago, and I suppose would be closer if it wasn't for the hapazard way they grew into it. But comparing the two still seems much like comparing Mac System 6 to Windows 3.1.
Latex and Word Perfect... I'm guessing head trauma followed by a long nap.
WP and Latex were never easy to use. Maybe easy for you to use. My Mom used WP, knew all the shortcuts, thought it was the best. Then they changed all the shortcuts. Took up Word instead. A year later, she couldn't remember any of the shortcuts. Nothing to do with a coercive monopoly. Just a bad decision by the makers of WP.
I have a similar story with OS/2, when IBM screwed me out of a free upgrade. Anybody seen OS/2 lately?
Anywhile, whatever happens will be preferable to PDF.
How many people, organizations should have to do this? Isn't it a bit more efficient to just have a documented format? Just how much work is needed to describe the average letter or legal document? Why does it take a 6000 page (and yet still incomplete) spec? Personally, I don't understand why 90% of what the government produces isn't or can't be plain text, or at worst, no more complex than what the Mac Text Editor produces. But ODF is loads better than MS' format-of-the-month, and that is all OOXML is: an XML dump of their bloated, spaghettified format-of-the-month.
If you accept both standards, as MA has done, that means that everyone, government orgs, companies, citizens, have to support *both* to read all of the documents. How does that help anyone?
Microsoft could have adapted their software to fit the business requirements.
? tag=st.next
Actually, they did. Shortly after Peter Quinn first announced support for ODF, and denial of Office, he said rather matter of factly that Mass. would consider Office if they opened up their format (note, made and ISO standard was not a requirement since ODF wasn't an ISO standard at the time either). Note that in 2005, this is what quinn said:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5893208-9.html
"In fact, one important point that has so far gotten no attention in the coverage of the Massachusetts decision is that the door is actually still open for Microsoft's format's get back on the list. In a telephone interview, CIO Quinn made it clear that if Microsoft fixed its patent license to meet the state's requirements, the state would reconsider the Office XML Reference Schema for inclusion in its standards. "We would support multiple formats as long as they're open" said Quinn. "If Microsoft were to do that, I would expect that we would add it to the list."
So, back in 2005, Quinn said, all Microsoft had to do was fix its patent license, and they were a shoe-in for consideration in addition to ODF. Microsoft did just that, issuing a patent covenant that is very similar to Sun's patent convenant for ODF.
So the question is, why are people still complaining?
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
"oh, so now as long as it's readable by old software it's fine? pure astroturf."
So what's exactly the part of the "old HTML 1.0" that is unreadeable by "modern" HTML 4.0 browsers?
Please explain to me what ODF has to do with Linux. Oh, right... NOTHING. This is not a platform issue. Remember, whenever certain companies talk about users being "forced" into choosing ODF, it's their own doing - they chose not to be open, and they chose not to participate in the ODF process. They could have supported ODF from the beginning and chose not to - a pox on them.
I realize you're just a troll, but that was pretty stupid.
Hyperic Community Manager
sigh... move along, nothing to see here.
Hyperic Community Manager
In my mind's eye I envision a hoard of nasty XML viruses lurking in OOXML documents. One day they will awake.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Not so much 1.0, but there's a lot of HTML 3.2 that's not in HTML 4.0 Strict [and Transitional is, just that, transitional. meaning in theory it's not supposed to continue being supported by all browsers forever] If critical layers of meaning are encoded in 'bgcolor' attributes, those might not show up in some future HTML-strict-and-not-transitional compliant browser, or with a browser that supports HTML 7.0 and has backwards compatibility for HTML 6.1 or whatever.
Actually, as I look up HTML 1.0, how many browsers support the xmp or listing tags? or the plaintext tag (arguably more part of HTTP 0.9)? HP1 and HP2 for character highlighting?
XHTML was a severe break with compatibility, lots of valid HTML is invalid XHTML, and just results in a YSOD or equivalent. (don't believe the people who say "well, img _really_ required a closing tag all along, we're just enforcing it now).
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Here is the titel: "Open Standards Initiative Fails in Massachusetts."
Mass wanted to go all open standards for storing their important docs. That way, Mass could be sure they would be able to open those documents decades from now.
That initiative failed. Mass is now not going all open standards for their important documents.
Frankly, I don't Mass will ODF at all. But certainly, Mass will not be all open standards.
Sometimes the desire to do what's right gets in the way of doing what's practical.
Quinn did not deserve the shameful treatment he was dealt from a corrupt government. All just to make Bill Gates that much richer.
It makes me ashamed to be an American.
"A population that lacks the will to assert its rights neither deserves nor receives them."
I agree with your take except for the "deserves" part. That is the mindset of a true slave. Despite what we have been cornered into believing, the world we live in, and specifically the world of humankind, is one based on compassion. Through the ages we have tolerated the sociopaths who confuse themselves with society and "God," not out of cowardice, but out of compassion for them and our fellow man. It's only been the technology of the last few thousand years that has enabled these people to extend the reach of their malformed psyches to extend so far as to actually degrade our ability to support their fantasy world. We just can't handle the metastasis that they are any more and we have to remove these children from the fake pedestals on which they sit so that we can survive as a species.
Our mass media and Hollywood is swamped with slave-thought. The images we see of men, women, families, society, are all those of what a slave sees, but is in actuality the antithesis of what they are trying to portray.
We don't need to continue propagating their misinterpretations. It's time to come together and help them make a choice to either heal and move forward, or be shunned.
Just to clarify, by "slave" I do not mean those forced into labor, I mean those who think like a slave. This specifically excludes African-American history, because theirs is a history of resistance and hope in the face of covetous hateful tyranny. A true slave is one who forsakes hope, faith, truth, and therefore compassion, because compassion is the one thing that defines us as a group.
"Do you have a copy of WordStar too? How many versions? Government documents are meant to last for decades, potentially centuries. I have been in places that have large numbers of old WordStar documents, of various formats"
c /wordstar.txt.
WordStar documents were pretty much like HTML and RTF in that they were plain text with embedded formatting commands, because unlike for example the Microsoft Word document format, WordStar's documents were primarily designed for printing stuff that was nicely formatted, and not as a mechanism for locking people into a single vendor for eternity. In WordStar's case, these commands were of two types: sequences of printing characters such as ".pa" for a page break, and sequences of non-printing characters that usually occur as pairs that bracket a piece of text which should be printed in a certain way (e.g. underlined, superscripted, etc.). This means that all of the actual information in them can easily be viewed with any ASCII-capable text editor, although it's obvious that some of the formatting will be lost (certain types of formatting such as right justification and centred titles were however applied to the text itself, so they'll be retained), and the non-printing sequences will probably be displayed as graphical characters in most modern editors.
The meaning of various WordStar codes and commands is documented in many places on the Internet, e.g.
http://mediasrv.ns.ac.yu/extra/fileformat/text/do
It wouldn't take much in the way of programming skill to use such information as the basis of a small utility in Perl or Python to strip the commands out of a WordStar document and turn them into plain text (converting to RTF or HTML could also mostly be done with a simple look-up table), but there isn't really any need to do so because it's directly supported by a wide range of existing commercial, free, and open source software.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
I think you're a bit harsh alluding to this as corruption. MS staff is rather good at misdirection - the way these guys are trained suggest they must have a tame ex Jehovah Witness somewhere.
This guy may genuinely believe that he's been given socio-political arguments that trump the decision power of the Standards board, and that there would be no point in discussing it with mere 'techies'.
It's not the first time I've seen that happen and it won't be last time either, I think. It's up to us to expose this but it's hard work. But hey, nothing worthwhile is ever easy..
BTW, thanks for the NoOOXML.org suggestion.
Insert