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New York and Minnesota Publish Open Document Studies
Multiple readers have written to point out that New York and Minnesota have reached the end of their lengthy deliberations on open document formats. Both reports agree that an open format would be beneficial, but neither were willing to endorse a particular choice. New York's executive summary notes, "The State Legislature should not mandate in statute the use of any specific document creation and preservation technologies, as technologies can easily become outdated." Minnesota's report claims, "The marketplace is still in flux, and it is not certain that a single standard will emerge." In related news, yesterday's announcement from Microsoft that they would provide support for ODF in a future update to Office 2007 has EU antitrust investigators optimistic, but cautious. Microsoft has said that the ISO process was what prevented OOXML from receiving support in the same time frame.
Outdated? Really? Did they even bother to ask anyone that knows anything about opensource? Open standards means that even if it does become outdated there can still be an implementation no matter what. It's the best insurance against having outdated formats. I guess I'm off to write a few paper letters.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
Yeah I'm sure it was the ISO process that prevented it from getting support, not the shoddy standard that is OOXML.
they should give a law saying that the document formats chosen by public entities should have Open Standards.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
Really, the use of fear of z standard becoming outdated is just a justification for inaction. There is no answer to that in any sort of technical field. What can you say when technology will always improve, standards will always become outdated. Saying you shouldn't adopt a standard because it will become outdated is precisely akin to saying you shouldn't drive a car because it will eventually run out of gas. It's just a mask to allow them to justify to the public why they won't move forward.
If fear of a standard becoming obsolete is a reason for not adopting it, I'm curious as to how they justify any of their IT budget?
I agree with you that they shouldn't state in laws that a certain standard should be used, just that they be open. It was just their wording as to the reason that I don't particularly like. Anyway, when laws get passed stating that the standards for government documents must be open are there also penalties for non-compliance? These documents are important and the best way to ensure that they survive the test of time is to make the standards open and free to download by anyone.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
As in functionally outdated. What happens when active documents become the norm? (One could argue that with AJAX and magical PDF forms, they already are.) What happens when wikis are the expected way to receive complex information with cross-references? Another chance for content handling software houses to get their fingers sticky? In court, sometimes you don't appeal because you know you'll lose, and sometimes you don't appeal because you know winning would be worse than losing.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
The common way to do it is to have legislation which refers to a standard managed by an external agency. The standard can then be changed without requiring legislative change.
This works well in fields like safety, where OHS laws can reference equipment like fall prevention harnesses, and still allow manufacturers the opportunity to innovate in their products.
It will fail in an arena where the resident monopolist is willing and able to trample standards bodies in order to perpetuate its monopoly. Until the monopolist is unseated, or demonstrably changes its ways, more specific legislation, such as mandating a particular format will be needed.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
IMHO, standards should be the law. I mean, no open standard should become a law, but there should be a law that is the standard, and by basic legal principles of equal rights for everyone under the law, it would also have to be open, to be fair.
Industry would be obliged to fulfill the law to the letter but would also be allowed to "embrace and extend" the codified legal format, but only for purposes not related to public, legal or government affairs, no "extended format" document would be acceptable as legal, neither should anyone be obliged or coerced to read or write a document in such an format. Of course, then each word processor would have to have "legal" mode of editing, or option in "save as" selection of legal format in addition to its proprietary one(s). The law which codifies legal format should have no external references, i.e. complete and unambiguous description, "from scratch", should be contained in it.
Car analogy: there is set of prerequisites for a car to be legal and "road legal", but you can make your own motorized vehicle to drive around your own estate. Also, a commercial car is allowed to be "better" then required by law, but it should be able to observe traffic regulations (i.e. it must be possible to drive slow, or brake more gradually, no matter how ridiculously obvious and assumed this may sound).
Microsoft has already said they will only implement ODF 1.1 when at the same time all competitors will produce ODF 1.2 documents.
Thus Microsoft will not be able to read many ODF dokuments produced because of imcompatibilities.
Its Microsoft making a imcompatible version of Java all over again to stop Java from being adopted. Now they are doing it to stop ODF from being adopted.
Just saying it like it are.
Can OO.o, KOffice, or Symphony read _any_ valid ODF document properly and properly save any changes made to the document that ODF supports?
If not, they are correct in stating that there is no fully compliant ODF implementation.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
This should be a POLICY issue not a LEGISLATIVE one. They should make it policy only to use open formats. And worry about the format becoming outdated is hogwash. If you want to open a Microsoft Word document written 20 years ago, simply crank up Word 2007 and open it. Open Office will open current versions (at least up to 2003) of MS's formats as well. I do not know how far they go back, but I'm sure future editions will at least open stuff from today.
.csv files but extended to include text, spreadsheet, database, web graphics, desktop publishing, and even non-editable files (.pdf).
.pdf competitors, but there's simply too many different versions right now. .pdf, .xps, .mdi, etc.
I look forward to an open, non-proprietary standard for all data types. In the same vein as Text files and
I regularly use Microsoft's
In the end, this will all be determined by the 'office' wars. Which may depend on the 'OS' Wars. I.e. if Linux or Mac leapfrogs and becomes the majority desktop platform, whatever office suite works best on that platform will probably be the one whose format becomes most-used.
Bottom line: Who cares? There's always conversion utilities.
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
The key difference is that the failures in interoperability in the suites I mentioned will be treated as bugs and fixed promptly.
Office's incompatibilities will be flaunted as failures of the format and exploited to justify extending and extinguishing it.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
You are missing the fundamental difference when it comes to information publishing vs hardware standards. Imagine if in the early 80s NYS passed a law that all documents should be available via videocassette (even worse, imagine if they encoded BetaMax into the law). State agencies would still be spending money to publish via videocassette, even though that mode of communication is outdated.
The NY report called on the new committee to consider costs, so it's worth a mention. The general view is that switching to a new platform and office suite entails training costs, but they're paid back over about five years. On the other hand, government agencies are likely to license open source systems and pay for support, instead of using free-as-in-beer versions. But once again, Microsoft is forcing people to switch to new versions of their software, which leads to training costs.