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in statute the use of any specific document creation and preservation technologies, as technologies can easily become outdated."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.

Comments

Clueless legislators...

[jkrise]

Both reports agree that an open format would be beneficial, but neither were willing to endorse a particular choice.
The State Legislature should not mandate in statute the use of any specific document creation and preservation technologies , as technologies can easily become outdated.

Looks like Microsoft has effectively brainwashed these clueless legislators.

Formats and technologies are completely different things. ODF is an Open Format. Open Office is a technological implementation of this format. Microsoft has recently merely proclaimed that they will also be implementing ODF in the current version of Office.

OOXML claims to be an open ISO certified format. But as on date, there is no technological, compliant iomplementation... in fact, the specification is not yet documented, as required by ISO processes.

Why can't they simply legislate on ODF, and then go about choosing the ideal technological implementation of the same?

Re:Goes to show

[Anonymous Coward]

Open standards means that even if it does become outdated there can still be an implementation no matter what. It's the best insurance against having outdated formats.

Huge difference between restrictions related to a specific open standard and open standards in general. Creating a mandate for open standards in general in relation to government documents would be the best choice as opposed to any specific choice. If a standard is truely open then any document creating software can get the code written to read and output to the open standard. Newer but still open standards could be adopted under a wide mandate without having to change the mandate, but they should be provably open before adoption.

Then as you said it would be insured to be readable later, of course with one additional caveat, the documents should be stored on media with open source file structures as well, else that insurance could be blocked by the inability to read the old file structure. Old documents might be required to be moved to newer storage devices as well but as time passes on the process could become increasing expensive. How many former modes of storage hardware are no longer in use or at least no longer in wide spread use? However if such a requirement is made, then look for Microsoft and perhaps others to fight it as hard as they can.

Composition of those states' panels?

[christian.einfeldt]

It appears that Microsoft is shifting its competitive strategy with regard to ODF from rejecting the ODF standard to fighting for control of the standard in the committees. Below is a statement from James Plamondon, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Developer Relations Group, describing his view of how to leverage Microsoft's influence over committees. One wonders to what extend Microsoft might have used these tactics in New York and Minnesota:

have mentioned before the "stacked panel." Panel discussions naturally favor alliances of relatively weak partners -- our usual opposition. For example, an "unbiased" panel on OLE vs. OpenDoc would contain representatives of the backers of OLE (Microsoft) and the Backers of OpenDoc (Apple, IBM, Novell, WordPerfect, OMG, etc.). Thus, we find ourselves outnumbered in almost every "naturally occurring" panel debate.

A stacked panel, on the other hand, is like a stacked deck: it is packed with people who, on the face of things, should be neutral, but who are in fact strong supporters of our technology. The key to stacking a panel is being able to choose the moderator. Most conference organizers allow the moderator to select die panel, so if you can pick the moderator, you win. Since you can't expect representatives of our competitors to speak on your behalf, you have to get the moderator to agree to having only "independent ISVs" on the panel. No one from Microsoft or any other formal backer of the competing technologies would be allowed -just ISVs who have to use this stuff in the "real world." Sounds marvellously independent doesn't it? In feet, it allows us to stack the panel with ISVs that back our cause. Thus, the "independent" panel ends up telling the audience that our technology beats the others hands down. Get the press to cover this panel, and you've got a major win on your hands.

It bears scrutiny as to who was on the New York and Minnesota panels, and their affiliations and histories. I don't actually know of the composition of those panels, so I am posing a question, not making a statement.

No implementations of Microsoft's OOXML

[christian.einfeldt]

It is important to remember that there are no implementations in the real world of Microsoft's OOXML schema, as discussed in Andy Updegrove's blog, quoting David Worthington:

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080521092930864

Worthington's story includes quotes from Matusow and Mahugh that provide intriguing insights into how the decisions were made. After noting that saving to the OASIS ODF 1.1 format would now be possible, Worthington writes:

However, the company is not quick to embrace its own creation. Mahugh stated that Microsoft would not implement the final ISO version of OOXML until Office 14 ships at an unstated date in the future. This variant of OOXML was designated ISO/IEC 29500 at the time it was certified as an ISO International standard in April.

"One way to look at it is the prioritization of formats," Mahugh explained. "We reach a point in time where we have to decide whether to continue to invest in a previous version [of Office] or to cut the cord and move forward."

ODF support was a priority for Microsoft, Mahugh noted, adding that "real world" customers say that there is a pressing need for PDF [AU: ODF?] support. "At this point there are no products using [ISO/IEC 29500] in the marketplace."

When will Microsoft support its own file format? Worthingon quotes Gartner Research's Michael Silver on that question as follows:

"Customers that are expecting true document fidelity from XML-based, ISO-standard document formats will continue to be disappointed." Silver observed that the most compatible formats to use today are Microsoft's legacy binaries, and he believes that Microsoft will be unlikely to convince customers to move to OOXML in the foreseeable future.

Executive summaries compared

[davide marney]

The report from NY has a more thorough treatment of the issues than the report from MN. It makes a strong case for openness as a policy, not a technical choice; shows how it is just one of many such choices, not all of which can be equally satisfied in every situation; and then very ably lays out a recommendation for making sure that openness gets pushed down into the state agencies.

The report from MN is focused on relating the wide variety of opinion that exists in this area, and not on making a specific recommendation (other than the commonsense one that the market is in flux and that the legislature shouldn't be picking market winners and losers.) The report gave me a much better understanding of just how confusing it can be when people try to talk about this issue. Like many complex topics, one needs to almost insist on agreements about terminology and scope even before engaging in the real discussion.