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in statute the use of any specific document creation and preservation technologies, as technologies can easily become outdated."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in statute the use of any specific document creation and preservation technologies , as technologies can easily become outdated.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