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Texas Legislature Considers Open Document Formats
An anonymous reader notes that a legislator in Texas has introduced a bill to require open document formats in all state government business. The bill is carefully worded such that only ODF could pass its test as "open." The story is covered by the Fort Worth Star Telegram, which is careful to be even-handed, giving Microsoft's spokesman equal time. A ZDNet blogger notes that the bill, introduced by a Democrat in a state whose politics is dominated by Republicans, faces chances that "...fall somewhere east of slim and west of none."
And semi-dirty to dirty politicking if that doesn't convince them. Remember Massachusetts.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
The bill is carefully worded such that only ODF could pass its test as "open."
That's favoring one vendor over another.
I totally agree with you there, and that is what I came here to say.
Microsoft Office, ODF, PDF and XHTML would be much better,
By suggesting MS Office, you miss the point of open formats. Suppose the government saves something, and doesn't open it again for 30 years. This happens a lot for archives. It will be tough to impossible to track down the specific version of MS Office so they can open it. They likely won't even know which version to track down. PDF or XHTML, on the other hand, are open formats, and are unlikely to die soon. XHTML has the additional advantage that it is text, and even if 50 years from now, nobody remembers how to render XHTML, they can get the content by reading the file in a text editor.
Indeed. I think it's important to realize here that the government isn't mandating OpenOffice usage, just ODF file formats. Nothing prevents Microsoft from integrating ODF support into Office in meaningful ways and remaining competitive with the other players.
They don't want that though. Without lock-in on the MS file formats, they can't keep their customers hog tied to MS Office. It's simple business. I wish politicians would just realize that until they put Microsoft in a position of equal footing, they will always be paying too much for software.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
While PDF is open, it also allows heavy DRM.
But that is entirely at the discretion of the person who made the PDF, rather than at the whim of Adobe.
No, Republicans hate democrats and vote against them regardless of the merits of the bill.
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And vice versa.
The Microsfot answer to ODF, though approved by an ex-standard body (turned MS plaything) is NOT an actual open standard:
- no usable specs
- no reference open implementation
- just one implementation (ms office), and maybe not even that
Which is why it is important to word open document laws in such a way as to filter it out. Requesting an open implementation and at least 2 full implementations from different vendors does the trick nicely, and probably will for a long time.
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