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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."
I'm not ever really come across evidence one way or another on this type issue.
If anything, I'd say that BOTH parties, in general, vote towards proprietary solutions, since they both are so heavily bought/rented by corporate interests.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
They can keep them tied to Word (it's still the "safe" choice) but they lose their fiat pricing ability.
Anytime their prices get too steep, you roll out a "test" project with some ODF competitors and microsoft cuts your prices by 50%.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Don't let this thread turn into "Lets bash Texas!" please. I just see it coming, so I write this in hopes to get people thinking.
I recently moved from Washington State to Houston, TX. Things are different here, that's no joke. Some people honestly think of this state as a sovereign country sometimes (and they were for a time... unfortunately). But people are people anywhere you go, and for the most part just want to be left alone down here, free from a government bothering them. This is fairly ingrained into their constitution too; especially as it was re-written when the old southern boys managed to get control back of the government from the highly obtrusive Northern States back in the past-Civil Wars days. They wanted to make sure that the State government was mostly ineffective and powerless so they could be left alone.
What this boils down to, is a State Legislature that is inherently designed to be weak and making change difficult, especially at a state level. In every two year period they are allowed to meet for 140 days (barring a special session being called). Can you imagine your state legislature only meeting for 70 days a year?
That being said, I want to DISPEL any preconceived notions you have about Democrats and Republicans when you look at the Texas State legislature. To get anything done is this ridiculous state, they have to actually work together. Let me repeat that. They have to work together. Partisan lines blur! This political attitude can be seen when you look at our nimrod of an ex-president, all he wanted was to get both Repub. and Dems. sides to work together. Lo and Behold, the political arena in the nation's capital was drastically different (and in my opinion, he was well over his head). Getting back on topic, when you have only 140 days to work with in 2 years, and you have to pass a friggin budget among so many other things, this shows how little Texans trust their government. But these days, no one in their right mind would trust any government at any level.
All I'm saying is, don't generalize Democrat and Republican so heavily in a state legislature. I'm sure most states in this country are the same way, by which I mean, their political arena is drastically different than the National arena.
Posting with out proof reading since 2001.
That's favoring one vendor over another.
Ummm...ODF is a vendor? I think not. Microsoft is more than welcome to join the rest of the world and support ODF. How many vendors offer products that support ODF versus how many vendors support Microsoft's proprietary formats? You say Microsoft supports ODF. If I'm not mistaken that's through a third party add-on. But if they support ODF with their products, what's the problem? How is requiring ODF excluding them or favoring any other vendor? Is it because Microsoft would actually have to compete based on performance and price? Oh what a travesty that would be. Microsoft actually having to compete.
Quote from the article:
At a hearing on the bill then, Microsoft national technology officer Stuart McKee described it as anti-competitive and warned that it could be the equivalent of the state "picking Betamax when everyone else goes with VHS."
How can using a format that is free and unencumbered, that anyone can implement and is implemented in a number of different products "anti-competitive"?
Who is John Galt?
As others have said, Arnold is a RINO to most Republicans. (Republican in Name Only)
However, A quick true story will help understand the grayness of Liberal vs Conservative.
A colleague of mine moved from CA. to OK. In CA, he thought he was a conservative. In OK, he discovered he was a liberal who was a little to the right towards being a moderate.
In other words, Conservative/Liberal is in the eyes of the beholder!
OK has a limited legislative session also.
As a Staunch Republican, I use Linux, ODF, release pgms under GPL. So Dem/Rep is not limited to Linux/Windows.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Aside from my quibbles that multiple implementations or "uses XML" should not really be part of the definition of an open format, there is not a clear way to interpret the bill as excluding OOXML, the format MS rammed through as an ISO standard to compete with ODF. So if the intent is to support ODF and disallow OOXML, I don't see that this will do it. (The bill as written requires documents to be an open document format, which the bill defines as one that is XML, open, interoperable across platforms and applications, published without restrictions or royalties, independently implemented by multiple SW providers, controlled by an open industry organization -- could arguably apply to both ODF and OOXML.)
And boy oh boy, is Aman Batheja, the author of the Star Telegram article, confused. First of all, he confuses "open document formats" and "open source." He writes, "State Rep. Marc Veasey is pushing lawmakers to require all state agencies to create and share their electronic documents in open-source formats." The bill has nothing to do with open source, or programming of any kind! The bill simply states that the file format for DOCUMENTS should be open, like ODF (and unlike, .doc/.ppt).
He goes on, in his confusion, "It could also mean that many state workers may see familiar Microsoft products such as Word and Excel replaced with lesser-known competitors on their work computers." Again, wrong. MS Office 2007 already has an ODF plugin, so you can read and save to ODF formats from within MS Office if you want to keep using MS Office.