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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."
OpenLockin?
That's favoring one vendor over another. What the government should be doing is mandating a variety of formats based on the preferences of the public. Microsoft Office, ODF, PDF and XHTML would be much better, and it wouldn't be that hard for the government to support all of those. After all, Microsoft Office can or does support all of those formats, so it's not like the government would have to do more than install a little extra software and mandate that all public records be saved 4 times with File->Save As or a macro that does the same thing.
...of red state democrats.
whilst it's always good to see genuinely open formats in use, isn't there already an ISO standard document format? If there is, is it better to use the ISO standard or an open standard?
And semi-dirty to dirty politicking if that doesn't convince them. Remember Massachusetts.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
If you live in Texas, get involved with your reps to see that this gets passed.
open documents means the government stays accessible to all. There is no reason not to want that in a republic.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's called a PDF...
I have a bad feeling about this...
...right? I mean, that's their stated goal.
Oh wait, no. Politicians only do things that help them personally.
I love you, U.S.A. political system.
...the mighty herds of MS lobbyists swarming in their 1000s down to texas at this very moment.
Hm. It's the fault of the republicans I guess. Evil conservative types, wanting lock-ins. Definitely a republican problem. If we had more democrats in Texas, we would have more open standards! Just look at California, New York, Washington... look at all those open standards being used by those states! And democrat-liking Hollywood! Hollywood is a huge "open source," open document, non-DRM fan. What we need to do is legislate open formats, that way private companies can't be standards incompliant! That will fix the free market, private enterprise will flourish, etc.
[/sarcasm]
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.
I'm waiting more for Texas to secede, and take a huge portion of it's neighboring area/people with it. I fully believe that if they did, and the US tried to take it back, Texas would come out with more land than when they left initially.
Shit like the mayor of that Texas town telling the cops to stop investigating an incident with a cop getting shot in the face by an illegal immigrant drug runner among other numerous issues that Texas is at the forefront of giving the Federal Government the middle finger over, I see it as only a matter of time.
Wasn't Betamax the better of the two, and VHS only won because of porn? How does that analogy make any sense?
The one where they legally require you to buy your own private insurance and then call it universal healthcare? Yeah, I'm sure that one is costing the state billions.
It is, because if you cannot afford health insurance, the state picks up the tab. that's the whole key. Massachussetts has the lowest uninsured percentage in the country, by far, but it is expensive to do.
This is my sig.
Go right ahead, Ballmer. You can bribe those oily Europeans until they're shining your car, but I dare you to budge the courageous and independent public officials of Texas! They cannot be bought and will stand tall against oh my god who am I kidding here open document formats are doomed.
---don't make me break out my red pen.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123698935539126273.html
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Among the reasons for Nebraska's economic strength is a long history of strong executive leadership and an independent legislature. But mainly these factors exist because we have an inquiring public that demands to know how tax dollars are spent. That's called accountability, and it was the inspiration behind my effort to create NebraskaSpending.com, a searchable, public database that discloses every aspect of state government spending. By allowing the public to examine how its money is spent, we are equipping Nebraskans with great tools to hold their government accountable.
Kentucky, Missouri and other states also have established, or are establishing, similar Web sites. These sites have cost states millions. We did ours for $38,000.
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Nebraska sets a great example to follow when it comes to open government. While what they did did not specifically cover the format of said documents they did present expenditures in a method by which citizens of their state and others can see where the money is going. That is far more important to me than what format the information is in.
Look, presentation is key, not the format of which it is stored. Yes, it would good if the data was stored in a truly neutral format it does guarantee access to it or easy access.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
They only way for ODF to fail is if big-business buys the result. I'm sure America has learnt over the past few months not to let big business dictate the politics.
Ha ha ha ha.
Ok, I can understand ODF for collaboration, but is that the best format for publication? Why not PDF or XPS?
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
Does someone want to tell me what's wrong with plain text?
It's expressive enough for legal documents... Are they using ClipArt, for Pete's sake?
Besides that, it takes a tiny fraction of the disk space or any other format; its standards are stable; it's platform- and application-independent; you can search, scrape, and analyze it with extreme ease; and they can use Unicode if they like non-Latin characters.
I'm not seeing the drawback here. No Wingdings?
"Each electronic document created, exchanged, or maintained by a state agency must be created, exchanged, or maintained ..."
Sounds to me like it's drafted up by the Department of Redundancy Department. I didn't know the Democrats have one?
PDF has been suggested in other proposals for publication.
XPS is proprietary.
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.
what about rich text format, RTF?
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.
The version of OOXML ratified as a standard doesn't even have one implementation I know of, let alone two on multiple platforms. Also the restrictions and royalties clause and IP/patent clauses would likely be an issue since MS's licensing of their format significantly restricts competitors.
I contacted Representative Branch's office, and I sent to Senator West's office too asking that he introduce a companion bill there, or support it in any other ways he can.
Open XML is a dead horse.
>
Hmm, he is saying "... Word and Excel replaced with lesser-known competitors...." like it would be a bad thing.
Sucks to be him.
Interesting how you leap to defend your beloved Republicans. You won't tolerate even the implication that they aren't the perfectly benevolent masters they claim to be.
Stop being a partisan idiot, please.
"it's important to realize here that the government isn't mandating OpenOffice usage, just ODF file formats"
It's hard to realize that when the coverage outright lies about that being the case.
TFA: "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."
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
which is careful to be even-handed, giving Microsoft's spokesman equal time.
That is not even remotely "even-handed". Even handed would be if M$ was given time proportional to the number of people they represent, which is practically nil.
People, including the media, endlessly confuse "one dollar, one vote" with "one person, one vote". It's time they stopped doing that.
"And therefor, you must acquit!"
That's how I always took it. Good to see corroboration. (Might have felt a bit paranoid without it.)
Anyway, parent thinks he's invented something new?
There's precedent for sarcasm marks (sarcasm points), irony marks (irony points), doubt points, certitude points, acclamation points, authority points, indignation points, love points, and percontation points (rhetorical punctation).
I recommend for him a bit of research before he thinks he's invented something and certainly before he commends others to action. And before he names the find after himself.
The one where they legally require you to buy your own private insurance and then call it universal healthcare? Yeah, I'm sure that one is costing the state billions.
It is, because if you cannot afford health insurance, the state picks up the tab. that's the whole key.
Except the state doesn't pick up the tab for everyone who can not afford health insurance. A few months ago CNN had special report on health care and part of it was about the Massachusetts system. One person in the report was a DJ for a radio station and his employer didn't offer health insurance. So he checked into getting his own. He said part of the state law was that a person who did not have or buy insurance had to pay a fine but that it would be cheaper for him to pay the fine than it was to pay for insurance. At leas the first year, because the fine increased after the first year. He simply couldn't afford insurance and the state was not helping him. According to "Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America" the cost for the insurance has gone up not down.
Should there be a Law?
If memory serves me correctly, you could only get Betamax from Sony, and they didn't license it out for 3rd parties to produce equipment for.
Your memory is wrong then. Besides Sony, other companies offered BetaMax video recorders.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I'm not sure if it would be that difficult to read a document in the WordPerfect 5.1 format right now since the current version of WordPerfect and both OpenOffice.org and StarOffice will open the file.
It depends on whether the file format was proprietary, and MS's OOXML is proprietary. OO.org can open some MS file formats but it does not display them all correctly.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?