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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.
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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.
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That's favoring one vendor over another.
Hmm... one vendor? Lets see who supports ODF.
AbiWord, Google Docs, IBM Lotus Symphony, KOffice, NeoOffice, OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, SftMaker Office, Corel WordPerfect Office, Zoho Office.
Of those, which is the one vendor that is being favored?
The specification is also open for others to use in either free or proprietary applications. Since the spec is open and there is open software to access the format, the documents created in it should always have the possibility of being accessed.
The ability to switch to open standards and open source software can also save local and federal governments millions of dollars.
If you haven't been paying attention, local and state governments are having a hard time financially. The economic downturn has reduced their income. I'd much rather my government use open source than raise my property taxes.
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Actually, it is favoring all vendors....over just one. With them picking one, non-proprietary format...then, any document application can be considered and used to read/write.
You said it yourself that MS can operate with ODF, so, it isn't like MS is being locked out here.
As long as they pick one format, that no one company 'owns', then that sounds to me like the way to go for our public documents. And, often times...as the govt. goes,, so does the general public. Much like hardware is becoming commodity, so are office applications (especially spreadsheets and word processors). They should be treated as such.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
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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]
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.........
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.
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%.
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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?
Wasn't Betamax the better of the two, and VHS only won because of porn? How does that analogy make any sense?
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.
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.
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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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.