OT: Massachusetts Verdict: MS Office Formats Out
Guy Fraser
guy at incentre.net
Wed Sep 28 19:13:08 UTC 2005
On Wed, 2005-28-09 at 11:14 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
> Fajar Priyanto wrote:
> > The future is forming up....
> >
> > http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1863060,00.asp
> >
> > The state of Massachusetts Friday made it official: It will use only
> > nonproprietary document formats in state-affiliated offices effective Jan. 1,
> > 2007. Although state CIO Peter Quinn has said repeatedly that this issue does
> > not represent "the state versus Microsoft Corp. —or any one company,"
> > adoption of the long-debated plan may result in all versions of Microsoft's
> > Office productivity suite being phased out of use throughout the state's
> > executive branch agencies.
>
> Or MS could "open" its document format...
>
> [snip]
>
> Mike
If you read the articles on this, that is not an option.
Massachusetts has adopted the Open Document Format and
expects the vendors to support that format. All documents
used by the state must use ODF or PDF format, so that
they are "future safe". The Open Document Format was
developed by an international committee, and was intended
to be openly defined and available for use without
restriction or royalty.
Even if MS opened their formats, it is unlikely they
would have given up all legal claims and patents to anyone
who wanted to use it for their own products. Besides there
is already an available set of formats that provide the
features and requirements desired. If MS supports the format
they will be able to contend for software contracts, if they
don't then they will not be allowed.
The notion that features are tied to the document format
hold little value. Most features are just designed to make
manual tasks simpler, but do not affect the well known and
defined methods for typesetting and laying out documents.
Having not read the ODF specs I can not comment on how it
deals with linked data from other documents, but it would
be fair to presume that considerations were made for
linked and embedded data.
I can only hope that all levels of Government everywhere
do the same thing. Contrary to Microsofts spin, this will
improve competition and be good for all effected economies.
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