Will Linux Benefit from Microsoft's SNAFU in Massachusetts?

O'Reilly ^ | Sep. 28, 2005 | Tom Adelstein

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

David Berlind over at ZDNet wrote a remarkable article called Did Microsoft send the wrong guy to Massachusetts' ODF hearing?. If you missed this article, you'll have missed the equivalent of what Intel's Andy Grove called an inflection point. This one has the potential to have more impact than the release of the first Pentium processor.

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Microsoft has essentially alienated the rest of the IT industry. I can't remember a single company that had so many people working in harmony against it, including IBM at the height of its arrogance. The Java Community Process provides just one example of an industry working again a company.

[Golden Eagle]

Massachusetts picked a format that was developed to be non-proprietary, as they saw that XML was not a functional file format.

The format they've chosen is XML based.

I would love to hear that using ADA as we had to some years ago for Defense contracts, and how RS-232 is a communist/socialist plot.

We never had to use ADA, nor did anyone else I know. RS2332 was a true innovative standard, this one is a joke based on a minority product.

If anything the nonsense with patents is anti-conservative, as it chokes the free market and gives government a great amount of power to enforce the right to control ideas.

Protecting ideas from illegal duplication is conservative, preventing that protection is liberal. Obviously.

To tell a consumer, even a government consumer, that they can't make demands on the type of tools they want, is an abuse of the principles of limited government, which is one of the cornerstones of conservatism.

I won't argue that, see my posts, I totally agree that choices should be allowed, but this decision is taking choice away. And the reason given - to make the data more accessible - is ridiculous since no one currently has access to this format, and the industry standard format is being denied completely.

[Golden Eagle]

By mandating an open document format that no individual can limit MA has not limited the types of technology they have, in fact, expanded them.

Insane. They chose an untested mod of a minority product, one that basically none of their current constituents have have access to.

[Golden Eagle]

Nothing about ADA must be used?

Never even seen any ADA code in use, heard about it, that's all. We were terrified at first, but ignored it completely and no one cared.

Are you honestly trying to convey the impression that the gov't merely asks for a product and accepts whatever is delivered?

Contracts are specific, never for something so large as "entire state government". To mandate a single product, especially one that is obscure and untested, for that large of an operation is absurd, and obviously politically motivated.

[N3WBI3]

They chose an untested mod of a minority product, one that basically none of their current constituents have have access to.

Hmm none of their constituents can get to openoffice.org which has release for Unix (OSX, Solaris, ....), Windows, and Linux? Corel (closed source) plans to have ODF out by the end of the year and Star Office (closed srouce) already has it. Given the timeframe MS has more than enough time to impliment it themselves.

Face it youre pissed about a state wanting a really open format because it forces MS to either adopt it or be left out. Thats MS's decision to make they are not being forced out of any market..

[Khym Chanur]

You claim to work for the DoD, yet you don't see any "limiting" of technology in RFQ from the gov't? Nothing about ADA must be used?

From Wikipedia:

In 1987, the US Department of Defense began to require the use of Ada (the Ada mandate) for every software project where new code was more than 30% of result, though exceptions to this rule were often granted. This requirement was effectively removed in 1997, as the DoD began to embrace COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) technology. Similar requirements existed in other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries.

[Khym Chanur]

Protecting ideas from illegal duplication is conservative, preventing that protection is liberal. Obviously.

Why care about whether doing so is conservative or liberal? According to the Constitution:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Seems that whether or not patents actuall promote the progress of sciense and useful arts should be the standard by which they're judged, unless you desire a constitutional amendment that changes things. Personally, I think that the way software patents are being granted don't promote the progress of the art of software, but that's pretty different from the topic under discussion.

I totally agree that choices should be allowed, but this decision is taking choice away.

Any sort of requirement that the government makes will limit the choices they have for the software they can choose. Do you find this lessing of choice bad only because you find the reason behind the requirements to be bad, or do you have more genearl objections?

[Khym Chanur]

They chose an untested mod of a minority product...

It's a standard, not a product. In what way is it being "untested" a detriment here? That this format might not allow for doing certain things with documents that the state needs to do?

Or do you mean that, as of yet, in the only products which have implemtented it so far, that the ODF import/export functionality is so new as to be untested?

... one that basically none of their current constituents have have access to.

What percentage of the consituents would have to already have software which can handle ODF installed before you'd consider it to be non-detrimental for the state to switch to that format? Or do you have some other definition for "have access to"?

[Dominick]

Protecting ideas from illegal duplication is conservative, preventing that protection is liberal. Obviously.

This isn't true at all. Allowing a person to use the courts to protect his work for a limited period of time is constitutional. There is no political bent to it. If anything the government should stay the heck out of battles to preserve Mickey Mouses copyright for centuries. It should have no say, until someone brings in a court case. So far, the issues they have brought in "digital rights" management are not at all in keeping with our (at least for rest of FR) values as conservatives and as laissez faire capitalists.

How about FM radio and Armstrong, was the denial of his rights to sell FM radio? Obviously, his rights were frustrated by a government gone wild, interfering in the due process of the courts, which is what conservatives want to prevent by the definition of our political goals.

I totally agree that choices should be allowed, but this decision is taking choice away. And the reason given - to make the data more accessible - is ridiculous since no one currently has access to this format, and the industry standard format is being denied completely

MS Word is not an "industry" format. ASCII text is an standard, HTML is an standard, XML in the pure form is an standard. MS-XML is proprietary. The format does not have to be implemented by a single piece of software to be adopted.

[Golden Eagle]

Nope, just pointing out how ridiculous it is when these liberals claim they want to make it easier for people to access their data, then forbid the format that 90% of the people are currently using.

[Golden Eagle]

ASCII text is an standard, HTML is an standard

Sure are, and MS office writes to them and others. I use HTML for almost everything I do. There's not a lot of need for even more standards, but if there were, it should be based on what most people are using now, not something obscure that no one currently has.

[shadowman99]

Not Massachusetts. It's all about Google.

The watershed moment is Google's action the week with Sun. Their new partnership will place a link to Open Office on the Google bar that many IE users happily install, as well as installing the JRE. This is a direct shot at MS from Google. This is why Balmer is throwing chairs at employees. "The browser is the operating system" is becoming reality, and Microsoft is not positioned to dominate this market.

Open Office is feature rich and stacks up very well against MS Office. Since this version is web based, users will always be running the latest version. Many older machines that run MS Office slowly will benefit by running a browser based Office suite. And the macro-viruses that plague MS Office will be easier to control since Google and Sun can control their web services faster than MS can get it's users to patch their systems.

Google and Sun this week made the arguments about operating systems obsolete. With the introduction browser based Open Office, we finally are seeing the internet based application services enter the mainstream.

Windows, Linux, OSX, whatever. In a couple years the most important program you boot will be your browser, and IE isn't keeping up with the Joneses in that dept.

Massachusetts is simply an interesting footnote. Business analysts will look back at this someday as the year that Microsoft's empire began to break away.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Interesting post.

How do you know that there will be a link on the google toolbar to oo.o?