Would you mind explaining a few things for those of us who are not red hatters?
What is DRM?
Who is a thief?
How is Open Document Format used? Is it similar to .txt or .rtf? Can it be used in Microsoft Word, or wordpad? If not, how?
This sounds like a good thing, but I'm not sure how it is used.
Where did the term red hat come from?
I'm running Open Office on my WinXP PC at home and it opens and saves Word documents without a problem.
^^^^^^^^^^What is DRM?^^^^^^^^^^^
DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. It's part of TCM, or TPM, or whatever microsoft is calling their trusted platform.
Basically, any music you have on your computer in mp3, wma, ogg, or others is stolen. Even if you own the CDs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management#Legal_enforcement_of_DRM
This should give you a little bit of a background to work with. It's a nightmare.
^^^^^^^^^^^^Who is a thief?^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ask Dr Dre and Metallica and any of these other music/hollywood whackos who are pushing groups like the RIAA to implement protections on music.(don't forget the shareholders)
You do remember their comments from/about napster, right?
^^^^^How is Open Document Format used?^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It's actually very simple. Instead of .doc you'd have .odf. A format which all applications can use thus protecting people from vendor lock.
Microsoft releases office 15 and it sucks, people can easily move to open office 5. If that sucks too then they can go to star office 12. Corel office. K Office. G Office. Etc....
^^^^^^^^^^^Can it be used in Microsoft Word, or wordpad?^^^^^^^^^^^
Not now. Linux/OSS is the first competitor that MS hasn't found a way to squash or FUD out of business.
They would rather you use a mac than linux. Having so many players stacking up against them, now including the state of MASS, they're running out of options and time.
^^^^^^^^^^^Where did the term red hat come from?^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It's a name of a company. http://www.redhat.com/ You can download their operating system for free at http://fedora.redhat.com/ which I'm using right now.
I'm not sure where the term originates from, wikipedia might answer that but as it sits now RH is the largest (#1) linux-only company. Novell(as in netware) is #2.
What is DRM?
DRM = Digital Rights Management
Note that the "rights" being spoken of here aren't your rights as a consumer, but rather is referring to the "right" of a company to restrict how you may use a product you purchase from them.
Let's say you buy a CD of the group "Anonymous 4" called "11,000 Virgins" (it's not/i> what you think - I highly recommend it as some of the most beautiful music ever to be recorded). The supporters of DRM want to be able to prevent you from being able to rip the contents of that disk to your computer so you can put it in your playlist there, into your iPod, or however else you chose to use it. I'm not talking here about giving it to friends or anything else like that. Many in the music industry want to have to buy a copy for each device you want to use it on. If they had their way they'd get rid of the "doctrine of first sale" and put second hand music stores out of business as well.
There is much more to this, and it would be a good idea for you to look more fully into it as it will affect you eventually. Big Media&tm; want to do away with products like Tivo (and all other PVRs), just like they attempted to squash the VCR years ago.
WHo is a thief?
According to Jack Valente, anyone who hums "happy birthday" without paying royalties to ASCAP or RIAA is a thief. Not only that, but extending the length of copyright to infinity minus one day would satisfy the constitutional requirement that copyright be for a "limited time".
How is Open Document Format used? Is it similar to .txt or .rtf?
These two are best answered together. The Open Document Format (ODF) is a spcification for a file format that was agreed to by a collection of companies and organizations. The idea behind it was to have a vendor-independent file format that was easily parsable with 3rd party tools and was fully documented.
The reason such a file format is important to a government body like the state of Mass., is that it allows citizens in the state to conduct business with the state through electronic documents without specifying the software they must use to do so. This will encourage competition among software vendors as they will have to compete based on conformance to the standard and on such things as product features, reliability, speed, and usability.
Can it be used in Microsoft Word, or wordpad?
At the present time, Microsoft does not support the OpenDoc format in any of their products.
If not, how?
OpenOffice, StarOffice, AbiWord, Koffice all support, or will support the OpenDoc format in the near future.
If Microsoft wants to compete, they'll have to either support the format natively in their software, or they can make a 'filter' available to allow the import and export of OpenDoc documents, much like they already do for WordPerfect and Lotus 123.