Posted on 09/29/2005 8:52:01 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
The broader media usually take little interest in public policy debates about technology, but they’re missing a big story in Massachusetts.
The technology trades, blogs and industry are buzzing about a monumental policy shift in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Officials in the state have proposed a new policy that mandates that every state technology system use only applications designed around OpenDocument file formats.
Such a policy might seem like something that should concern only a small group of technology professionals, but in fact the implications are staggering and far-reaching. The policy promises to burden taxpayers with new costs and to disrupt how state agencies interact with citizens, businesses and organizations.
Worse, the policy represents an attack on market-based competition, which in turn will hurt innovation. The state has a disaster in the making.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
If you have a NeXT around, try firing it up next to a Linux machine, and compare them head to head. Compare Appsoft Image to The GIMP. While you are at it, check out http://gnustep.org/.
OSX is certainly a nice system, and shows how nice NeXT was. Solaris is great for high-end servers, but I'm having trouble thinking of situations in which I'd deploy it for production purposes on anything most companies can afford. I'm afraid that it will turn into a dinosaur. Most of the action these days is on low-end servers.
Thanks to both of you. I finally figured it out on my version. File|Print and the print to file through the PDF converter. I never would have found that if you all hadn't pointed me in the right direction. Even knowing what I was doing, I couldn't find that documented.
A quick test seemed to work. I'll play with it some more tomorrow.
I take it from some of the comments that it may be more elegant in later versions?
Later versions have an 'Export as PDF...' option in the File menu.
Bravo, 'bunny. Bravo.
I bet the new policy will stimulate competition and innovation. It will result in rapid improvements to the OpenDocument standard, and a bunch of great new applications will emerge that will put Microsoft to shame (again). I hope companies like Apple adopt OpenDocument as a native format in their applications.
Jim Prendergast is executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership.
The so-called "Americans for Technology Leadership" is lobbyist outfit funded by Microsoft. Prendergast makes his living by spreading Microsoft FUD.
Nowhere in his article did he address the substantive issues of data format rot in long-term document storage, which may be the reason that Microsoft is banned in Boston.
Did you use Windows when it arrived? It didn't even have overlapping windows. It only had tiled windows. For instance, four windows - each using 1/4 of the screen.
Exactly. I already have documents written in obsolete proprietary word processor formats. I don't want public records to be inaccessible 100 years from now.
Yes, I remember GOSIP.
Printing to a PDF converter is not what I had in mind.
I've also never had any trouble with the installer, in any ooorg version. So go figure.
The ooorg installer can get complicated and even stubborn when one wants to install multiple copies/versions of the program on the same box. I HAVE seen that.
Anyone have a handle on the political leanings of some of these tech groups?
Adobe, Apple, Sun, Oracle, etc lean left, Microsoft pretty much apolitical but gives to some left leaning causes?
Why should this be a problem when basically any off the shelf office suite can read those formats now? You sound like parrots repeating the same illogical point over and over. The only possible issue would be the technical will to restablish connectivity into the files, but even these proposed formats would require that.
Not to be rude, but you're closing tag fits you to the a T. First, when you use the word FREE how are you using it? To me it looks as if it's free from cost. But I'm sure after I prove it's not free in that sense you'll switch to FREE as in FREEDOM.
It's been proven the so called FREE software actually costs more to install, operate, and maintain. Now this isn't a blanket statement, but more time than not it has been proven right.
So just to get this straight, you'd rather spend money on getting an inferior product in place because it has an open standard interface? Note the policy doesn't say it has to have certain features, so if the only one that can meet the requirement is something that gives you the features of notepad, you'd be fine with that?
To me you go withe the most cost effective solution. Period. You can determine the cost it takes to convert documents to open standards format, so it's an apples to apples comparison. Once again Taxachussettes and the liberals are leading the way for the Anything But Microsoft crowd.
Now for the ironic part of this. The next version of office is going to be an ODF. I bet most on this thread supporting ODF, won't be supporting MS though.
LOL! It's still proprietary. Adobe can change the standard at any time without any notice. That's what M$ gets beat up on all the time. They want a standards body to own it.
Nevermind that it's Microsoft's own stupid fault for not embracing the OpenDocument Format.
First, how is a gov't mandate helping competition. If ODF was so great it would win on it's own in the market place. Microsoft only has a monopoly on the OS not the office desktop suite. But the good news that I'm sure you'll love is that the next version of Office does use an ODF. So let's give 3 cheers to the next version of office that I'm sure you're just dying to buy so you can have a microsoft ODF. Hooray, Hooray, Hooray!
I was corrected on this statement in an earlier post. TCP/IP is actually a suite of open protocols. It's not a standard per se.
You and Bush2000 are gonna simply have to learn that if you post evidence that socialist and communist govt's are part of the ABM crowd you will get batted around because you are hitting people who like to think of themselves as conservative.
There I fixed it for you.
bump for later
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.