Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument

FOX News ^ | September 28, 2005 | James Prendergast

[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.

[Prime Choice]

One of the founding members of the author's organization, Americans for Technology Leadership, is...Microsoft!

http://www.techleadership.org/about/

Not exactly an independent view.

Okay...now we're coming up to the part where Brass Buzzard accuses you of being a Communist lackey for actually stating facts.

[Paleo Conservative]

Editorial on FOX News weighs in on the controversial decision by MA to switch all their systems to an obscure and untested data format.

That would be very useful for the legislature.

[Golden Eagle]

PDF is an open format. Anyone who cares to implement the format within their application is able to do so, because Adobe has provided detailed specifications describing the format.

From what I understand, so is Microsoft's new format, which was specifically opened to meet the supposed MA request. But MA moved the target anyway.

[Petronski]

So Microsoft is excluding itself from Massachusetts over "a slight modification of a competitor's format?"

How moronic of them.

[flashbunny]

I've never heard him justify why he frequents a site that runs on two of the biggest 'commie' pieces of software - apache and linux.

[LiteKeeper]

And I am no fan of Microsoft - there loss is free-market gain.

[Golden Eagle]

Let's see, a document format that can be read by anything, written by anything

I think you must have meant "read by 1% of computers, written by 1% of computers" instead, since that is about how common this format is.

[Petronski]

I didn't want to sound like I disagree with you. I don't.

Be well.

[Prime Choice]

Uh-oh...you dinged the Brass Buzzard with readily-accessible facts. That's like holding up garlic and a crucifix to Dracula himself.

Now all we're going to get is a lot of hissing, frantic swiping and erratic backpedaling from ol' Buzzy.

[Golden Eagle]

Obscure and untested? Any new format is obscure and untested.

Which is why it's not a good idea to mandate an entire state government to use it, with no alternatives allowed.

[Redcloak]

I imagine you do.

Are you back to opposing non-proprietary file formats?

[JoJo Gunn]

The release said Americans for Technology Leadership was "a new grassroots coalition."

Y'all refresh my memory. Wasn't that grassroots coalition made up of dead people who wrote letters to State Prosecutors and Letters to the Editor(s) of newpapers? ;)

[Prime Choice]

I've never heard him justify why he frequents a site that runs on two of the biggest 'commie' pieces of software - apache and linux.

Hell...dig back into his posts far enough and you'll find he claims he was on Free Republic prior to it being created...and that he was on the World Wide Web years before it existed.

The guy's a few biscuits short of a picnic, I tell ya.

[Golden Eagle]

And that took me less than 5 minutes to find out.

No surprise, doesn't make the points he made wrong. At least he's a capitalist, and not one of the "all software must be free" hippies.

[LiteKeeper]

Never crossed my mind - I am well!

[flashbunny]

you speak like someone with absolutely no experience in tech or internet fields.

[Golden Eagle]

Eighteen state's attorneys general were joining with the Justice Department in its anti-trust suit against Microsoft.

Yeah we remember, a bunch of liberals lined up behind Billy Clinton and Janet Reno. Sounds like you were you in the back too?

[Reeses]

Bill Gate's Smithers

[bahblahbah]

"obscure and untested data format"

Who the hell cares, let Massachusetts do whatever they want. Everything is in XML so its not like they can't later hire a couple of college interns or get some software engineering students to write some xslt to convert between the formats.

[flashbunny]

uh, exactly what experience do you have with technology or open protocols?

Do you know the history of TCP/IP and why it was created?

If you did, you would realize his position and yours are ridiculous.