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.

[ordinaryguy]

Please point me to some free software for creating PDF files.

www.openoffice.org
iText, a JAVA-PDF library
JasperReports
panda
ROBODoc

[flashbunny]

"The romper room antics and children who seem to have lost their parents are hardly damaging to my position,"

You are the source of the most damage to your position.

You say people use 'romper room antics', yet you throw around the 'commie' label like it was going out of style.

You refuse to answer direct questions, and you say that relevant facts don't matter.

And you don't even know that if not for open standards and protocols, you couldn't even be making those ridiculous statements online.

[bahblahbah]

This is what makes this whole thing ridiculous. The format is in XML so they can use XML-FO to convert it to PDF.

[Golden Eagle]

Socialist governments really go for the free stuff. Cuba...China...Massachusetts...

And it's not enough for them just to use it. They have to go and create these mandates you can't use anything else. Liberal/communist conspiracy, obviously.

[Prime Choice]

I simply post facts like the ones in the above article.

It's an exceedingly biased editorial.

Learn to tell the difference, hah?

[Redcloak]

The upside is that one needn't buy one particular (usually pricey) software title to read official government documents in MA. Nor would you need to do so to submit files to the Commonwealth.

If they published something as a .doc file, then you would need Microsoft Word to reliably open and edit the document. Other programs might be able to do so, however, the results may be less that optimal. (Fonts screwed up, spacings wrong, fields misapplied or lost, etc.)

With open file formats, a number of programs can open and edit the same file. You get to choose which one you want to use instead of having some government bureaucrat decide for you. And what one person composes on one program looks just the same to someone else using a different program. Neither is forced to buy one and only one title to do business with the MA government.

[flashbunny]

you ever going to answer a direct question?

[Petronski]

Liberal/communist conspiracy, obviously.

Don't forget your hat:

[flashbunny]

article, editorial.

Concerned citizen, paid microsoft shill.

It's all the same.

[Petronski]

Other programs might be able to do so, however, the results may be less that optimal. (Fonts screwed up, spacings wrong, fields misapplied or lost, etc.)

DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run.

[Golden Eagle]

Preserving records in a format which someone can work with 100 years from now is liberal?

MS formats have been reverse engineered to this point and therefore from this point on will be open and published royalty free. Your argument has no logic or weight, whether you recognize it as the failed talking point it is or not.

[RushingWater]

I bought a used PC and my Windows won't validate. It doesn't make me like Microsoft.

[JoJo Gunn]

Whose "facts"?

You have been asked time and time again if you have any technical background, and you have not answered. I suspect you're not even on my level, and I'm as Joe Layman as they come. Bit I'm bright and intuitive and don't post FUD like you and Bush2000 and QuasiOwoozi or whatever the name was of that other crazed badger from MS was.

Go ahead, make me a liar. Show some credentials and ability to say anything beyond the childish "you're an open source crazie".

To be blunt, I don't think you will. Anyone who posts inciteful tech threads with no background at all (something you'd never see me do) must be a masochist.

[flashbunny]

Golden eagle is a free republic treasure trove of comedy gold.

[Redcloak]

OpenOffice.org produces .pdf files.

[Prime Choice]

You go right on telling yourself that, Buzzy. Meanwhile, flashbunny has posted several direct questions...all of which you avoid.

Tsk. It's so sad to see you're so utterly afraid of the facts. And that you view the software that this forum runs on (Apache, Linux and PERL) to be "liberal" and "communist."

Seems to me you should practice what you preach and go find yourself a conservative forum that runs on Microsoft IIS. But hey...if you wanna be a loudmouth hypocrite, that's your deal, man.

[Gunslingr3]

Legal worries? He means they want to see the US patent system destroyed, and this is their way of circumventing it.

No, he means, "the exceptions to the 'royalty-free license ... to make, use, sell, offer to sell, import, and otherwise distribute Licensed Implementations solely for the purpose of reading and writing files that comply with the Microsoft specifications for the Office Schemas' are problematic, as are the terms of use"

MS wants to own the file format whereas MA prefers the taxpayer's information be stored in a non-proprietary format so that any vendor can participate in future state information technology contracts. Should MA be locked into a single vendors proprietary format, or locked into an open format that anyone can create programs to read and write? Which situation do you think is better for free market competition?

If you're genuinely interested in the subject and not just spreading FUD for MS you could read this article: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,1863229,00.asp

[Golden Eagle]

If he knew anything about the history of the internet and darpa, he would know why an open standard like TCP/IP was created

TCP/IP was created by the US federal government. This proposed format is a slight change from an obscure vendor's format, nothing else, your attempted comparison between it and TCP/IP is ridiculous, and shows how absurd your reasoning is. Your constant shrieks don't help your cause much either, LOL.

[Prime Choice]

Most excellent contribution to this thread, Petronski! Kudos.

[NJ_gent]

"Mass officials have been quoted as saying PDF files meet the state standards. Please point me to some free software for creating PDF files."

Here. I can point to at least 5 other examples of freely available software for writing pdfs, and at least 10 commercial products. Next question?