FoxNews.com readers slam pro-Microsoft column

Macworld ^ | 10/14/2005 | Elizabeth Montalbano

[Panerai]

Readers of FoxNews.com have blasted a Sept. 30 column criticizing Massachusetts’ decision to support an open document format for its published documents, a move that would limit or even eliminate the use of Microsoft Corp.’s Office software in state government agencies.

The column, “Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument,” was written by James Prendergast, executive director of the Americans for Technology Leadership, an organization Microsoft co-founded.

Several of the letters, published Wednesday on FoxNews.com, accuse Microsoft of trying to promote its own interests by presenting Prendergast, writing for a Microsoft-linked organization, as an unbiased observer. This practice is known as “astroturfing,” defined as a formal public relations campaign that tries to mask itself as a spontaneous, grassroots reaction to an event or opinion.

Massachusetts last month finalized a plan to standardize the published documents of its government agencies on OpenDocument (short for Open Document Format for Office Applications), an XML-based file format developed within the standards body OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards).

“I think the issue here is that Microsoft has taken a strategic stand not to provide data in this format, for commercial reasons, and now is trying, via James Prendergast, to create doubt in the minds of your readers to keep its products in control,” wrote reader Joe Moore, according to FoxNews.com.

[opticks]

No Office, No Microsoft.

[YOUGOTIT]

Massachusetts - is that not the so called state that votes a drunk, woman killer into the Senate every 6 years?

[Panerai]

Funny guy, the decision to go with opendocument was made by the Republican Governor

[Question_Assumptions]

As someone who really likes MS Office (I have purchased copies on my Macintoshes), I applaud this move to keep standards open. If adoption becomes widespread enough, Microsoft will simply adapt Office to handle this format, either natively or via translation from native formats and I think that's a win for competition and an open marketplace. Of course there is always the chance that Microsoft will revert back to their "embrace and extend" ways if they do, but that's better than a wholly proprietary format.

[flashbunny]

yes, and amazingly, they got this right.

[JoJo Gunn]

ping

[IonInsights]

You can save MS-Office files as XML, and then transform them to whatever XML format you need. Problem solved.