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New York Decision On ODF Vs. OOXML Approaching

Posted by kdawson on Tue Dec 18, 2007 08:08 PM
from the choose-wisely-young-jedi dept.
Software Government IT News
christian.einfeldt writes "In August of 2007, the State of New York passed legislation requiring its CIO, Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, to gather information on the advantages and disadvantages of adopting either ODF or OOXML as a document standard, and to report her findings by 15 January 2008. As part of her duties under that legislation, the CIO issued a Request For Public Comment to get feedback on the topic. The deadline for that public comment is 28 December 2007 — so there is still time for the Slashdot crowd to be heard."
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[+] Politics: New York Jumps Into Open Formats Fray 184 comments
cyrusmack writes "Hot on the heels of the bad news regarding the defeat of all open formats bills, New York has become the latest in an area that has seen a flurry of activity already this year. In the article on InfoWorld, it's pretty clear that this bill is significantly watered down from what other states have attempted to do this year. You can bet Microsoft will be there in force, just as it has been elsewhere."
Submission: NY State decision on ODF v OOXML approaching by christian.einfeldt (874074)
[+] Your Rights Online: New York and Minnesota Publish Open Document Studies 62 comments
Multiple readers have written to point out that New York and Minnesota have reached the end of their lengthy deliberations on open document formats. Both reports agree that an open format would be beneficial, but neither were willing to endorse a particular choice. New York's executive summary notes, "The State Legislature should not mandate in statute the use of any specific document creation and preservation technologies, as technologies can easily become outdated." Minnesota's report claims, "The marketplace is still in flux, and it is not certain that a single standard will emerge." In related news, yesterday's announcement from Microsoft that they would provide support for ODF in a future update to Office 2007 has EU antitrust investigators optimistic, but cautious. Microsoft has said that the ISO process was what prevented OOXML from receiving support in the same time frame.
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  • anybody? (Score:3, Funny)

    by pak9rabid (1011935) on Tuesday December 18 2007, @08:11PM (#21746896)
    Am I the only one surprised that this was actually posted here before the deadline?

  • Write! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by h4rm0ny (722443) <h4rm0nyNO@SPAMtarddell.net> on Tuesday December 18 2007, @08:13PM (#21746908) Journal

    If you don't do something as quick and simple as writing to ask for something, what right do you have to complain when you don't get it. If just a small fraction of the people here write in support of ODF, that will be a huge and impressive response.

    There's enough complaining about OOXML et al on this site. Put your money where you mouth is.

    • Re:Write! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2007, @08:48PM (#21747232)
      what right do you have to complain when you don't get it

      Let's see - the NY taxpayers are already paying this CIO's (probably hefty) salary, and she is supposed to recommend that which is best for her constituents.

      From all the info I've seen regarding the matter, ODF and OOXML are two document standards. One was written by committee and has the support of multiple companies, organizations, and individuals. The other is written by a monopoly and has support of no one except MS and their paid shills.

      The fact is there is absolutely no reason for a government body to go with MS's lock-in format considering the technical merits of both, and most especially the past behavior of MS. OOXML is a pseudo-standard, purposefully obfuscated to keep the MS monopoly gravy-train running smoothly.

      If these government agencies can't start making no-brainer decisions in the interest of their constituents, perhaps it's time that these positions were simply abolished...

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by cheater512 (783349)
          Thats the thing. You cannot make your own office suite.
          The 'open' standard is incomplete in addition to being a complete mess.

        • Re:"locked in"? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Fred_A (10934) <fred@NospAm.fredshome.org> on Wednesday December 19 2007, @04:09AM (#21749528) Homepage

          In the spirit of open source, screw the MS Office suite. Take the open OOXML standard and write your own office suite.
          Since you've apparently not followed the saga, the purpose of the MOOXML "standard" is that you cannot reimplement it because it isn't fully specified (in addition to being a festering mess).

          Only Microsoft has the blobs required to make MOOXML work. Only partial compatibility can be attained by other in the best of cases. OTOH ODF actually *is* an open format which is properly documented and which does evolve in the open.

          On top of that, I'm not certain whether all of the Microsoft users can actually read/write MOOXML files. A large number haven't switched to the latest version of Office and don't seem to want to (or cannot if they're on Macs). In small structures I doubt they even know about the translator add ons for their version of Office (if it's even available for their version).

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by hey! (33014)
          Doesn't it matter exactly what the standard does?

          Part of the rationale for OOXML is that organizations and developers can extend it with additional features:

          Second, the custom data are embedded in any OpenXML document in a Custom XML part (3.7.3) and can be described using a Custom XML Data Properties part (4:7.5). By separating these custom data from presentation, OpenXML enables clean data integration, while enabling end-user presentation and manipulation within a wide variety of contexts, including docum

          • Re:"locked in"? (Score:5, Informative)

            by mattpalmer1086 (707360) on Wednesday December 19 2007, @08:41AM (#21750646)
            Gah. Here's a FAQ you may find useful:

            Q: What does open office and MS Office have to do with a document standard?
            A: Nothing.

            Q: What does the GUI of your word processor have to do with the format you save a document in?
            A: Nothing.

            Q: Why do you need to use open office if you use ODF?
            A: You don't, use whatever software you like.

            Q: What does the open source software development model have to do with open information standards?
            A: Nothing.

            Q: Does using ODF mean that communists will steal my children?
            A: No.

            Q: Will aliens eat my brain if I equate information standards with software implementations?
            A: Yes.

    • Re:Write! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2007, @08:55PM (#21747284)
      The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an open standard:
              * The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties (consensus or majority decision etc.).
              * The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a nominal fee.
              * The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
              * There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.

      These commonly accepted criteria are enough to ignore the whole OOXML vs ODF discussions as OOXML patent licesing conditions only fake compliance. No one trusts the OSP and the CNS from Microsoft. And openness of the ongoing ISO process is a running gag.
      • The first one of your points doesn't matter as long as the final three are true and one more:

        The standard must be completely specified. It must be able to be implemented with no other information not present in the standards documents.
    • Any suggestions for how to phrase it if you're not a New York resident?

      This is a New York government function, they would be perfectly within their rights to throw away all input that isn't from New York residents. ...except of course for the "expert testimony" from Redmond, WA.

      • Re:Write! (Score:4, Funny)

        by harlows_monkeys (106428) on Tuesday December 18 2007, @10:34PM (#21747904) Homepage

        Any suggestions for how to phrase it if you're not a New York resident?

        How about this?

        Dear CIO;

        I'm not from New York, but I'm on the Internet. The same Internet that thinks Ron Paul, lolcats, and "2 girls 1 cup" are great, so I obviously know more than anyone technical.

        I don't know anything about your actual requirements, but you should pick ODF, because OOXML is from Microsoft. ODF 1.2 is in committee right now, and it will plug all those holes in ODF, like spreadsheet formulas not being specified, so don't let the fact that you can't do anything useful in the current version without lots of vendor-specific non-standard extensions bother you. Vote for Ron Paul!

  • Being Diplomatic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2007, @08:13PM (#21746914)
    Please folks, if you're going to comment on this issue be polite and don't use form letters. Refer to government open standards, how OOXML isn't a stable standard and is ungoing massive changes at Ecma, that kind of thing.

    Mostly though emphasis on the "polite" part. Imagine how persuasive someone can be when they're not a dick about it and when they just lay out some good clear arguments :)

    • Re:Being Diplomatic (Score:4, Informative)

      by kc2keo (694222) on Tuesday December 18 2007, @08:32PM (#21747086) Homepage
      correct... another words use constructive criticism should you add input before the decision is made. List the pros and cons and be clear and to the point. Its kind of like a resume... If the employer sees many misspelled words, way to long, or with a font thats hard to read, etc will be ignored. If I was to write in with feedback I would put what I want in bullet points and have the text bold. Under that I will argue the pros and cons etc... I would follow the same form throughout my commenting. I find it to be the best way to get your point across. Forgive my horrible comment grammer but I just wanted to add my comment to the discussion. Getting back to History final exam prep along with the Spanish one... :-(

    • Re:Being Diplomatic (Score:5, Informative)

      by harlows_monkeys (106428) on Tuesday December 18 2007, @10:44PM (#21747974) Homepage

      Refer to government open standards, how OOXML isn't a stable standard and is ungoing massive changes at Ecma

      The problem with that is that ODF is also undergoing massive changes. The version currently working its way through standardization adds the OpenFormula spec to ODF, which is something like 25% of the size of ODF. That's a pretty massive change!

  • When is.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Creepy Crawler (680178) on Tuesday December 18 2007, @08:14PM (#21746924)
    When is a standard not a standard?

    Perhaps... it's when the company who wrote it won't pass it over to standards bodies [slashdot.org].

    Perhaps we ought to have "varying" standards for road design... or we should have ever-changing standards for building construction.

    Considering this is public documents are at stake, it is our history. It is no less important than safety.
    • Perhaps we ought to have "varying" standards for road design... or we should have ever-changing standards for building construction.

      South Carolina doesn't give even highways a foundation - their roads are built on piles of sand, with maybe a little gravel crushed on top. Not even the three-layer roads of Macadam and nowhere near the five-layers of Telford. As for building construction, building codes change after disasters (rarely before, when it might have been useful) and aren't exactly impressive. Part

    • Re:When is.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by harlows_monkeys (106428) on Tuesday December 18 2007, @10:47PM (#21747986) Homepage
      So when is Sun going to turn control of ODF over to a standards body? (There is a difference between letting a standards body approve a particular version, and turning control over).

      There are zillions of things wrong with OOXML, so why do people keep picking things that are ALSO problems with ODF? It would be a lot more effective to pick those areas where ODF is actually different and better, and push those.

      • ---So when is Sun going to turn control of ODF over to a standards body?

        They don't have to. The source is opened and what ODF is has been released to the community at large.

        Anybody with the appropriate manpower can effectively freeze what ODF is.. just call it GAODF- government approved ODF.

        • They don't have to. The source is opened and what ODF is has been released to the community at large

          That's not quite correct. ODF is covered by Sun patents. They have made those patents available for free under a license that covers ODF 1.0, plus any future versions whose development Sun participates in past the point where OASIS would require a patent license. (You can find the complete text of the license at the OASIS web site if you want to see for yourself). So, future versions have to have Sun parti

      • Sun turned the control of ODF over to a standards body a long long time ago, before it was even a standard. This is what made it much easier to pass the ISO process than OOXML.

  • I'm a New York State resident and... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by betterunixthanunix (980855) on Tuesday December 18 2007, @08:15PM (#21746930)
    ...I've just about given up on politicians in this state. Albany has not been able to pass an on time budget for...actually, I don't think I was even born the last time they passed an on time budget. Governor Pataki was a union-busting asshole, and Governor Spitzer has failed to fulfill his promise of restoring integrity to Albany. Hillary Clinton votes for one idiotic bill after another, and Chuck Schumer voted in favor of Mukasey (need I say more?).
  • would the gathering of requirements not work out better if the deadline were in 1 month from now, not 11 months before now?

  • Not even Windows users like OOXML (Score:4, Interesting)

    by webmaster404 (1148909) on Tuesday December 18 2007, @08:23PM (#21747008)
    Not even Windows users like OOXML. Even the ones with Office 2007 usually save into .doc format. I don't see why we can't just go with plain old .doc. Sure it isn't as "open" as ODF, but OOo and Office can read them well enough (now if I got to make the plans, it would just be plain .txt, fast and easy to read, who needs formatting) to see what they are saying. But OOXML just plain isn't adopted anywhere, it lacks support for non Windows platforms and no one really knows what the "standard" actually is, and knowing MS's previous actions, they will soon "extend" OOXML to have "features" that will make the free/open source document readers have yet another thing to deal with. So why can't they go with .doc? Or better yet HTML? Even .txt would be better then OOXML, even though ODF is nice, Windows systems with Office need "plugins" to view them.

    • Re:Not even Windows users like OOXML (Score:5, Insightful)

      by corsec67 (627446) on Tuesday December 18 2007, @08:28PM (#21747056) Homepage Journal
      Which version of .doc?
      They are fairly incompatable, and not even Office can open all of the versions correctly:
      95, 2000, XP, 2003?
      There is no "doc" standard, it is just the memory dump of the version of Office, which changes with each release, and that is the problem.

      TXT would indeed be better, if only because it isn't going to change in the future.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Sodki (621717)

        TXT would indeed be better, if only because it isn't going to change in the future.

        What kind of TXT? ANSI? Unicode? UTF-16? Big endian? Little endian? etc, etc.. I know, my examples are probably wrong, but the point isn't.
        • I think UTF-8 and UTF-16 specify the endian-ness, but you do have to choose an encoding for the "text" document, you are very much correct there.

      • TXT would indeed be better, if only because it isn't going to change in the future.

        Notepad in Windows XP forces you to chose between 3 different text formats (with useless names), and there really are many, many more.

    • Re:Not even Windows users like OOXML (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Heir Of The Mess (939658) on Tuesday December 18 2007, @08:37PM (#21747130) Homepage

      I know the parent is probably going to get modded into oblivion, but they made an interesting point that will probably be missed. Why do we need to store all the information in a fully formatted document. I know that good ol' A4...or American Letter standard will persist for a long time, but surely if it's just the information we need to retain there would be a better way of storing it without all the formatting cruft thrown in that makes it hard to decipher if you don't have a massive spec to write a loader from.

      Afterall everyone here is mainly worried about retaining the information in a format that is readable by future generations right? right!?

      • That is a good point... Just look at the floppy disks, there is lots of them yet readers are hard to find for non 3.5 sized ones. The same could happen to OOXML and other propriatary formats.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by mabhatter654 (561290)
          ODF at its heart is a zipped folder of unicode formated text files. In 10 years when nobody cares you can still fire up a perl parser and run thru the files in a standard fashion to pick out your data. OOXML doesn't ever guarantee you will get by with anything less than a full office suite.

    • I don't see why we can't just go with plain old .doc. Sure it isn't as "open" as ODF, but OOo and Office can read them well enough (now if I got to make the plans, it would just be plain .txt, fast and easy to read, who needs formatting) to see what they are saying.

      There are too many, different versions of .doc and no, the majority of programs cannot read and write them "well enough" now. Anyone who's ever managed an archive of documents has probably run into .doc files that cannot be opened by any currently available version of Word. One of the things ODF is solving is the security to know in another 5 years you'll still be able to open your files. The .doc format mess does not provide that security.

      So why can't they go with .doc?

      If the reasons I mentioned above are not enough, it is anti-com

      • HTML does not handle all the use cases of office documents smoothly and is a pretty terrible format for exchanging documents since in many cases you'd be exchanging entire directories of files instead of a single file since all the resources in HTML are stored by reference.

        I wholeheartedly agree that HTML isn't really the optimal format for document exchange, and your first point (that it doesn't handle all the necessary use cases) is quite valid. However, the latter point is not necessarily a big problem. Everybody and their dog has an implementation of zip by now, so something as trivial as a zip file with an index.html file and a resources/ directory with all the needed external stuff would be a pretty open and portable way to address the issue. Also, refer to the Apple

  • Fuck document formats. XHTML and SVG work fine. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2007, @08:29PM (#21747068)
    Fuck all these document formats. XHTML, CSS, PNG, SVG and PDF work just fine for displaying virtually any sort of data.

    XHTML is the container. It allows for textual documentation to be represented, and allows for other data representations to be embedded within that container. Its native support for tables makes it usable even as a spreadsheet (which can be powered by JavaScript).

    CSS allows for very complex document layout and stylings to specified with ease and conciseness.

    SVG can represent nearly all vector-based pictorials, including many forms of graphs. Bar charts are easily represented with rectangles, and a pie chart is easily represented as a collection of filled arcs. SVG's scalability allows for these charts to be resized really easily.

    PNG images can be used for all other images that aren't best represented using SVG.

    PDF is the perfect format for bundling all of those other resources together in a medium that displays on almost any system.

    Best of all, those are all open standards, with free implementations available for almost every operating system and platform. There's just no need for this ODF and OOXML bullshit.
    • Except that no one would want to use a JavaScript-powered spreadsheet for anything more advanced that a few simple arithmetic formulas. But sure, as an interchange format it would probably work. Everyone can get their hands on a free standards-compliant browser.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by CastrTroy (595695)
      In case you didn't know, ODF is basically just what you mentioned. If you rename your ODF file to .zip, you can open it and see all those files inside. It doesn't use XHTML, but it does use XML to store the document text and structure. It stores all the style information in another XML document, and it stores all the pictures in a folder called Pictures. All this is wrapped up in a little zip file.
      • Interestingly, this is pretty much what OOXML does too--directories containing XML for text/structure and binary files for images, movies, etc. zipped up and renamed docx/xlsx/pptx.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by cafelatte (99544)
      Ask yourself this question: "Which format would be acceptable by a book publisher?" Books have table of contents, footnotes and indexes. Depending on the typeface size and page width, the footnotes can vary on which page they're on the bottom of. The file formats you mentioned doesn't accommodate this requirement. But you make a good point, those formats should be used more often.

      • PDF (Score:3, Informative)

        by blueZ3 (744446)
        I work in publishing, and the format that we generally use is PDF, for just the reason you state. The typeface, page sizes, etc. are all contained in the PDF file, so there's no problem with footnotes moving pages, because the contents of the pages are fixed in the file.

        I wish PDF were completely open and that we could convince everyone who distributes documents to use PDF for that purpose. All the problems you mention are just as troublesome when opening a Word file on two different machines (which is why

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by xouumalperxe (815707)

      Sorry to burst your bubble, but there are several issues with the idea you posted.

      PDF is a great format for publication, but crap for information exchange. You need some sort of "work format" to do the heavy lifting for you before you can commit the document to its published .pdf form. Regarding that "work format", I'll assume that by "XHTML" you actually meant "XML", since the latter is a general purpose mark-up language, and the former a domain-specific application of the latter, and this whole discussi

  • And invent time travel (Score:5, Funny)

    by kseise (1012927) on Tuesday December 18 2007, @08:32PM (#21747084)
    Was she required to invent a time machine to meet that deadline? ""In August of 2007, the State of New York passed legislation requiring its CIO, Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, to gather information on the advantages and disadvantages of adopting either ODF or OOXML as a document standard, and to report her findings by 15 January 2007. "

  • Oh, Come Now (Score:5, Funny)

    by Vengance Daemon (946173) on Tuesday December 18 2007, @09:59PM (#21747688)
    Think about it: New York, politics, Microsoft's money, the need for an objective decision. It is just so cute that everyone on Slashdot is discussing this seriously and talking about sending comments in; I wish I had a camera.
  • anything you print can be made into a pdf with all the formatting exactly retained from the original. I also like RTF.. remember that? Word actually saves into it, rather well, although MS uses curly quotes to screw other competitors' translators up.. I got the idea for PDF because Sun Microsystems has new server software that will convert several formats into PDF, including I assume word and wordperfect.

    --Sam
  • Dear New York,

    I would like it realy realy much if you would use Microsoft one, because that would help my cause much better. As we have a history together, I am sure you will do this.

    O. B. Laden

    Then IF they select for Microsoft you can suddenly 'produce' the email/letter and those who choose for Microsoft will be send to Guantanamo and be an example for the rest of the USofA.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ls -la (937805)

      is when Microsoft is going to stop the shennannigans and start playing ball with the rest of the world.

      When they stop making money off of shenanigans. Innovation takes time and money, it's cheaper to copy other people.

      Can someone tell me when the last time they tried to compete on innovation rather than vendor lock-in?

      I'm pretty sure that was before I was born.

      Can someone make the argument that OOXML is all about document protection for the consumer and not about keeping everyone else on the run?

      Probably, but I doubt it would be a very compelling argument.

      Can someone tell me that Vista was supposed to make everything better for the USER?

      Well, it's supposedly more secure...

      Can someone tell me why I need DRM in my life?

      I'm sorry, it's not your life. Read the EULA on the last piece of music you heard: "We, the RIAA own your soul. By listening to any music in any form, you agree to this binding contract."

      Can someone tell me that C# is open and not proprietary? It only runs on one platform, theirs? How is that better than writing natively? The UI is only for IE with .NET? Why would I want Silverlight over Flash?

      Does Microsoft even pretend C# is open? If so, is it covered

      • I can't see an argument for Windows (any version) being more useful than another OS except that more people use it and more people write software for it.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Nazlfrag (1035012)
          Perhaps because I don't want to encourage a douchebag to work for nothing for a bunch of dataminers?

    • You do (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Titoxd (1116095) on Wednesday December 19 2007, @12:03AM (#21748422) Homepage
      You answered your own question. Standardization does not equal adoption, but the State of New York is asking its CIO which format it should adopt. PDF became popular and a de-facto standard before ISO 32000 was approved, so it is important to note that a government is asking for public comment about which format to implement, regardless of ISO status.

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