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Software Government Politics

Romney Continues ODF Support With New Appointee 117

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the sounds-like-a-platform-to-me dept.
Andy Updegrove writes "There is a major new development in the ongoing saga in Massachusetts over implementation of the OpenDocument Format (ODF). Governor Mitt Romney has named a permanent successor to former State CIO Peter Quinn, utilizing the entire press release announcing his appointment to underline the fact that the new CIO, Louis Gutierrez, would not only be charged with implementing the ODF policy, but that his past experience was uniquely suited to that task. Moreover, the press release goes out of its way to note that implementation of ODF is still on target for an effective date of January 1, 2007."
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Romney Continues ODF Support With New Appointee More

Romney Continues ODF Support With New Appointee

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  • Boston More Tempting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bob9113 ( 14996 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @04:38AM (#14605357) Homepage
    A headhunter in Boston sent me an email today. In the past Boston has not ranked terribly high on the list of places to which I would consider relocating. With the apparent commitment to ODF, I am taking today's email more seriously. Being able to interact with the state gov't using my primary workstation makes a difference.

  • Hooray!! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @04:38AM (#14605358) Journal
    Wow, the first time in a long time that a politician has done something that made me happy. I think I would vote for this guy for president, just based on this alone.

    What does it say about him? He isn't blinded by special interests. He is not swayed by all the bad press and slander microsoft can pull off. He has enough moral backbone to make a stand, even in something relatively minor like this. In a political environment where any lobbyist with enough dough can get a law, that means a lot.

    • Re:Hooray!! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eivind ( 15695 ) <eivindorama@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @04:58AM (#14605418) Homepage
      Wait and see -- if MA is *really* following the plan and using ODF exclusively say summer 2007, then you can celebrate. Up to then there's definitely going to be around a gazillion attempts to derail this.

    • Re:Hooray!! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:17AM (#14605473)
      A year to the actual implementation is a long time.

      Not to be cynical, just don't give you hopes up. I'll celebrate when it is followed through on. Not a minute before.

      • Re:Hooray!! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NickFortune ( 613926 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @07:30AM (#14605813) Homepage Journal
        Not to be cynical, just don't give you hopes up.

        I'll grant that your cynicsm, in the general case at least, is well founded. However I don't think a quick chorus of "three cheers for governor romney" is entirely uncalled for.

        We're quick enough to complain when Orrin Hatch proposes a mandatory death penal for whistling the latest Britney Spears, or somesuch abomination. Should we not also encourage the rare individual who does something right?

        You never know, if politicans get to thinking there's votes to be had, it might just catch on...

    • Either that or he has an axe to grind with Microsoft, or has campaign supporters that have a vested interest in seeing ODF deployed across a whole state.

      Disclaimer: No factual basis to this postulation whatsoever, but I didn't see any facts in the parent post either.
    • Whilst I agree wholeheartedly that the polician in question is acting in the interests of his constituency as a whole, I have always wondered whether those special interests decrying this excellent initiative actually believe that the idea is bad or whether they are just looking after their own interests. I know several examples of people who did terrible things but in their view they were doing good.
    • Are you from MA? Because I've followed this pretty closely and he's doing this for one reason... TO LOOK BETTER. This is a kiss ass move that makes him look better in the papers and buys a few more Presidential hopeful points, at the possible risk of losing some House buddies. Trust me when I say that he redefines flipflopper, and has really changed his stance on most major issues greatly in the past year or so.

      But hey, now that he wants to be Prez, he's not such a bad Governor anymore.
    • I think I would vote for this guy for president, just based on this alone.
      I'm guessing you're kiding about the president thing. But seriously, I voted for Bush just because of the abortion issue. Learn from my mistake - don't vote on a single issue.
    • I think I would vote for this guy for president, just based on this alone.

      Mitt is from the great state of Utah. Not necessarily a bad thing, but you might want to know a little bit more about him before you punch his name at the box in '08. After all he may be a friend of Darl.

      In all seriousness. Romney is usually a pretty good guy unless you disagree with him.
    • I think I would vote for this guy for president, just based on this alone.

      You might get your chance. Disclaimer: I volunteered for Romney's failed Senate campaign against Kennedy and his gubernatorial (sp?) campaign while I lived in MA. There were always whispers that he had his sights set beyond Beacon Hill.
    • He's sending a strong message of support for ODF and for his subordinates. The previous guy gets intimidated out of his job because of all the fuss M$ were making.

      What better way to give two fingers to the bully boys than to appoint someone with a stronger track record of supporting open software? Its turns the resignation of Quinn from a victory for M$ into a defeat.

    • I think I would vote for this guy for president, just based on this alone.

      Didn't we have the story about political astroturfing last week?
    • What a bunch of SUCKERS!

      Mitt Romney has said lots of things before, then recanted them as soon as the polls or the cash said differently. Look up his record on abortion rights, he's flipped and flopped and spun around like a carnival ride. That's the way he is on most things, determined to say whatever it takes to get to higher office, aiming for those four years of freedom where he can finally be his wingnut self, followed by a VERY comfy retirement of corporate boards and super-premium speaking engageme

      • Maybe this policy will be more consistent. After all, he comes from Utah, home of the once seemingly invincible WordPerfect. People from there might take a little pleasure at causing MS a little pain.

    • I think I would vote for this guy for president, just based on this alone.

      That would be foolish. For one thing, the President of the United States has to have a huge amount of skills related to government and management. Despite Bush sometimes making stupid, uninformed decisions or messing up on words, he has the skills needed to be president.

      Always remember: A politician is not merely a bundle of "positions" on issues.

      One last thing. The phrase "special interest" has unnecessarily become taboo. I hav

  • Poor me, living here in Virginia, where I don't necessarially have access to the algorithms used to encode state documents, even though all commercial algorithms can handle it.

    It would seem like a bigger deal if there were a serious problem with document compatibility, but it doesn't feel to me like there is. The main reason given for the ODF switch is to ensure that documents will be readable indefinitely, and this is certainly important. But the major M$ formats have stabilized in the last half-decade or so, and we're not gonna see decoders for them disappearing anytime in the foreseeable future. Everyone who wants to write a good word-processing package is going to be decoding Word 97+ for the next 50 years at least, and most importantly, when they stop including that compatibility, why should we think they'd be including compatibility for a similar standard? And there will always be people implementing decoders on their own, for either standard. It just feels like we have bigger problems; it's good OSS PR, but not a huge deal. Though of course, I could be wrong.

    And on a side note, Romney's presidental prospects are dismal. As a Virginian, let me warn you all about Mark Warner. He's gonna sweep y'all away. Romney, with this, is setting himself up as a pro-tech president. But I was working on a VR project at the NASA research center down here, and in one demonstration at the Southern Governor's Conference, Governor Warner tried out the equipment. He looked around in the simulator for a while, then took off the glasses and started asking some incredibly hard-hitting technical questions about the engineering behind the system. He really knows his stuff. So he's a moderate and charismatic southern Democrat with a strong fiscal record, and definitely strong on the technology front. I'd like to see Hillary run myself, but I think Warner's gonna take the nomination. And Romney doesn't have a chance.
    • I'd like to see Hillary run myself, but I think Warner's gonna take the nomination

      I think Hillary is going to be drafted

    • Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:18AM (#14605476)
      You have no idea what this is about do you?

      Only MS's office is 100% compatible with MS .doc format. And not even that is complitely true, because of different versions. MS locks it's formats to it products and with it the user. Have to write a .doc document? Yes, OpenOffice can write one too, but it's not 100% compatible and might fuck up. Now if MS would open the specs that would be different, but knowing MS they'd do that only if they were made to do it and even than they'd probably give old specs (like in the EU incident)...

      Now odf is all about free market and competition. You want a very good word processing program and have money? Suite x is for you! 100% compatible with odf format. Looking for something cheaper? How about Suite y? 100% compatible with odf. Not good enough to meet your needs? Than consider Suite z... 100% compatible with odf. Get the point? More competition = more choice = better products.

      And I bet you use a pirate copy of MS office...
      • And I bet you use a pirate copy of MS office...

        You were doing great up until that point, then you had to go and spoil it with a pointless ad hominem. It just cheapens your whole argument - even if it's true, and the GP does pirate Office, what does that have to do with document format compatibility?

        • Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Well, so far, most Microsoft supporters (mostly programmers, users, etc.,) I've met don't actually -pay- for Microsoft software (well, besides getting a Dell system that bundles Windows).

          One way or another, nearly -everyone- of the Windows users I know, still somehow manages to run MS Office, Visual Studio, Photoshop, etc.

          On the other hand, the government -does- pay for software; with our freaking tax dollars!

          Now, how would folk's support for MS Office change if they had to pay for it (or even realized that

      • Only MS's office is 100% compatible with MS .doc format. And not even that is complitely true, because of different versions.

        you have no idea. our operations staff is almost entirely on a mix of Win32 platforms - NT 4, 2000, and XP Pro (god help us). our entire engineering staff and most of our management are on Macs, some using MS Office, some using NeoOffice, and some using Pages/Keynote. we've run into several situations where one Microsoft product can't read the files produced by another, for reasons we

        • PDFs always look the same.

          Yep, they generally suck for a blind person using a screen-reader.
          This is why the blind community usually refers to PDF as "Pretty Dumb Format".
          • they don't have to be any worse than any other document type. even setting aside fall-back measures like on-screen OCR (which i agree is a pretty abysmal fall-back), most currently-produced PDFs have the text in them, rather than just vector instructions (which is why you can copy/paste from them). if a screen reader can read a Word file better than a PDF (in the general case), it's a design or implementation failure in the screen reader.
      • Except for one problem: Word has more features than the current ODF supports.

        Let's take your example and think of it another way.

        You have the three good word processors that all do task X very well. Now you're going to do task Y, so you pick up SuperMegaPlus with Auto-Y feature. The problem is that the Auto-Y feature requires saving some data that the ODF format doesn't support, so while SuperMegaPlus can read ODF files, the files it saves are not quiet compatible. But feature Y is so important to you,

    • Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AnotherDaveB ( 912424 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:37AM (#14605524)
      It would seem like a bigger deal if there were a serious problem with document compatibility, but it doesn't feel to me like there is. The main reason given for the ODF switch is to ensure that documents will be readable indefinitely, and this is certainly important. But the major M$ formats have stabilized in the last half-decade or so, and we're not gonna see decoders for them disappearing anytime in the foreseeable future. Everyone who wants to write a good word-processing package is going to be decoding Word 97+ for the next 50 years at least, and most importantly, when they stop including that compatibility, why should we think they'd be including compatibility for a similar standard? And there will always be people implementing decoders on their own, for either standard. It just feels like we have bigger problems; it's good OSS PR, but not a huge deal. Though of course, I could be wrong.

      For you and me, you're right, it doesn't make any difference. But for a company, buying a word processor that relies on a hack to read the accepted standard file format is not an attractive proposition, so they buy MS Word / Office which means that MS can raise the price of Word/Office and the competition have to lower the price of their offerings to compensate for the "hack" compatibility.

      Sales droids at Sun, IBM et all must be over the moon. The ODF file format just became "the coming thing", "the future", "the smart choice". No longer the "brave choice", "trend setting choice". Nail biting in Redmond.

      Massachusetts [wikipedia.org] is a USD297billion economy with a population of 6.3 million people. Big deal.

    • Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by myxiplx ( 906307 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @06:13AM (#14605620)
      Arghhh!! How many times do we need to point this out. You may not feel like there's a problem with compatibility but for a government department who want to *guarantee* accessibility of documents, the MS formats are not currently suitable.

      You say anyone who wants to write a good WP package will be decoding word. Sure, many programs do this, but they've all had to reverse engineer the format. This means they cannot guarantee that they're importing the document correctly. MA correctly take the view that they cannot afford to be giving out documents for the next 100 years that *may* be correct, they need to be sure.

      That is why MA are insisting on an open spec. They're not anti-MS by any means, they are just clearly defining their requirements and inviting companies to demonstrate how they can meet them. That's a normal tender process. The fact is that MS don't like having to make their programs suit the needs of the customer, they'd rather the customer changed their requirements to suit MS.

      This is not a MS / Open Source issue, it's a question of whether there's an open public standard for saving and reading documents. MS have options of making their formats public, or of making their software compatible with a public standard. Neither of these are things MS are keen on doing since they both open them up to competition, but both are quite possible.

      PS. I'm not anti-MS, in fact I'm very Pro-MS. I run a domain of 100+ computers and 11 servers, all running MS software, and I wouldn't want it any other way. I think some of the work MS are doing is superb and I'm waiting for their next generation operating systems with baited breath. But despite all that, I can see the sense in the decision MA are making.

    • Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Yaztromo ( 655250 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @06:18AM (#14605628) Homepage Journal
      Everyone who wants to write a good word-processing package is going to be decoding Word 97+ for the next 50 years at least, and most importantly, when they stop including that compatibility, why should we think they'd be including compatibility for a similar standard?

      Current non-MS word processors already have a hard enough time implementing Word 97 import, particularly for any really complex documents. Why should time make it any better?

      Let's look back to the most popular word processors from ~20 years ago: WordStar. According to Microsoft [microsoft.com], Word can only import version 3.0 and higher. OpenOffice appears to have no support at all (that I can find). Nor does Apple's Pages. So if you come across a WordStar v1.0 or v2.0 document, you're SOL -- and that's after not even half the 50 year figure you quote.

      How about WordPerfect? From the same reference, Word can import WP v4 and higher documents. So anything created in WordPerfect v2.2 (from 1982) or v3.0 (from 1983) is likewise not importable. Again, I haven't found anything about WordPerfect v2.2 or v3.0 support in OpenOffice (it does support WordPerfect import, but I can't find what versions this includes), or in Pages.

      And that's just the two most popular PC-DOS packages from the 1980's, and doesn't include documents generated for other systems (like the Commodore 64 -- Paperback Writer anyone?), or from dedicated wordprocessing terminals.

      And it gets better. Check out the entry in the above link for Word 6 and Word 95 support -- not even MS Office supports importing these anymore ("Retired - no longer available"). Word 95 isn't even 10 years old. And what about Microsoft Works format? Nada.

      If you think that in 2056 you'll still be able to import Word 97 documents in popular word processing applications, you're living in a fantasy world. It's not going to happen. Will they be able to read ODF? Perhaps not -- however if necessary someone could write whatever sort of importer or converter they want, as the official recipe for such documents will still be around.

      Less than two hundred years ago, Egyptian Hieroglyphs were virtually unreadable. It took the finding of the Rosetta Stone to make it understandable again. ODF is the Rosetta stone we get to leave for future generations. We already have unreadable document formats, and we're not even 30 years into the Personal Computer revolution. Thinking that we're going to be able to read modern day Word documents 50 years from now is overly idealistic, and seems highly improbable.

      Yaz.

      • That's the best summary I have ever seen on why ODF is so important!
      • Well, it's not quite that bad from an archaeological point of view: many word processor files contain text encoded in a standard character set in roughly the order it should be read - the text just has extraneous mark-up. I'm sure future civilisations can do without knowing exactly which bits of the text were originally rendered in Comic Sans. From a legal and administrative point of view, though, it's worse - you'll need an accurate and reproducible record of the contracts you've made for the lifetime of

        • Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate (Score:4, Informative)

          by aaronl ( 43811 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @08:34AM (#14605987) Homepage
          From the archaeological standpoint, DOC is worse than hieroglyphics. MS DOC format is not a text format, it's an obfuscated binary format that is, in reality, a memory dump of the OLE objects that Word was working with. You have huge amounts of data in that file that is not text, and you can't guarantee that the text is stored as actual text.

          BTW - contracts are still typically printed, signed, and stored, all on wood pulp paper.
          • >You have huge amounts of data in that file that is not text, and you can't guarantee that the text is stored as actual text True, you can't. But if I open a random selection of .DOC files with a text editor I can see the contents of most of them. Archaeology doesn't necessarily depend on being able to decode every word of every document: most historical documents haven't survived or have survived only in a damaged form. That's partly why archeologists have jobs. >contracts are still typically print
            • It's a poor choice to enter into a contract that you don't have the full terms for. I've never been happy about contract terms that allow for a party to amend the contract after signing. Generally this only occurs for policy contracts, such as credit cards, bank accounts, or utilities. I would never enter into an important contract where the terms could be changed without all original signatories accepting the new terms. You shouldn't either.

              The right answer is to print the document, and have all partie

          • Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate (Score:1, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            MS DOC format is not a text format, it's an obfuscated binary format that is, in reality, a memory dump of the OLE objects that Word was working with.

            I'd love to know where this rumor started. A Word document isn't just a "memory dump" of the what Office had stored in it. If it was, Word 2003 wouldn't be able to open Word 97 documents, but it can.

            Yes, it uses serialization to store the objects. HOWEVER, object serialization is NOTHING like a "memory dump" - it's a proprietary binary format, that's all it

            • Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate (Score:4, Informative)

              by aaronl ( 43811 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @06:09PM (#14611126) Homepage
              Well, the "rumor" started from Microsoft basically telling everyone that it was how they did it.

              MS Office documents are stored as OLE Compound Documents, and have been since Office 97. The way this works is to take the OLE structure that you're working with in memory, and save it to a file. Office stores these as serialized structures representing different OLE objects.

              This enables Office to embed many types of other content, as long as it can be represented by an OLE object. The method of saving the OLE memory objects to disc also allows Office applications to quickly load and save complex documents, however it carries the penalty of large file sizes. It also makes it incredibly difficult to load an Office OLE document without access to the format specifications.

              While the OLE Compound Document format is documented, the ways that Office stores the data within its specific OLE containers is not officially documented *at all*. This means that you can fairly easily open an OLE document and see the OLE containers in the stream, but you can't manipulate most of them, for lack of documentation.

              As an aside, Word 2003 can *usually* open a Word 97 document, and less often, Word 97 can open a Word 2003 document. You will usually get an intact document in the former case, but you will often lose formatting in the latter. In other words, Word 97 and Word 2003 aren't actually fully compatible, in either direction.
        • While what you say may be true for your typical inter-office memo, it may not be true for complex documents.

          When Word reads and old .doc file, it doesn't usually screw up on which bits have what fonts. It does tend to screw up on things like pagination and placing text boxes or images correctly. This could result in reference figures being put with the wrong text for example, or in pieces of text being transported to the wrong parts of a document. This not only obfuscates the original document's meaning,

        • Well, it's not quite that bad from an archaeological point of view: many word processor files contain text encoded in a standard character set in roughly the order it should be read - the text just has extraneous mark-up.

          No, it is that bad.

          Whether people are aware of it or not, Word can store all of the changes made to a document. There may be old, out-of-date, and replaced content inthe document that no longer displays when loaded in Word.

          So if you just run "strings" against a Word document, it may c

      • "Stop Press! (2 March 2005) The HABiT WordStar Converter has been updated. The new version 3 converter supports all DOS versions of WordStar with conversion to either plain text or to HTML. Read more here. [wordstar.org]"
        Googling for "Wordperfect conversion" gives tons of results, several of which can do all old WP formats.
        Paperback Writer ROMs and amiga emulators to run it on can be downloaded from lots of places online.

        What was your point again?

      • So anything created in WordPerfect v2.2 (from 1982) or v3.0 (from 1983) is likewise not importable.

        Hmm, and I thought WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS only read WordPerfect 4.x documents... could be wrong though, I've only run into >5.x documents myself.

        doesn't include documents generated for other systems (like the Commodore 64 -- Paperback Writer anyone?)

        Just transfer the floppy over the cable (which may prove troublesome - I only personally have a cable that plugs to a printer port, and it won't work

        • Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Yaztromo ( 655250 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:28PM (#14610729) Homepage Journal
          Now, another format that does prove to be somewhat of a headache is Windows 3.x Write... Ummm, would be fun to know what opens this stuff. Word apparently supports that, but I haven't yet found many apps in open source side that would touch those. =/

          It's interesting that you mention this. Back in the early 90's (from 1991 until 1993) I published an online magazine called "The Sound Blaster Digest" (which, in my stupidity I eventually renamed after getting lots of complaints that the title showed a bias that never existed). For the first two years it was an all ASCII production (as this was started before the rise of the World Wide Web), but later is was published simultaneously in ASCII and Windows Write format. The latter format embedded graphics, multimedia, and used nice fonts, making it easier to read.

          At the time, it was fairly radical. I was getting recognition from Creative Labs, Microsoft, and BBS and Internet users world-wide. America Online gave me a free account to upload new issues each month, CompuServe sent me everything I needed to get on their network to do the same, and letter mail rolled in from all over the world. My name was known at trade shows, and free stuff rolled my way. The whole thing was even the subject of a story on CityTV's Media Television. At one time, I was approched to be interviewed for Wired (something I regret not following through on). I was considered a pioneer by many, publishing a monthly magazine completely in digital format. I did it before any of the big magazine publishing firms did.

          Unfortunately for me, I was young and had other things I wanted to pursue. I never made much money at it (although people did subscribe to both a diskette subscription and a BBS uploading service I ran), and it took quite a bit of my time to produce. Other pressures in life eventually took over, and I stopped publishing. Which I do somewhat regret -- back in the day, my name alone was a free pass to a lot of good stuff. I was ahead of the curve, and considered a pioneer, but you probably won't read about it in any history of the Internet.

          (The issues are still online in various places. I have every issue here, and have considered putting them up in an "online museum" on my website, perhaps along with some supplimental materials. I still have a box with every piece of mail anyone ever sent me when I was still publishing, including lots of 5.25" diskettes people would send with things they wrote, or sometimes the digital audio of their greetings to me :). I also have a tape copy of the Media Television interview which perhaps one day I'll digitize and put online).

          Anyhow, to get away from wandering down memory lane and back on topic -- as mentioned above, later issues were available in Windows Write format, and used Microsoft's Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) to include MIDI files, digital audio samples, graphics, etc. And unless I find myself a copy of MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, AFAIK there is absolutely no way for me to read them.

          So, the most popular online magazine in the world from only 15 short years ago is already unreadable (at least in its Windows Write form). Windows Write was available on every copy of Windows, and at one time was a really easy way to share decently formatted text with other Windows users. But today documents created in it are nothing but a pile of bits.

          Admittedly, I was a few years too early for the rise of the World Wide Web, which is a more natural medium for such documents. Sometimes one of the dangers of being on the cutting edge is that a better solution to the same problem crops up, eclipsing the solution that was best at the time you started. If I had continued publishing for another year or two, I probably would have moved to HTML, but timing wasn't on my side.

          One of these days I'll revisit this history somewhere, as it probably should be recorded. The Internet seems to have a poor record of things that were happening on it 15 years ago and earlier, and somebody somewhere might find it interesting (or might even remember those halcyon days :) ).

          Yaz.

    • Re:ODF, Romney, and pro-tech presidental candidate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by voidphoenix ( 710468 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @06:51AM (#14605697)

      But the major M$ formats have stabilized in the last half-decade or so, and we're not gonna see decoders for them disappearing anytime in the foreseeable future. Everyone who wants to write a good word-processing package is going to be decoding Word 97+ for the next 50 years at least, and most importantly, when they stop including that compatibility, why should we think they'd be including compatibility for a similar standard?

      Visual Studio 2005 format is incompatible with 2003. It doesn't even seem to have an export function. That's just a 2 year separation. Do you really think Microsoft formats will remain stable for 50 years?

      It's precisely because you have to decode -- reverse engineer -- M$ formats that the push to ODF is being made. At the very least, it's a major reason. ODF is a public standard. If we need to read 50 year old docs in 2056, the worst case is we write a new reader, but the format spec will still be available.

      • Visual Studio 2005 format is incompatible with 2003. It doesn't even seem to have an export function.

        Wow, you just seem to want to jump on the bash MS train don't you?

        First off, lets be clear. Its only the Solution and Project files that are incompatible, and there's a very good reason for that. You CANNOT develop .Net 1.0 or 1.1 application using VS2005, nor can you develop .Net 2.0 applications with VS2003. VS2005 can upgrade your solution and project files to the newer version if you want to move your
    • So he's a moderate and charismatic southern Democrat with a strong fiscal record

      There are no moderate and charismatic southern Democrats...well there were, until he enacted the largest tax increase in peacetime history and then was impeached 3 times.
      But I don't see what this has to do with ODF. Are you that blindly partisan that you're afraid of a Republican getting mad props just this one time?
      Are you his son or nephew or something?
    • Which also still means that you are tied to Windows and MS Office for 100% compatibility. If you want to autogenerate documents, it's a pain in the ass, and you have to have an Office license to do it. Want to do some analysis of a document? You'll need an Office license.

      Get it? ODF is about promoting freedom. To use YOUR document when YOU want, in whatever way YOU want.

    • ACCESSABILITY!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @08:24AM (#14605961)
      The reason that Massachusetts has insisted on a Free and open document format is not just because other software isn't 100% Word-compatible. Another big reason is people who -- for one reason or another -- can't use Word. For example, blind people. Screen readers for Office uniformly suck, partly because they have to hack Office and reverse-engineer the Word format to work (just like OpenOffice). ODF's free spec will allow people to build screen readers that actually work properly.

      And yes, this is important -- it's the government we're talking about, so using Word effectively disenfranchises people and turns them into second-class citizens. That's just not acceptable.
      • Screen readers for Office uniformly suck, partly because they have to hack Office and reverse-engineer the Word format to work (just like OpenOffice).

        I agree that current screen readers suck, but it is not because they have to reverse-engineer a proprietary format. Freedom Scientific, the largest maker of Screen Readers in the world, is a close Microsoft partner and has full access to the Microsoft Windows and Word specs to develop their product. Screen readers suck because turning a 2-dimensional grap

        • Screen readers are only an example. Other instances where an open format beats Word is in the case of poor people (can't afford Office), cellphones and other portable devices (you can re-style XML to fit the screen, but you've got to know the DTD/schema for the XML to do it!), search engines (same issue as portable devices), etc.
    • "it's good OSS PR, but not a huge deal. Though of course, I could be wrong.

      I'd say the fact that Microsoft is pouring a lot of money and effort into stopping this proves that they think it's a huge deal. They've spared no effort, from heavy lobbying of politicians, to generating a smear campaign via the Boston Globe, to get this stopped. Is there anything which they haven't done?

      They well realize that once one state falls, others will go along. And they will start to lose their exclusive vendor tie-in

    • It would seem like a bigger deal if there were a serious problem with document compatibility, but it doesn't feel to me like there is. The main reason given for the ODF switch is to ensure that documents will be readable indefinitely

      No.

      The primary immediate and future reason for the switch to ODF is to be able to find pertinent documents in the archives using search techniques that are thorough and efficient. The archives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are not static things: there is a constant n

    • No commercial or free software exists to decode MS Office documents except for MS Office. I've tried everything and tested and tested. There's always something that screws up the import. ODF is a way out of this MS quagmire and you can still keep using MS Office - all they have to do is add ODF to the mix. They can hobble ODF a little by not implimenting some ease of use features, but in the end this law could set us all down the road to owning our own data and being free to use whatever office suite we

  • Long day (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @04:49AM (#14605388)
    This is getting out of hand. Mitt Romney is advocating Open Source software and shunning Microsoft. Wikipedia says that MA Democrat Marty Meehan [wikipedia.org] is sleeping with Ken Mehlman [wikipedia.org]. John Siegenthaler trying to discredit James Frey [wikipedia.org]. I'm so confused. Bill O'Reilly, Please Save Me. Slashdot, I wish I knew how to quit you...
  • What are the taxes like in Mass., anyone know?
    Seems like it might not be a bad spot to relocate to, unless, of course, your field is hardlinked to proprietary document formats!

    • Taxachusetts? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Joseph Vigneau ( 514 ) * on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:25AM (#14605493)
      Not so much anymore. State income tax is currently 5.3%, though you can voluntarily pay 5.9% (I'm not kidding, there's a checkbox in the tax form for this). Romney's trying to get that down to 5%, however, but given the heavily old-boy Democrat leaning of the Legislature, it will be a tough fight. There's also a 5% state sales tax, but it's a short ride to "tax free New Hampshire", so that's generally not a problem.
      • There's also a 5% state sales tax, but it's a short ride to "tax free New Hampshire", so that's generally not a problem. Always nice to see New Hampshire is still living by it's motto "Live Free or Die". It still does sound like a threat, though.

        • Re:Taxachusetts? (Score:3, Informative)

          by kalidasa ( 577403 )
          Property tax rates are significantly lower in Massachusetts than they are in New Hampshire (especially southern NH). The meals tax rate is lower (5% versus 8%). Massachusetts doesn't tax groceries or clothes under a certain amount ($175, I think, though that may have changed over the years). On the other hand, Massachusetts expects you to pay a use tax on items you buy out of state (without paying sales tax) at the same time you pay your income taxes! However, services in Massachusetts are as a rule much be
        • Once in awhile there is a movement here in NH to get a sales and/or income tax. Every person who has attempted to introduce this has either had a horrible defeat in the legislature and/or lost their next election.

          I honestly do not see anything in the near future that will change the situation. Maybe 30-50 years from now, but not before then.

          The only gripe I have is the property taxes. It is insane in NH. Luckly I rent, so I don't really see what the tax is for my place.

      • Re:Taxachusetts? (Score:2, Informative)

        by cuteintern ( 643644 )
        I have family in Westfield, and last I knew (2003-ish), the state gov't was in horrible financial shape. As I recall, the situation was bad enough that they dissolved the county governments to save everyone a little money to help out.

        (Not that there's anything wrong with one less level of government!)

        Has something on that front changed?
        • If they went all out OSS they wouldn't have money problems :)
        • Counties in Massachusetts didn't really do much of anything on their own since, well, before I was born. Jury duty notices and prison administration were pretty much the only things that were county-specific. There is no use for that extra layer of government in Massachusetts anymore.

      • Re:Taxachusetts? (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "Tax free New Hampshire"?

        You folks are out to lunch.

        You pay it one way or another. Think folks: property tax.

        New Hampshire doesn't charge you for sales tax. That seems A-OK, right? Well, didn't work out so well. Schools were going to hell. Finally the court had to step in and fix the problem because the republicans running things had run things into the ground. So local communities had to raise property tax rates. Unlike in "liberal" Massachusetts, where we do our best to keep our schools in good sha
    • According to the Tax Foundation, 31 states higher tax rates on a per capita income basis. http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/taxesbystat e2005/ [cnn.com]
    • I'm currently residing in Massachusetts. The taxes aren't too bad and you can always forgo the big item sales taxes by taking a short trip to New Hampshire (Though you're supposed to file anything bought in New Hampshire and used in MA in your tax forms, no one does). The real killer is the cost of living if you locate to anywhere close to Boston. Rent for a single bedroom apartment is around $1,000 per month, condos no less than 200k and a small hous upwards of 300-500k easily. Also, the prices seem to inc

  • Speaking of statehood... (Score:4, Funny)

    by peterfa ( 941523 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @06:30AM (#14605650)
    I live in Washington State, you know, the land of Redmond. It's nice of our Eastern fellow state to take a look at ODT format. However, you must pitty us. We're never going to see the light of OSS in our lifetimes...
    I guess the sun sets in the West and rises in the East. I guess evolution obeys time zones too.

  • document conversion (Score:1, Insightful)

    by slashk ( 519084 )
    and if something delays or complicates the process, the whole world will hear about it.

    if groups in the MA govt. start complaining that they are losing documents, having problems with maintaining multiple versions of the documents, etc.,
    then this effort will be known as the biggest boondogle in history.

    and anybody who recommends this path in the future will be sharply reminded of this failure.

    i give the initiative about a 1 in 20 change of success.
    • if groups in the MA govt. start complaining that they are losing documents, having problems with maintaining multiple versions of the documents, etc., then this effort will be known as the biggest boondogle in history.
      and anybody who recommends this path in the future will be sharply reminded of this failure.

      So you are saying that they should do nothing -- just maintain the status quo because they might fail or someone might criticize them?
      • hah, even maintaining the status quo leaves them in a pickle... every time Microsoft upissue Office, things change... and you can bet your bottom dollar that things will change in the proprietary extensions to "Office Open XML" format that Microsoft will keep a tight patent-mined rein on...

    • Re:document conversion (Score:5, Informative)

      by vidarh ( 309115 ) <vidar@hokstad.com> on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @09:04AM (#14606064) Homepage Journal
      You mean just like "upgrading" to a newer version of Office then?

      More than once I've had more luck opening old Word document with OpenOffice than with a newer Word version...

      Besides, if you'd bothered checking what they're actually planning to do, they've specifically made it clear that keeping current software around to handle legacy documents is ok, and that no document conversion is required.

  • ODF on its way (Score:3, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @08:17AM (#14605941)
    Moreover, the press release goes out of its way to note that implementation of ODF is still on target for an effective date of January 1, 2007

    They got on a horse and rode through town and declared, "The ODF are coming, the ODF are coming!"
  • Considering how the GOP is pushing this, the Dems must be pretty angry. In the end though, you need to keep in m ind that MA is a one party state. Dems genreally dont need to be elected since no one runs against them and they have an overwhelming majority (super majority?) in the legislative body.

    My prediction, this is a Repblican project and will be DOA.
    • My prediction, this is a Repblican project and will be DOA.

      As I understand it the decision has been made by the IT department and doesn't need to be voted on. The governor's statement just clarifies that MS's lobbying effort to change the decision has not borne fruit.

      • keep in mind that there is nothing here that the legislature cant control. The reason it has gone back and forth is because of the power of the legislature. They have a big enough majority that Romney cant even veto anything. Romney hats MS with a passion akin to a slashdotter. One of the first things he did was make every in house project go form win32 to protable Java. MS hates him anyway.
  • Balmer throws chair.

  • Romney, Massachusetts and ODF (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SkyDude ( 919251 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @10:34AM (#14606542)
    Mitt Romney, as governor of my home state, has been somewhat ineffective as governor, only because Massachusetts is about 80% has a union-funded Democrat state legislature. He is, however, a savvy and smart businessman who has surrounded himself with some very smart people. He may not be a techie, but he has received good advice from his staff about ODF. Any good business person should know the pitfalls of a single supplier of anything. It's good business and hopefully, more states will adopt the standard. Most already use PDFs for downloadable documents, and, while not quite open source, at least there are a few other applications that can create and open PDFs.

    For those who think living here might be close to nirvana, keep in mind housing costs. It's true, the taxes here have been brought somewhat under control, but they are by no means low. The town next to where I live has a property tax nearly double what I pay, and they are still struggling financially. The cost of a basic 2- or 3- bedroom house, anywhere inside the Interstate 95 (Route 128) beltway is staggeringly high. The lowest price is around $350K, where the hight end is nearing $1MM! And, if you want to live in anything bigger or newer, expect prices in the high $500s to $800s; in a few places, over $1MM.

    Massachusetts has a lot to offer in terms of history, geography and business, but my wife and I agree, that when our kids have completed school, we're outta here. The politics of this state are an embarrassment. Remember, it's the two Ks that represent us in the Senate - Kennedy and Kerry. The Mass congressional delegation is a collection of clowns and the state politics are rife with corruption and cronyism. I'm not sure where we'll go, but almost anyplace with a two party system would be better.

    I'd like to see Mitt make it to the White House, but he has a tough road. It's not unlikely that he'll accept the VP nod if the 2008 Republican candidate is someone like himself.
    • but my wife and I agree, that when our kids have completed school, we're outta here.

      Might I recommend my home state, Louisiana? No problem with corrupt politicians down here. No sir. We got the finest politicians who can buy... I mean money can buy... err.. ah hell... Bienvenue Louisiane!

      PS. We use old fashion voting machines with swing down levers/arrows for voting. We sold our old voting machines to Mexico... boy were they suprised when they elected Edwin Edwards to be President of Mexico!
      • Might I recommend my home state, Louisiana? No problem with corrupt politicians down here. No sir. We got the finest politicians who can buy... I mean money can buy... err.. ah hell... Bienvenue Louisiane!

        Good idea! Looks like there may be some prime property in New Orleans once the Nagin's nitwits knock down all of the abandoned houses.
  • ... Not because of the whole ODF thing, but because I'm a resident of Massachusetts, and have seen all the crap that Mitt has subjected us to (my wife is a schoolteacher ... need I say more?)...

    Now I have to cheer for a man I loathe? Oh, the irony...

  • Massachusetts Following Saugus (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It's interesting that the Town of Saugus, Massachusetts [saugus.net] has been successfully using open formats for years. Not just the government there, either. Even the Saugus Chamber of Commerce [saugusbp.org] is using open formats successfully.

    With smaller test cases like that in place, I suspect that Massachusetts itself will be right on time with the switch.

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