Massachusetts decision for OpenDocument

October 15, 2005 Posted by mitch | technology | 0 Comments

Let me start off by giving props to them for being bold enough to stand up to Microsoft for whats right. Currently Microsoft seems to be pulling out all the stops and using the media to try and further influence Massachusetts to their way of thinking. Some how microsft doesn't understand the word "open" in this case. They claim that their new Office XML format is open, however the two or maybe three problems with it, is 1) Microsoft controls the format. One of Massachusetts requirements is that the format should be in an open forum for discussion. If you don't have that, then your only sligthly better than running any other Microsoft office format, which currently changes with every new release of Office with no warning, simply to force people to upgrade from what I can tell. 2) Documents you create arn't solely owned by you *the creator*. Its kinda of a joint relationship with you and Microsoft, and guess who can trump the other? :) 3) The license is crafted in such a way that prohibits opensource (namely GPL'd software) from supporting the format. There is also pieces that require any implementation written to read the file format must support the full format. Now why would you included that? I really have no idea, just asking the question. However, you can tell that anyone drafting the license has never really coded much in their life. For some things writing some code to support the very basics of the format is all that is desired. Such as a web page that allows you to download office documents and instead of forcing the uploader, or whoever is setting up the site and files, to have to manually add in the documents title... why not just write a little piece of code to read the title from the document itself?

I can't grok what it is they're trying to accomplish unless it boils down to the fact that they really don't think that they could play on a level playing field in this arena. I still find it interesting that they can still, with a straight face, say they're trying to do whats best for their customers. Ideally, whats *best* for their customers is choice. An open document format is what is best for their customers.