Thoughts on the Massachusetts OpenDocument Hearings
Just as I expected, Microsoft is not going to simply sit back while Massachusetts makes moves to adopt the OpenDocument format as the standard document format for all government communications. This has the potential to be ground breaking if Massachusetts is able to pull it off. It seems that two legislators have stood up as opponents to the plan and have started hearings on the matter. There is no doubt that Microsoft is behind these two legislators, feeding them with their ammunition of F.U.D. and it would be interesting to see if Microsoft has ever “donated” any funds to these legislators campaigns.
They seem to have some interesting arguments against the proposed standard.
1.) By establishing a standard around a single file format it unfairly locks out certain vendors and eliminates competition.
Jeez, I wonder what vendor they are talking about here? Not to mention the fact that it’s completely not true at all. As a truly non-proprietary and open standard ANYONE can implement the OpenDocument file format in their applications. The same can not be said of another well known file format created solely for the use of a single office suite by a single software company.
Microsoft has already stated that they have no intentions of implementing ODF in their popular office suite Microsoft Office. Their reasoning for this decision is that they do not have the resources to be able to add this functionality into their applications. So let me get this straight, one of the worlds most profitable companies with almost unlimited financial capital cannot come up with enough resources to add a free and open file format to their office suite?
That’s amusing to me because KOffice, an office suite created with almost no financial backing, has been able to implement ODF in it’s latest offerings.
Eliminating competition, really? Creating a communication standard around an open and free document format will only increase competion. The file format can be implemented by anyone, any company, any software project. Their have already been a number of applications to announce that they either already support ODF or plan on adding support for it in future releases.
Lets talk about what really eliminates competion. How about using a proprietary file format such as Microsoft’s .doc, .xls, .ppt, etc. NO other office application can fully support or implement these file formats, how does that breed competition.
Think about standardizing file documents with ODF like standardizing on HTML for displaying information on the world wide web. Their are currently many applications for viewing web pages and html files (IE, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Safari). Their are also many applications for creating web pages and HTML files (Frontpage, Dreamweaver, Quanta+, AceHTML, Bluefish, Notepad). Any one of these tools will create HTML files that can be viewed in any browser or opened for editing in any of these other tools.
3.) Costs of implementing (training).
This has always been the old Microsoft fall back. Don’t move to Linux you will need to re-train all your users. Don’t move to OpenOffice you will need to re-train all your users. This will not be such an easy argument in the near future though. Anybody who has seen screenshots of the upcoming Microsoft Office 12 release knows that Microsoft has drastically changed the user interface. Even though these changes have been made in an attempt to make it easier to use (and the images I have seen do seem intriguingly) people will not be able to readily apply all they have learned in the past with prior MS Office releases to this yet to be released version. So, users will need to be re-trained regardless if you upgrade to the latest version of MS Office or if you move to OpenOffice.org (or any other ODF compliant application).
MS Office is an expensive application to begin with, especially when compared to OpenOffice.org which you can download for free and redistribute as much as you want. Massachusetts could probably download OpenOffice.org 2, burn them on CD, and distribute them to every resident in Massachusetts for less then they are currently paying just to use Office for all state employees (this is just a thinking-out-loud quess).
4.) Issues with accessibility and disabled people.
This appears to be their only actual argument with any merit. I really don’t know the specifics as to what is actually lacking in terms of accessibility and features for disabled people but it seems ODF is lacking in this department.
The good news though is that it seems this will be remedied very soon! As was mentioned in a previous post IBM and Sun held a joint meeting on the OpenDocument format. One of the things discussed was this very issue. According to ConsortiumInfo.org IBM and Sun were joined by Adobe, Corel, Computer Associates, Force 6 3, Google, Nokia, Novell,and RedHat, not to mention Peter Quinn, Massachusetts CIO, PatrickGannon of OASIS, and folks from OSI, RedMonk
From ConsortiumInfo.org on one of the topics of the meeting:
“Addressing the accessibility issue will be a major focus of events thatwill be announced shortly. There has been a commitment made to not onlyclose the gap between Microsoft Office and ODF by the Commonwealth’sdeadline of January 1, 2007, but also to make ODF a superioralternative to Office for those with disabilities by that date, if notbefore. Look for concrete details in press releases to follow.”
As I said, it appears this issue will be ironed out shortly. That said, politics sucks and Microsoft has enough resources to buy as many politicians as they need (or at least just enough of the right ones) to ensure they are the sole software company supplying the states documents needs.
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