On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 14:30 -0400, Chad Smith wrote: > http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-6109103.html > > Massachusetts will begin using OpenDocument as the default document format > later this year as planned, but it will be sticking with Microsoft Office in > the near term, the state's top technology executive said. > > No massive state-supported adoption of OpenOffice.org in Massachusetts, I > guess. > > But did we really "lose"? I mean, they made MS O support ODF - that's a > good thing, right? > > What do you think?
In theory, it's a huge victory for user freedom, which is what the free software movement is all about: freedom, not price. (And this is why my feelings for the open source movement run from mild dislike to vicious despisal; they ignore free software's original and very basic reason for existence.) In practice, right now it's a huge question mark, as it remains to be seen is how Microsoft will screw up, bugger, blunder, fold, spindle, mutilate, and otherwise err in ODF support in its products. If Microsoft "support" of World Wide Web standards like HTML, HTTP, CSS, JPEG, and PNG in Internet Exploder (better known in some circles as aIEeeeeee...) is any indication, the "cure" may well be worse than the disease. It may well be that we are only a few months or weeks away from the last "clean" version of OpenOffice.org's ODF support which is free of any workarounds for Microsoft Office bugs with regard to ODF documents. I, personally, don't think OOo should *ever* have *any* workarounds for Microsoft's poor programming when it comes to ODF; we need every MSO user to complain loud and long to Microsoft "this is a bug in your software, not OOo, and you need to fix it", and we need every OOo user that gets a broken ODF document generated by MSO to report back to that MSO user "your software is making broken documents and needs to be fixed". OOo is as close as we have to a reference ODF implementation and to pollute its ODF support with MSO bug compatibility would be a tragedy. (Speaking of which, is there such a beast as an ODF validator at the moment? If we don't have one now, I know we will need it very soon.) For the record, I do hope the "near term" means that Massachusetts refers to means quite literally "near term" as in, after end of life of their current Microsoft Office licenses, they don't buy any more. It's bad enough that Massachusetts taxpayers have indirectly paid money to a corporation with monopolistic business practices and questionable ethics, but would be even worse if the state government did not ensure that the taxpayers at least "got their money's worth" by using the software for its natural life. -- Shawn K. Quinn --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
