Hi :) Aaarrrgh. I've been busily trying to deal with the FUD or ill-informed comments on the UK Govs proposal to set ODF, and only ODF as standard format for editable word-processed documents. But this one is such a long comment that i find it difficult to summarise or deal with at all! http://standards.data.gov.uk/comment/807#comment-807 Suggestions would be welcomed a long as they manage to stay polite and cool and maybe a bit posh. Here goes ...
The proposal premise is flawed. Personal Opinion The users are being compromised by this overtly technical discussion over proprietary versus open formats that seems to have been sparked by this Cabinet Office challenge. For the average user, there is no distinction around document formats. The Government department user wants to be able to create, collaborate and distribute the most effective and well formed information internally and externally to citizens and business users. The citizen wants to be able to respond and interact with the Government in the simplest and most effective way. The choice of appropriate software for both user groups is governed directly by these fundamentals, not by the type of document format that is produced. Until now! By positively discriminating against the Open Office XML format, The Cabinet Office is proposing to force tens of thousands of users (internal & citizens) who have older versions of MSFT office to upgrade or to find alternative Office type software. As a citizen I do not just interact with the Government, I have work to do and social activities which require interaction and collaboration too. Am I supposed to also start creating documents for sharing with my local club and request that all participants also upgrade or otherwise change their software to access these open documents. The answer is yes if this proposal in current form gains any further traction. Please stop and think hard about the short to medium term consequences of this proposal. Professional Opinion. The proposal contains a statement that "Users must not have costs imposed upon them due to the format in which editable government information is shared or requested" There have consequently been numerous comments on this forum regarding the perceived cost burden to run MSFT Office. I would seriously question the premise of no cost. How or why is this realistic and why therefore is it included in the original challenge? This, I believe is another deliberate attempt at positive discrimination. The Government is freely able to impose cost burden across numerous other activities. As of today I believe that all UK citizens can purchase full MSFT office suite for £7.99 per month that is available for 5 devices per user. If the user is unable to own their own cheap PC or laptop they can use the web based version included in any library or public place that has bandwidth, thus there is not a requirement for an expensive piece of hardware as many have eluded to in previous comments. As you can hardly buy a gallon of petrol for this amount, it has to be seen that this represents extremely good value for money. The proposal does not mention the cost to Government of using proprietary licences including Microsoft, but again there are many comments that the perceived saving of £m's will directly ensue form this proposal being adopted. If this is the intention of the proposal then please explicitly state so, otherwise, as I say, the proposal is flawed. Mandating a change to ODF across multiple Government departments, agencies & NDPB's etc. will have huge implementation and subsequent Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) costs in addition to significant migration costs onto ODF. New products such as Libre Office from Germany, have well-formed credentials, but have grown out of the ashes of Open Office which has in the past had Oracle licencing connections. Oracle stumbled as they acquired Sun Mocrosystems and the result was a breakaway called The Document Foundation. Perhaps this is why comments regarding Open Office are light by comparison to Libre Office. Interestingly when researching this organisation, I noted that Michael Meeks who is a Director has published some positive comments about Microsoft's adoption of OOXML when it was first introduced. There is very emotive and strong criticism of Microsoft in many responses to your proposal and I feel that such emotion should not be part of what needs to be a professional debate. I have taken the opportunity to read and digest Microsoft's formal response to this proposal and find that their stance of requesting ODF and OOXML together is well founded, pragmatic and entirely supportable. If a Government Department is to request say Tender Submissions, they should be entirely free to request submission on both formats. Many Government Departments that I have dealt with still request submission in .doc format rather than .docx. I have no problem or issue in dealing with those requests. There are many comments regarding the view that an ODF format will be robust and unchanged for many years to come, in comparison to an implicit suggestion that the MSFT format will not, thus supporting ODF adoption to protect the ability to view digital information archives in the future. I was very interested in this and consequently did my research. I was unable to find any such assurance from any source that ODF will remain unchanged in the future. Perhaps my search was not exhaustive enough, but I would be very interested to see what actual evidence there is to support these numerous claims. The issue of future proofing digital archives is a vast and complicated one and I suggest that if there are some solutions forming then it would be most useful to everyone to share the facts. Personally I am still able to access Word & Excel documents created as far back as the 1990's with my current software and this has served me well without interruption or complication. Finally, whilst I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate, I am very concerned that this consultation does not appear to be far reaching and has therefore attracted a tightly formed, vociferous minority voice, which has no basis on which to make fundamental policy change the like of which is being proposed here. The vast majority of individuals that I have spoken to are simply unaware of it and are therefore excluded from giving an opinion. We need to have a much wider user based forum which extends well beyond the mainly technical discussion that has raged here. Perhaps this is the intention and of so I would welcome that wholeheartedly. In conclusion, I would submit that there should be a longer period to extend the consultation and consider more fully the wider implications of this proposal. My combined personal and professional opinion is that we should conclude that the proposal should extend to include the widely adopted MSFT OOXML format to allow the best and widest option for maximum user satisfaction across all users that this proposal will affect. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted