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Massachusetts ditches Office

B

Blue Velvet

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Jul 4, 2004
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Are these the signs of things to come? Adobe will be pleased — Metro, stalled at the gate in Massachusetts.


The commonwealth of Massachusetts has finalized its decision to standardize desktop applications on OpenDocument, a format not supported by Microsoft Office.

The state on Wednesday posted the final version of its Enterprise Technical Reference Model, which mandates new document formats for office productivity applications.

As it proposed late last month before a comment period, Massachusetts has decided to use only products that conform to the Open Document Format for Office Applications, or OpenDocument, which is developed by the standards body OASIS.

State agencies in the executive branch are now supposed to migrate to OpenDocument-compliant applications by Jan. 1, 2007, a change that will affect about 50,000 desktop PCs. The reference model also confirms that Adobe's PDF format is considered an "open format."
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http://news.com.com/Massachusetts+moves+ahead+sans+Microsoft/2100-1012_3-5878869.html
 
Color me shocked. The Soviet Socialist Republic of Massachusetts has had it in for Microsoft for years... even with the anti-trust trial over, Massachusetts steadfastly refused to settle with Microsoft, even though ALL of the other states that sued Microsoft (there were 19, IIRC, + D.C.) had settled.

I doubt seriously that anyone at Microsoft is too concerned about this.
 
interesting, wonder if any other state governments will follow suit, or if this will be isolated.
 
ham_man said:
What is wrong with .doc? Doesn't every text editor work with .doc? :confused:
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sarcasm there?

no .doc wont work with MS Works for example, or WordPerfect, dont even think Notepad can open it, but i could be wrong there.
 
PlaceofDis said:
sarcasm there?

no .doc wont work with MS Works for example, or WordPerfect, dont even think Notepad can open it, but i could be wrong there.
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So Apple's standard text editor can open Microsoft proprietary format, but Microsoft's own standard text editor cannot open their own format? Wierd... :rolleyes:
 
latergator116 said:
Im glad Mass is starting to move away from Microsoft's crap software. Let's hope other states follow.
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I am glad too, that means state colleges will also be changing over ^_^ and i go to state school here.

YAY
 
One of the issues here is document retention and archival.

It's difficult to guarantee that in 20+ years, you'll still be able to open all those .doc files given that it is a proprietary and closed format.

OpenDocument and OASIS is a completely open spec that is unencumbered by any potential IP/patent issues, and free for anyone to implement in their software.

The same can't be said for Microsoft's XML schemas which they call 'open'.
 
clayj said:
I doubt seriously that anyone at Microsoft is too concerned about this.
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Actually Microsoft was very vocal about this and had representatives on hand for most of the public meetings (and were often speaking the most of any interested party).

ham_man said:
What is wrong with .doc? Doesn't every text editor work with .doc?
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No... and more to the point, Microsoft is changing the format using their proprietary XML which is going to break compatibility (actually this started with Office 2003) with other word processors that are trying to be compatible. It also breaks compatibility with earlier versions of Word.

The main point is that Microsoft's .doc is not a published file format. Just about every application that can read .doc is based on a reverse engineered version (which is why nothing is as compatible with Word as Word).

Both the Open Document format and the PDF format are completely open for anyone to use without restriction, which is why the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has chosen them over Microsoft's offerings.

Microsoft Office itself has not been ruled out... except by Microsoft themselves. They have said that they will not support the Open Document format (as it is open, there is no one stopping Microsoft from supporting it). Which means any office suite (like OpenOffice and StarOffice) which supports the format are in the running.

Plus, Office 12 is not going to run on Windows 2000 (which is what most of the systems in the Massachusetts government are running), so that is another reason why they are considering moving away from Office.

The other factor that weighed heavily in this was the cost to the people of Massachusetts to read their own documents. OpenOffice is free and available for almost all platforms, where as Microsoft Office is only available for Windows and Mac... and the Mac version currently doesn't support the XML file format. People shouldn't have to pay several hundred dollars to some third party software company to be able to read the documents of their state government.

One of the examples sited in the hearings was the FEMA web site which only worked with Internet Explorer on Windows. The fact that Mac, Linux and Unix users were locked out of a Federal Government web site was sited as something that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts would not like to emulate.

:rolleyes:

This has been going on for two years now. I'm surprised that the Mac community wasn't aware of this.
 
clayj said:
Color me shocked. The Soviet Socialist Republic of Massachusetts has had it in for Microsoft for years... even with the anti-trust trial over, Massachusetts steadfastly refused to settle with Microsoft, even though ALL of the other states that sued Microsoft (there were 19, IIRC, + D.C.) had settled.

I doubt seriously that anyone at Microsoft is too concerned about this.
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Yes, our two Senators, House of Representatives and the majority at the State House.

We have an awesome Governor, one of the best in the country. Mitt Romney, he is the one that save the Utah Winter Olympics in 2000. A brilliant and thoughtful man. Could be the next president if the United States. I'm very proud of him. This is an example of his awesome leadership here in the Commonwealth.
 
y0zza said:
It's difficult to guarantee that in 20+ years, you'll still be able to open all those .doc files given that it is a proprietary and closed format.
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Heck, you can't open them NOW. Word isn't compatible with itself. Coming from the publishing industry, I can tell you that you never know what sort of weird glitches you're going to get. And speaking from a software engineering perspective, there is absolutely no excuse for that sort of thing, except for a deliberate desire to obfuscate as much as possible. I mean, hello, this isn't the early 80's anymore....

--Eric
 
y0zza said:
One of the issues here is document retention and archival.

It's difficult to guarantee that in 20+ years, you'll still be able to open all those .doc files given that it is a proprietary and closed format.

OpenDocument and OASIS is a completely open spec that is unencumbered by any potential IP/patent issues, and free for anyone to implement in their software.

The same can't be said for Microsoft's XML schemas which they call 'open'.
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Much like the open standard from Adobe and the DNG format for digital images. It is now time for us as a society to ensure that digital files are readable for future generations. Corporations can not IMO be relied upon to provide that future support.
 
RacerX said:
and the Mac version currently doesn't support the XML file format.
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According to my experience, you are correct on everything except for this. I've developed some php applications that generate XML Excel files that can be read by Office on either Windows or OS X, that include almost any Excel function. Maybe the Word version of XML has some special commands that the Mac version can't read?
 
Ok, here is a question, may be a stupid one?? ... What is going to happen when another state or the federal government sends them a document that is in word format? are they going to have one machine with office that can "Translate it" to a text editor level?
 
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