State of Massachusetts / OASIS formats

[Michael Haney]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 7:38 AM, Chris Puttick <cputtick at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/10/20  <sounder-request at lists.ubuntu.com>:
>> Send sounder mailing list submissions to
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>> Today's Topics:
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>>   1. Re: State of Massachusetts / OASIS formats (David Sanders)
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:17:44 +0200
>> From: David Sanders <dsuzukisanders at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: State of Massachusetts / OASIS formats
>> To: sounder at lists.ubuntu.com
>> Message-ID:
>>        <6228eb140910200217u462b4019w182ace5547c6831e at mail.gmail.com>
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>>
>>>
>>> As i understand it MS office has ratified there new format "Office Open" as
>>> an open standard, the fact that the standard is incomplete and
>>> unreproducible without MS help does not stop it achieving there ends.
>>>
>>> Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML
>>>
>>
>> According to the below, they have indeed completed their switch to
>> *OpenDocument* standards. Please note that they never said they were
>> going to stop using Microsoft Office, merely that all their documents
>> had to be saved in OpenDocument format (which is a nice step forward
>> anyway).
>>
>> http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/96748
>>
>
> Actually, I think that document precedes all the lobbying insanity
> that came as a result of the Massachusetts policy, including the
> resignation of two state CIOs inside of 12 months, a failure to
> approve an IT budget resulting in considerable job losses and an
> eventual decision to allow Ecma OOXML; the result being, of course, a
> failure to make a change that would have resulted in a considerable
> saving to the taxpayer.
>
> In the meantime, several other states have gone a similar path with
> similar intense lobbying causing a failure of the strategy. New York
> looks like they might make the move stick, only time will tell. Of
> course the other side of the tale is more interesting from a future
> historian's perspective (of those who study history of technology and
> know about the leapfrog effect); significant numbers of other
> countries (or regions thereof) have made the switch to ODF (and
> beyond). A growing number in Europe, also South America (you've seen
> the pictures of the Brazilian president addressing the FOSS
> conference, right?), South Africa, Vietnam. It's rolling, and once
> rolling hard to stop. Trying the argument "we cannot govern our
> country with FOSS and/or open standards" doesn't stand up well when
> others are successfully doing it...
>
>

Micro$oft still has too much influence in the US for FOSS to make the
kind of headway it has in Europe and South America.  The growth of
FOSS adoption in the US will remain a slow up hill battle as long as
companies like Micro$oft are allowed to keep using the same
anti-competitive tactics by a DoJ that looks the other way.

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
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