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05 Sep 2005
The State of Massachusetts has unveiled a plan to replace Microsoft Office with a software suite that supports the open standards set by the Oasis standards body.
Massachusetts' chief information officer Peter Quinn said in a document posted on the State's website (PDF download available here) that the State seeks in particular to embrace Open Document Format for Office Applications, or OpenDocument.
"Given that the majority of Executive Department agencies currently use office applications that produce documents in proprietary formats, such as Microsoft Office, Lotus Notes and WordPerfect, the magnitude of the migration effort to this new open standard is considerable," Quinn wrote.
"Agencies will need to develop phased migration plans with a target implementation date of 1 January 2007."
Any government agency that plans to purchase new office applications before that date now has to pick an application that supports the OpenDocument standard.
The plan has yet to be approved. A draft has been published to allow the public to comment.
Brian Jones, a programme manager for Microsoft Office, pointed out on his blog that the forthcoming version of Office 12 will save documents in an open XML supported format by default that allows users of competing suites to open the documents.
A first beta of the software is due out later this year, followed by the final product unveiling in 2006.
Jones referred to the Massachusetts proposal to standardise on the OpenDocument standard as "short sighted and unnecessarily exclusive".
"There has been no thorough research into the open XML formats for Office 12, " he wrote.
The Microsoft document format, however, appears to be incompatible with the General Public Licence suggesting that open source applications including OpenOffice will not be able to use it.
By sticking to its XML format, Microsoft claims that it can guarantee compatibility across different versions of Office that would not be possible using the OpenDocument standard.
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Thank you.
A great move. Well done.
Posted by: Krishnan Shrikuamr 05 Sep 2005
Mass isn't dumping MS Office.
Massachusetts isn't dumping MS Office, they are just choosing a better file format. In fact, it would seem that Microsoft is denying Mass the choice of using MS Office by refusing to support the only publicly developed, fully documented, completely open file format for office applications that is compatible with all the various development models. Sadly, Microsoft seems content with bagging a very good file format that was developed by some of the sharpest minds across the industry. If this file format fails to meet Microsoft's needs that is only because Microsoft, a member of OASIS, chose not to participate in the development of the file format. Further, I can't imagine that decision makers will be pleased to hear Microsoft suggesting that they haven't given fair consideration to Office 12's file format. Sadly, Office 12's file format doesn't give fair consideration to open source software which is currently the only viable competition to MS Office. Good luck to Massachusetts for developing a software policy that meets the democratic rights of their citizens and actually promotes competition with out limiting who may compete for their business. Maybe Microsoft might grow up enough to realize that they can have a share of the pie, or nothing.
Posted by: Rodd Clarkson 05 Sep 2005
proprietary formats are cages
With laissez-faire industrial policy, software users are vulnerable to abuse of copyright protection by producers. Microsoft, in particular, has abused the protection and used file formats to cage users in, i.e. make it very painful for them to move data between formats and programs. Massachusetts is increasing the productivity and general well-being of state employees by letting them out of the Microsoft proprietary format cage. The cage is banned by the US constitution's copyright clause, but the laissez-faire policy will not implement it. This is only one of many negative results of laissez-faire federal policy that the media is banned from talk about. Certainly the other states should follow the example of Mass.
Posted by: rtdrury 05 Sep 2005