Texas Bill For Open Documents 197
Ditesh Kumar tips us to a blog entry by Sam Hiser noting a bill filed in Texas that would require state agencies to conduct their work in an open document format. After Microsoft's grueling battle against ODF in Massachusetts, bluest of blue states, it must be galling to face te same fight in the reddest of the red. Hiser notes that the bill includes a rigorous and sound definition of an open document format, which ODF would meet but Microsoft's current OOXML submission would not.
There is something here... (Score:2, Interesting)
Question: How will each of these states' approach to this `open formats' "problem" be similar and how will it be different if one dares to compare and of course speculate?
Re:State-sponsored OSS in Texas is reality already (Score:3, Interesting)
I've presented at several regional (Texas) conferences on various aspects of OSS in higher ed, and have talked to many, many people affiliated with higher education. I'm sorry, but I've never gotten the idea that OSS is in "heavy use" in Texas colleges. I'm sure there are "pockets of resistance," but by and large, Texas colleges are very much in bed with proprietary software vendors.
ODF Converter... (Score:3, Interesting)
For me, this is all about the future. Locking up government documents in proprietary formats is a disaster for future generations. We should ideally be scratching them out on cave walls...
Friedmud
Re:Check the author (Score:5, Interesting)
Some years ago Microsoft threated the city of Huston [usatoday.com] to sign up for a multiyear, $12 million software licensing plan or face an audit exposing the city's use of software it hadn't paid for.
But as it turned out, Huston had more than enough proof of purchase seals. And then they voted to dump Microsoft Office in favor of SimDesk because of Microsoft's gestapo tactics. I don't know if that's still true today and I doubt SimDesk supports OOXML. So not all parts of Texas are friends of Microsoft.
Re:Check the author (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Reddest? (Score:5, Interesting)
Austin's about as red as the Santa Fe sky on a clear afternoon, or Australia's Coral Coast. Add to that a bunch of tech industry, a huge university and about 2000 miles between it and Redmond, and this is hardly surprising.
Austin's where I first heard about Linux... in January of 1992. Slackware was on sale in the University co-op a year or so later. And it's where I first used USENET, IRC and internet e-mail, way back in 1991.
Re:OOXML and ISO approval (Score:3, Interesting)
That's nice Microsoft but we already have a published ISO standard (ISO/IEC 26300:2006) for "XML schema for office applications and its semantics". One standard is enough, thanks but no thanks. If you want you may propose revisions to ISO/IEC 26300 by submitting them to the JTC 1/SC 34 committee for review... Have a nice day.
Re:Makes Sense (Score:1, Interesting)
sense) using a Windows-only program (which does not). You can get an exemption if you can prove to the official in charge that using
a Windows-only program is an undue hardship (for instance because you don't have a Windows PC), but I don't think this is a good
solution, since you're now basically dependant on the goodwill of the tax authorities.