MA Lawmakers Question Move to OpenOffice 343
kcurtis writes "According to a boston.com article, senators in Massachetts are questioning the move to OpenDocument." From the article: "At issue is how the state government stores the millions of digital documents and other public records it creates. The Romney administration wants documents stored in a particular format that would allow the records to be read by a variety of software packages -- except Microsoft Office. The state Senate Post Audit and Oversight Committee is holding a hearing Monday on the proposed document storage standards after blind and other visually impaired state workers raised concerns."
Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Romney administration wants documents stored in a particular format that would allow the records to be read by a variety of software packages -- except Microsoft Office. The state Senate Post Audit and Oversight Committee is holding a hearing Monday on the proposed document storage standards after blind and other visually impaired state workers raised concerns.
Except that the original concern was raised that MS Office was the *only* way to access most of the documents. There is nothing stopping MS from implementing perfect support for the OpenDocument format. There are many things stopping competitors from implementing perfect MS Office compatibility. Come to think of it, even MS can't (or won't) truly implement perfect MS Office compatibility between the various versions.
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
So while fundamentally the issue of Accessibility is probably best solved at the OS level, MS has not but solved it at the Application level. Or at least they have made it smooth at the app level. And only MS apps receive true testing by these 2nd party application screen readers and dictation programs and screen zoomers, etc.
Its a tricky issue but one that has the laws on the surface fully in support of MS since MS does support this and the others really do not. Open Office should implement Accessibility, not just 'accessibility support' and not depend on a 2nd part to do it, if they want to fully compete. Especially with Government.
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:5, Informative)
Complex Word documents often have layout/macro issues - pretty much the same level of compatability as the OSS filters, really - though the conversion is very good and the fast majority of users will see no problems, just as with OO imports.
I think it's pretty clear to everyone that this is MS pulling out its political guns - think we'd be having these sort of hearings if they were moving servers from UNIX or Linux to Windows? The accessibility issue is real, and I'm not disabled and haven't done an intensive study, but OO.o does have accessibility support, even if it's not as good as what Office has. Previous versions of Office (97 and the like) have worse accessibility, so if they were good enough for workers then OO.o should be too, especially if funding can be found to sponser accessibility work in OO.o. The quotes don't sound to me like any has actually reviewed the alternatives and is familiar with the level of support in OO.o. It's not 100% correct, either. Makers of screen reader software and braille readers have specifically supported Office at the expense of other applications - an example of the harm the Office monopoly causes - and screen magnifiers work with whatever software you use. I think we're seeing a lot of people with vested political interests, or even just people that MS and MS backers have political access to, trying to toss thier 2 cents in to break a project that means a signifigant loss of revenue for MS.
All of this wouldn't matter in the slightest is MS implemented support for OpenDocument, of course, and I imagine there are plenty of people in Massechusets who would simply jump all over the chance to give MS 3 times the money they'd otherwise spend.
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:2)
thats just completely wrong.
Access 2003 *can* read Access 97, 2000 and 2003 Formats. (and i think even 95)
But you have to convert an Access 97 File to at least 2000 to be able to manipulate it.
it can even convert everything to everything (e.g. 2003 back to 97)
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:5, Informative)
Just a tip that may help out a little here. Although Access 2000+ won't let you directly manipulate Access 97 databases without converting them, the Jet DB engine is perfectly capable of R/W access to 97-format databases. One way to have them co-exist is to create a blank database in 2000, then link all the tables from the 97 format database in. By opening the special compatibility database, Access 2000 users can have full read-write capability without having to convert the database.
You can also go the other way (open 2000 format MDBs in 97) if you have a new enough MDAC version installed. A simple linked table won't work, but you can route it through an ODBC data source.
It's an ugly hack, and you still have to manually copy over reports / macros, but it works.
Re:8 years of backward compatability.... (Score:2)
In any case... (Score:2)
OpenOffice.org demonstrably reads and writes documents in far more formats than MSOffice. Small details of formatting occasionally suffer (but who is going to claim that never occurs between different computers with MSOffice?) but that is hardly a show-stopper.
OOo is now a mature product, and well able to stand comparison with MSOffice.
Re:8 years of backward compatability.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly the attitude IT needs to move away from. An understanding needs to occur that since computers are now permanent office tools, the data that is created and stored by them must be accessable years, if not decades into the future without worry of its accessability. People are generally sick and tired of the forced upgrade treadmill.
ODF has apparently been designed with long range accessability in mind. I believe that the new metric for data accessability should be one average human lifespan--any electronic data created at one's birth should be accessable during that person's entire predicted lifespan. This obviously precludes vendor lockin of file formats for the purposes of revenue enhancement.
There is no technical reason that MS could not incorporate seamless document importing capabilities from older versions of Office. It chose not to. Why?
precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
There really *does* need to be a guaranteed open access document format, especially for public governmental documents.
The willingness of most business to voluntarily get locked in to a forced upgrade cycle, and government the same, based on ONE monopoly's dictates and profit concerns, is mind boggling. It's contemptuous really, beyond idiotic. Imagine the discussion if books were similar, write something, ten years or so later, after you paid for an eyeball upgrade because "everyone else does it", you could no longer view the decade old book. It's ludicrous but that is what the closed document format people want with electronic records.
Re:8 years of backward compatability.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I might just be crazy or something, but I would really hope that the new metric for data accessibility would be "forever". Or at least "as far as the eye can see". Ok, maybe not everyone wants to keep all of their data forever, but why does that mean that our aim shouldn't be to make data accessible for the foreseeable future, for as long as a person should want to keep his data? If any data format precludes this possibility, I think it should probably be obsoleted immediately, as it is insufficient for the needs of civilization-- or my needs, at any rate.
Why should there be a necessary expiring of information, anyway? Can you imagine if every bit of information from more than 80 years ago suddenly disappeared? Imagine what we'd lose. No, we should demand that all file formats are open enough that they can be read for all of the foreseeable future, and that if that format should become obsolete, conversion would be possible.
Re:8 years of backward compatability.... (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone want to bet that MS will still be supporting Word 2003 file format for even 10% of that amount of time?
Thought not.
Re:8 years of backward compatability.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:8 years of backward compatability.... (Score:2)
Re:8 years of backward compatability.... (Score:5, Informative)
Point One: wrt to archival access, the "standard of the industry" and good corporate practices do not apply to some institutions, such as governments.
The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was ratified in 1780; it is of course still in active use. There is a large body of documents written before 1780 that might be called up on any discussion of MA law or procedure, as well as a yearly addition to this that has grown exponentially. This is not just the legislative and judicial records; it includes agency policy memos and even invoices and purchase orders since these might indicate how MA actually did its daily work at any time.
This is a "living archive" situation-- any of these old documents of the last 300 years could become relevant again today in a variety of different settings ranging from courtroom fights over MA's stewardship of public lands to the responsibilities that anyone selling goods or services to MA residents must meet.
I agree with the current govenrment of MA that it is important to make these materials as accessable as possible for as long as MA continues to exist. And it makes sense to look for the most efficient way to do this-- which in the eyes of those who have assessed the numerous studies, means moving to OpenDocument.
Point Two: Some other institutions have similar needs. Hospitals are one example that I know fairly well.
Malpractice litigation is one of a hospital's biggest expenses. In its collective wisdom, US courts have determined that a hospital should not be held to today's standard of care for an incident that happened years ago; the hospital should be held to the standard of care that existed at the the time of the incident. It is the hospital's responsibility to prove what its standard of care at that time was, and whether it exercised due diligence in developing and enforcing that standard. That means that all old policy and procedure statements, the research that informed these decisions, attendance records for training sessions in the new procedures, and some indication of compliance with the changed standard, all need to be part of a living archive. Obviously storing all this material digitally has advantages over paper storage. Just as clearly, it makes sense to go to a format that promises easy access into the future.
I worked for a hospital when MS Office 2000 was released. Our IT department thought this was a big deal when the first machines came in, and handed them out like candy to the Most Very Important Persons. IT got slapped hard alongside the head when the hospital Administrator found that the memo he had written on his new computer looked like crap on the computers of the clinical staff who were still using Office 97. IT got slapped hard again, when a Quality Control nurse found that MS Office 2000 mangled old policy statements that had been written in Word 97 and made them unusable. In the end, IT had to go through the expense of ripping out MS Office 2000 on every newly purchased machine, and replacing it with MS Office 97, and living in an uncomfortably ambiguous legal situation since Microsoft wouldn't give a straight answer to whether such a change was actually covered under the blanket contract. Instead of being acclaimed as the white knight heroes that the IT staff thought would be their due, the whole department acquired an odor reminiscent of the unclean shoes of a swineherd.
If there is a moral to this longish Sunday morning writing exercise, it is that youngsters who are entering the IT professions need to keep an eye on issues of long term storage and broad access.
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:2)
Not to mention the fact that in the Linux world, nothing comes close to Access as a [programmable] frontend. When you need to add business logic to a database, Access does a pretty goo
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, and I've done it--
Most businesses have use an Access database in the past because it is fairly easy to start it and build on top of it. Hell, I've had one that grew past it's 1Gig limit (when we migrated it to SQL7 with the same front end).
Personally, I've found that if you build the frontend in an HTML interface and use PHP/MySQL as the backend, you have a much better chance of being accessible and don't have to worry about updrages with the Access front end.
My case had Mac u
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
Execpt that this isn't about Linux vs. Windows remarkable as that may seem. It's about Open Standards vs Vendor Lock in. Windows users can use OpenDocument as well.
And then there's always OpenOffice Base which is reckoned to be a pretty good Access workalike - an aknowledged weaness of OOo 1.x, now addressed in 2.0.
When you need to add business logic to a database, Access does a pretty good job.
That's debatable; at best it's a matter of preference. Personally, I'd use a proper database (Oracle, PostgreSQL, Ingres, or Informix by choice) and add the front end using Perl/Tk. Or if you insist on using windows, use ODBC and the developement environment of your choice.
But right at the moment the argument is about who you can buy your office software from if you want to talk to MA government offices. Is it going to be Microsoft, or is it going to be everyone in the world plus Microsoft too (if they decide to stop sulking)?
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:3, Insightful)
If the state ONLY saves documents in that format from this point forward, then they will be unable to take advantage of any newly developed tech, be it standard or proprietary. ie, if Massachusetts 'locked in" on wax cylinders for playing sounds, it would make it hard to get my CD, cassette tape or futuristic crystal cube device into the state's procurement proc
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:3, Insightful)
If the state ONLY saves documents in that format from this point forward, then they will be unable to take advantage of any newly developed tech, be it standard or proprietary. ie, if Massachusetts 'locked in" on wax cylinders for playing sounds, it would make it hard to get my CD, cassette tape or futuristic crystal cube device into the state's procurement proces
Access sucks. Use SQLite instead (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok except consider the following:...
Ok, now consider this: MS Access is a strong contender for the Worst Ever Forward Compatibility Prize , no matter what criteria any panel of judges might decide to use. It doesn't look like Jet improves the situation at all-- it appears that the Jet technology is just extending the compatibility issues to the other MS Office applications that have now begun to rely on it for some functions.
The basic problem seems to go back to some of the earliest issues in softwar
Re:Microsoft supports disabled people better, peri (Score:2)
And yes, if Y was good enough then X should also be good enough. Thats not to say that theres not a reason to work on improving what we have, or that Office isn't better, but if disabled workers could work with Office 95, then they can also work with OpenOffice. Bear in mind that Massachusetts is only legally obligated to the extent of section 508 support.
I kno
Re:Microsoft supports disabled people better, peri (Score:3, Insightful)
I am impressed (Score:3, Insightful)
As opposed to whom, pray tell? And while we're at it, how does the public get charged, precisely? Funding targetted for OSS development tends to come from corporations, or by private fundraising rather than the taxation you suggest. Perhaps you were not aware of this.
Of course if MA adopt a Microsoft controlled format, then the general
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, the nefarious TNEF encoding bug is the most ridiculous thing in the history of email. Even Outlook Express won't open those nasty Outlook TNEF encoded attachments.
MS has only one reason for deliberately breaking compatibility between their own apps (and they regularly do). Do I have to spell it out ?
Stephan.
Re:Bzzt. Wrong Answer. (Score:2)
I've watched the MSOffice 2k3 Format != MSOffice '97 Format, and it turns out that Microsoft does have proper support between the various versions for MS Word at least,
This might be true considering you edit every document and save/update it with every version upgrade since Word 1.0 for DOS came out. But not true if you have not done so. And given the quantity and age of government documents it is unlikely they have. Even when it does work, content and formatting loss, even minor can happen.
Government
MS Office can already read ODF? (Score:5, Interesting)
(and you wonder why MA's techies don't trust them)
In the meantime, Microsoft is threatening to take their marbles and go home from South Korea because that country has the temerity to continue an anti-competetive investigation against them [groklaw.net].
And, of course, there was Microsoft's attempt to force the country of Israel to abandon Macs by refusing to properly support Hebrew (or any other right-to-left script) on Office-OS/X. They failed, because Israel decided to pay a group of local geeks (a fraction of the money that Microsoft had refused to fix office) to port Open Office to OS-X, and then announced plans to cut off all their contracts with Microsoft.
There are some signs that Microsoft intends to lock their customers more irretrievably into Office with patents and other tricks. That's one part of the reasons why MA may want to walk away from vendor lock-in.
So how much does it cost... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So how much does it cost... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So how much does it cost... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not even an American citizen, and I'd donate; as where the US leads the rest of the world usually follows, if bussiness & government here in the UK found it eaiser to use open formats and standards to deal with US companies and governmet they'd soon switch.
Re:So how much does it cost... (Score:2)
A better solution is to make the software comply with the disabilities law.
Re:So how much does it cost... (Score:2)
As others have pointed out, Kerry is a United States Senator who happens to be from Massachusetts, not a Massachusetts state senator.
Massachusetts state senators come much cheaper. (And that's saying something...)
Re:not quite . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think the use of F/OS Software is a liberal or conservative issue. Rather, it has to do with being educated on the tools available and the ramifications of their long-term use.
Don't be ashamed... (Score:5, Informative)
There was an oligopoly on food distribution for decades, with much higher prices than south, in the EU. One of the two big chains even had their own exception from monopoly laws! This was officially complained about by the politicians (but not too loudly), but nothing ever happened.
Despite that food costs is a larger part of low income people's expenses, something claimed to be close to the heart of the usual government party.
A few years after joining the EU, a low-price German food distribution chain started to open shops. They had a really hard time to get permits, since the towns decided that they wouldn't allow any more business centers outside the central cities (despite that those have been built for decades!). The central politicial parties didn't exactly intervene on the local political agenda, either.
All the bad press that the German shop got is besides the point -- we are talking about state/country level politicians here. (Swedish press isn't exactly NY Times in integrity.)
Sure, it might just be total incompetence. But since this hit low income people disproportionally, left wing politicians, always talking about the poor man's lot and "solidarity", should at least have talked seriously about doing something in the 70s.
I don't know if/what kind of lobbying was behind all this. I just note that 10% of the total cost for food in a year is a lot of money. And that left wingers love talking about the evil corporations, but never mention the big distribution companies that really stole the poor people's money.
IMHO, the win with the EU membership, is serious laws against monopolies.
incompatible objectives (Score:3, Insightful)
They do it here in the US too. The left despises Wal-Mart, which got to be as big as it is by offering their customers consistently low prices. Those customers tend to be those on the lower end of the economic scale. Even people who don't shop there benefit from the competition that forces other retailers to hold their prices down.
But the left's love of th
Re:incompatible objectives (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't be ashamed... (Score:2)
And was answered:
I was talking about markup, compared historically to the countries south of Sweden in the EU.
I also meant the total amount of money paid for food, not by an individual. (It has varied, 10% is certainly much too low.)
So your post wasn't just irrelevant, it misund
We already have Section 508 (Score:5, Insightful)
I am giving OpenOffice the benefit of the doubt by assuming the software is Section 508 compliant. I can see perfectly well so I cannot ascertain its compliance. I like to believe that Sun and whomever else backs OO.o understands accessibility.
I think these Senators have recently been in backroom talks with some unnamed software company from Redmond, WA. The alliance backing open document formats in MA should follow the money trail and see if any donations have been made to the senators in question.
If OpenOffice is, in the end, inaccessible and non-508, shame on the open source community.
Re:We already have Section 508 (Score:2)
When it comes to accessibility, many programmers are unaware of accessibility requirements, and some don't care. This sounds heartless, but is somewhat understandable from the "scratching an itch" PoV. Accessibility support is hard (especially since toolkits generally provide miserable support), and moreover is often considered "uninteresting". Perhaps most importantly, it's very hard to know where
Re:We already have Section 508 (Score:5, Informative)
See this page [openoffice.org] for details.
A few links (Score:2, Informative)
"emacspeak the complete audio desktop" [sourceforge.net]
Orca [sun.com]
"Sun's StarOffice 8 (based on OpenOffice.org) was released earlier today. In fact, already one University campus has standardized on it! There are many new features, including improvements to Microsoft Office compatibility, support for the new OASIS OpenDocument format (which the State of Massachusettes is adopting - see pages 18-19 of the Massachusettes Enterprise Information Technology Architecture version 3.5 [available in OpenDocument format too of cou [sun.com]
Accessible documents? (Score:4, Insightful)
My 2 cents: The less of these thousands of documents are stored in a proprietary format the better for everybody, including visually impaired. What am I missing?
Re:Accessible documents? (Score:2)
Re:Accessible documents? (Score:2)
When you're blind, you can't care less about the "Proprietary Vs. Open Source" wars if one of these tools can't provide you with the basic functionality you need for your life.
Will you be the one to tell a blind person "I'm sorry, but you can't access this document, because of my ideology-related political issues with Microsoft software.". Well
Re:Accessible documents? (Score:2)
If you're going to require something of somebody, its a good idea to require it of government and of private enterprise, and a bad idea to require it of private citizens. So the requirement to make data available freely to all citizens is para
OpenWhat? (Score:5, Informative)
Submission:
You do realize OpenOffice != OpenDocument, Zonkyboy, don't you? And what the hell is a Massachetts?
Re:OpenWhat? (Score:2)
[* yeah, I know, sorry]
(What's with the lack of "supN" characters and "small" tags?)
Sign here for OpenDocument (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't sign (Score:2, Insightful)
If MA does switchover, then those who have to share docs with the MA gov will have to use software that reads and writes OpenDocument. If MS Office does not support OpenDocument, then people will try other products, and MS may start to lose their stranglehold on the office software market.
Hopefully, MA is only the first of many businesses and governments that will switch to open formats. The fewer of these MS Office supports, the less useful it w
Re:Don't sign (Score:2)
Re:Don't sign (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sign here for OpenDocument (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sign here for OpenDocument (Score:3, Interesting)
To beg and grovel at the feet of the Convicted Monopolist is not becoming of this community.
Re:Sign here for OpenDocument (Score:2)
The second hand information I've heard from actual blind people implies that emacs for the blind is a better platform for blind people than any screenreader + gui hack.
How about a REALLY open/accessible format (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about a REALLY open/accessible format (Score:2)
You're from the US, right? Probably haven't had to deal with a text file that wasn't 7-bit ASCII.
Codepage problems are a bitch, and few documents have any hint of which codepage they're in.
UTF8 solves most of the problems (provided you can get compatible fonts... not too many around with the more obscure stuff in it) but that's not got enough traction to be a universal format yet.
So no, not *anything* can read it. There's no such thing as something that can be read anywhere.
Re:How about a REALLY open/accessible format (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How about a REALLY open/accessible format (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh wait... bollocks it works
Lords of Instrumentalisation (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that the/some/most important/one ? civil society organisation for Blind and Visualy Impaired Persons has been taken over by some very dangerous persons.
If I would be a blind american I would be feeling very concerned on how my "voice" is being used.
-----------
Lobbycracy stinks....
Re:Lords of Instrumentalisation (Score:2)
Re:Lords of Instrumentalisation (Score:2)
It doesn't always seem to count. Think of left handed, minority religions, homosexuals, handicapped, elderly, children, the tall, the short, the blond
Blind users love Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
There argument for using Linux is that you can do a lot more from the command line.
So in that way is Linux more productive for the blind.
So, using OpenDocuments will only make the blind more productive.
With OpenDocuments the blind users can also go in and read
the XML code itself.
Re:Blind users love Linux (Score:2, Insightful)
Flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry guys, you are on the wrong train. Demand that the tools used by the state have proper support for your disabilty, that's ok with me. Stop the move entirely because the M$ lock-in, the exact reason it's all been done, raises its ugly head? Hurts just thinking about it. Maybe we shouldn't have introduced trains and planes - the first generation of those used to have stairs and wasn't exactly accessible to cripples (used literally - people with one or both legs missing).
I wouldn't be surprised to find M$ money involved here. Sending forth those with the big sympathy bonus is in the 101 if every astroturfer and lobby professional.
Re:Flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)
OpenDocument != OpenOffice. I know a lot of people are correlating them, but the reality is that if Mass. goes ahead (and moreso if other states follow), Microsoft will support OpenDocument in Office (as they already pulled together with PDFs).
WIth ODF Accessibility is a competitive feature! (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance; a KOffice preview noted many accessibility features are already going into the devel-version of KOffice. See; This Month in SVN [canllaith.org]
This is just the first sign that leveling the playing field is good for innovation.
Applying the pressure (Score:5, Interesting)
C'mon MA lawmakers, fess up. Whose interests are you really looking out for, besides your own?
Crime By Ubiquity (Score:4, Insightful)
StarOffice Is Accessable (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/7/acc
Hopefully someone decides to talk to Sun and ask them if StarOffice has these types of features before their meeting.
Accessibility in OpenOffice.org (Score:3, Insightful)
Read:
http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/index.html [openoffice.org]
http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/at.html [openoffice.org]
and might be a lack of companies supporting the Java Access Bridge
Its a non-issue (Score:3, Interesting)
Short-Term:
1. Open document in OpenOffice.org, save as a MS Office doc, open in MS Office
2. Research non-Office suite specific accessibility tools (those that operate at the OS level) and evaluate. These might be satisfactory.
Long-Term:
1. Microsoft supports OpenDocument. Access to pre-existing tools still functions properly, no problems.
2. Third-party creates an import/export of OpenDocument for MS Office
3. Existing third-party accessibility companies provide support for OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, KOffice or any of the other suites supporting OpenDocument format. Perhaps funds saved from not buying MS licenses can seed this development.
4. Companies such as IBM already develop/maintain many accessibility tools. It seems likely that they would be a prime candidate for migrating these tools over to be OpenOffice/StarOffice compatible.
Solution to the "Problem" (Score:3, Interesting)
Few comments (Score:5, Interesting)
It strikes me that some of the feedback/discussion on /. ought to be fed back to the Romney administration - help them to defend their position. Can someone in the USA/Massachusetts do that please.
Re:Few comments (Score:3, Insightful)
Another wrinkle here is that everybody hates Romney, especially the legislature. People are guessing that he'll mess up as much stuff as possible before he runs for president instead of running f
Microsoft, thanks for raising an important point! (Score:3, Insightful)
Listen: The example of Blind or Visually Impaired access is PRECISELY why an open document format should be used. OK I admit it, I didnt RTFA, but it sounds like blind + visually impaired people are complaining because their microsoft software that enables them to read documents doesn't support the open document format. Well guess what, that'll take about a month for the free software community to fix, and by fix I mean, support whatever reading mechanism these blind people have.
Imagine if the situation was reversed, and we were asking microsoft to add support for the visually impaired. Or asking microsoft to give out a free reader so poor people could get access to the state's documents. Or asking microsoft to make a Linux, OSX, and Solaris port of that reader for people who exercise their right to choose. Or some brand new ailment appears where people need to read their fonts in dayglo rainbow colors or they have seizures. The FOSS community will be able to handle that situation _much faster_ than Microsoft.
This is the _reason_ mass is switching to ODF, so as needs change, the community can change the software. This is a safer bet than asking microsoft, crossing fingers, and hoping they decide it will be more profitable to do what we ask then to ignore us.
Maybe they caught us with our pants down on this one?
PERFECT OPPORTUNITY TO DEMONSTRATE WHY F/OSS IS THE RIGHT CHOICE.
Re:Microsoft, thanx for raising an important point (Score:3, Informative)
I agree; and I have seen a flurry of activity around KOffice, including a cool screenshot for better accessibility in the upcoming release. See this page; KOffice preview [canllaith.org]
Given how the Mass. legislature... (Score:2)
In brief, the two houses of the legislature came up with different version of the bill, then handed over to a committee comprised largely of lawyers who have done DUI defense work, who watered it down badly before the legislature passed it overwhelmingly and the legislative l
IBM says Follow Massachussetts to Norwegian govmnt (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the issues around open document formats used by governments and in the public sector is too important that lawmakers should be discouraged because of accessibility issues. Such issues can and will be fixed - there is no technical reason why for instance OpenOffice can't provide the same functionality for these users as do MS office. The same goes for support of the OASIS OpenDocument format in applications spesifically crafted for these users. It should not be more difficult to parse these documents than .DOC files.
There are also a number or countries this side of the pond following Massachussetts very closesly, and IBM last week invited the new Norwegian government to follow Massachussetts [andwest.com] in standardizing on OpenDocument in the public sector.
Microsoft has also been very active on Norwegian discussion boards lately where Microsoft employees have been operating under nicks posing to be normal discussion partipants rallying against the OpenDocument formats and promoting the openness of the MS XML formats. Repeated questions to Microsoft on the fact that this "openness" is only Windows deep [andwest.com] remains unanswered. Microsoft's own Office:mac 2004 is unable to read the Word XML document formats produced by Word 2003 on Windows.
Nice move Microsoft (Score:2)
Anything to make a buck and keep the monopoly going.
Microsoft has changing its rules (rant) (Score:2)
Ever seen a blind person use a PC? (Score:2)
Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
What's your point in the context of this article? One of the things the article doesn't mention is that this issue was brought up during the standardisation discussions. As it turns out, there are plenty of options for visually impaired persons, options that support the Open Document standard. (WordPerfect, for one.)
This is a strawman. The issue is being pushed by a sta
Time to get rid of those jacks of all trades (Score:2)
An undefendable position (Score:2)
Sounds like a challenge... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a perfect example. Gather up $100,000 and give it to the first team to develop a working screen reader for Open Office.. one that meets the same capabilities as what is currently available for MS Office.
Call it an OS-Prize contest or something. It could be an annual contest or set of contests.
Transparency (Score:5, Insightful)
One point to note is that these are Massachussets state senators and secretary of state (not national as the summary implies).
Another point is that while the overseer of public documents would be an extremely important voice in deciding the format of public documents, his failure to explain his opposition is totally unacceptable. He's not some corporate CIO who can delcare whatever policy he whims. He's got to explain to the public, his employers, why proprietary formats are necessary, and open formats unacceptable. Until he does, he just makes the argument for openness that much more obvious.
Other visually impaired (Score:2)
Re:I'll be damned (Score:5, Insightful)
The trade off is potentially all of our futures as against what is in practice a short-term hold-back for a few.
Short-term, because MS will support Open Document if there's the demand: they're on record saying precisely this. Also, other firms chasing the market opportunity will improve their support for the disabled.
"Blink first" is not good market strategy, any more than it is good diplomacy, and a strategy of always giving way to what there is supplied at present, and creating no new demand when there is a real long-term need of (in this case) document accessability, is simply cowardice.
Re:I'll be damned (Score:2, Insightful)
This reminds me of the public-toilet debacle that NYC faces every few years -- someone gets the bright idea of installing those fabulous, automated, self-
Re:I'll be damned (Score:2)
You'd hope so, but it looks like the OOo Accessibility Project has been dead in the water for more than a year. http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/ [openoffice.org] Maybe they could use some help.
Btw, the Exeloo self-cleaning toilets over here in Perth have full disabled access, so NYC should be able to do the same.
Re:I'll be damned (Score:5, Insightful)
To bring it back to the topic, with the money saved on MS Office licenses, MA could easily hire a temp whose job it was to do nothing but open OpenDocument docs in OO and resave them in a Word format for the blind workers.
Or better IMHO, with the money saved on MS Office licenses, MA could easily hire a programmer who could work on improving accessibility on OOo. It would serve the whole community.
Re:I'll be damned (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'll be damned (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'll be damned (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, the whole thing stinks of someone playing a PC card, but for other purposes.
Re:I'll be damned (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't realize that the MSFT reps shoveling thousands in campaign contributions to MA legislators were visually impaired state workers. But I guess it looks bad to say the senate was holding hearings because one of their big donors doesn't like what the state is doing. So they hold up those poor visually impaired state workers as the reason they're suddenly so concerned. Never mind the format has nothing to do with whether they can read a document on the computer screen, what relevance do facts have when there's money on the line?
Probably the same state workers that the senators bump out of the way while heading out to lunch with one of their good buddy lobbyists.
Wrong. Thanks for playing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhm... no. As was stated in the meetings leading up to the decision, Microsoft may participate by supporting an open standard. There were (at the time) two ways of doing this: submitting their document format to a standards body, and enencumbering it from any patents. Simple and straightforward.
The second way (now the only way, since MA has decided to go with Open Document) is to support the open document format. Considering MS supports *other* formats (WP, Lotus 123, etc), it's not much of a stretch for them.
At issue isn't a like or dislike for Microsoft; it is Microsoft doing what they always do-- they are trying to force their control on the citizens of the commonwealth of Massachusetts.
So let me ask you this: do you prefer corporate control of our government, or citizen control of our government? The crossroads is before you. Choose wisely.