Massachussetts moves toward "the open desktop"

Important win for open-source?

[MatthewHSE]

Interesting article at [news.zdnet.com...]

The commonwealth of Massachusetts has proposed a plan to phase out office productivity applications from Microsoft and other providers in favor of those based on "open" standards, including the recently approved OpenDocument standard.

"The importance here is more symbolic than anything, of course. While Massachusetts is undoubtedly a sizable contract for Microsoft, the revenue is incidental to the big picture: a sizable win in the US for the ODF (OpenDocument Format),"

OpenOffice got some attention in the article; should be interesting to see if this decision in Massachussets has any kind of impact on the general public when it comes to open source software.

[2by4]

It becomes more interesting when you put it into a wider context [theregister.co.uk]. If MS loses control of its proprietary closed standards monopoly that could lead to interesting changes in the world. And of course, no government should tie themselves into a single supplier solution like that, public information should be accessible in publically accessible formats, open formats that is that don't require the purchase of a near monopoly product to correctly display them. Even if OOo or Abiword can more or less open today's documents, there's no guarantee for the future at all, it's not under the goverment's control.

To me, the question isn't why would a governmental body of any type do this, but rather, how could they possibly not do it if the public longterm good is supposed to be a consideration?

[rjohara]

Hooray for my home state! :-) This is one of those transformations that could turn over very quickly if it catches a little momentum. Think of how suddenly the fortunes of (the distinguished and much-loved) Kodak changed.

[kaled]

They are happy to keep PDF files - I'm lost for words.

Kaled.

[j4mes]

They are happy to keep PDF files - I'm lost for words.

PDF is an open format - [en.wikipedia.org...]

[physics]

Once again Massachusetts proves it's ahead of the times! 2by4 was right on, public agencies especially should not be using closed formats. Now there will be the 'closed' (red) states and the 'open' (blue) states ;)

[kaled]

Of PDF files

PDF is a subset of those PostScript language elements that define the graphics, and only requires a very simple interpreter.

<rant>
If only a simple interpreter is required, why are Abobe readers so huge and so slow and why are PDF files so huge?

My astonishment with respect to PDF files was not the open or proprietory nature of the format but the fact that the format can best be described as "distilled essence of puke". It is perhaps the only software/format in the world that makes MS code look lean and efficient.
</rant>

Kaled.

[bcc1234]

Kaled, that pretty much shows that you don't know what PDF is.

It's like saying that HTML is messy.

It really depends on how you write in it (or how the application writes in it).

The same exact content and layout can be coded in many different ways in PDF.

It's a very good standard for its purpose. Too bad most writers process data char-by-char.

[kaled]

The PDF format itself may be wonderful - I don't know and I don't care. The fact is that PDF files are huge, readers are horrific, rendering of text is usually blurred and text search can be mind-bogglingly slow.

PDF may fill a technology gap (for authors) but in practice it does so in a way that is dreadful for end-users.

Kaled.