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Texas Democrats push ODF standard

By | March 19, 2009, 11:08am PDT

Summary: Texas Democrats are trying to make open source into a partisan issue.

Texas Democrats are trying to make open source into a partisan issue.

Their vehicle is HB 481, authored by Marc Veasey of Ft. Worth, who has sought to make a reputation as a thorn in the side of Texas’ ruling Republicans, supporting hate crimes legislation, mass transit, and the Obama stimulus.

That is another way of saying the bill’s chances fall somewhere east of slim and west of none.

What’s amusing are some of the arguments against the bill, as compiled by Aman Betheja of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The main argument, advanced by a Microsoft lobbyist, is that the bill is anti-competitive, and would be “like choosing Betamax over VHS.”

There is also a fear that users would have to replace their current software, although I believe Microsoft has been pretty scrupulous in supporting the Open Document Format.

It’s the fact that this is being discussed at all that is newsworthy. The rise of open source as a partisan issue, whether pushed by Tories in England, Hindu nationalists in India, or Democrats in Texas, has been remarkable.

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Topics

Texas, Democrat, OpenDocument Format, OpenDocument Format (ODF), Open Source, Emerging Technologies, Dana Blankenhorn

Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983.

Disclosure

Dana Blankenhorn

Dana Blankenhorn has been a journalist, writer and part-time futurist for over 30 years.

At the present moment I run only a personal blog in addition to my ZDNet open source blog.

DanaBlankenhorn.Com has the subtitle The War Against Oil. In the past I have used it to write about political history, e-commerce, personal matters, some ideas related to open source, and The World of Always On, which is the idea of using sensors, motes and RFID to turn WiFi links into platforms for applications which live in the air.

My IRA account at Schwab holds a few tech shares, most notably some Intel and Applied Materials, but there are no open source companies in it. I don’t even own any CBS stock.

Biography

Dana Blankenhorn

Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for nearly 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the Interactive Age Daily for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age's "NetMarketing" supplement, and dozens of other publications over the years.

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Because ODF is NOT controlled by Microsoft.
SpikeyMike 20th May 2009
Anything NOT controlled by microsoft will be a superior standard. 'Nuff said.
View in thread
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MS view is anti-competitive when using an open standard
LittleGuy 19th Mar 2009
Bet they would not say that if the bill supported their format.
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the bill is supported by smart Texans
Linux Geek 19th Mar 2009
Texas gave us some of the best people in the nation.
It is no surprise that astute people from there see the advantages of ODF and OSS, unlike other states.
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...and I'm one of them...
storm14k 19th Mar 2009
However its quite possible the zombie conservative voters in this state will see that he is a Democrat and thus any legislation proposed by him must be inherently evil and anti-capitalist. Nevermind if its pro-consumer and might cut government spending.
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LOL
TripleII-21189418044173169409978279405827 19th Mar 2009
There are as many Zombie Democrats as there are Zombie Conservatives in existence. That said, I am Conservative, I use Linux, I believe in Open Standards AND actual competition. So, how do I fit into the cookie cutter you labeled an entire state with?

As I said earlier, Conservative does not always mean Republican (Bush making the DOJ toothless being an example where he was anti-capitalist). Texas is very conservative, and pretty smart too. grin

TripleII
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I think this was my point....
DanaBlankenhorn 20th Mar 2009
Open source has been pushed politically from
many different points on the political spectrum.
Whoever is out of power gravitates toward it as
politically appealing.
0 Votes
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Socialism just keeps rearing its ugly head
P. Douglas 19th Mar 2009
All of this (GPL flavored) Open Source push within the government is ridiculous. Anyone who has ever put any thought into it, knows that proprietary technologies are what push the envelope in the advancement of technology and commerce ? from biotechnology to the software industry. Proprietary businesses produce orders of magnitude more jobs, taxes, investments, innovation, etc. Even businesses that use Open Source technologies (E.g. Red Hat) depend on proprietary technologies and business processes to generate profits and pay their bills.
0 Votes
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Open standards that force competition on the merits, benefits the whole
DonnieBoy 19th Mar 2009
country, not just a few select large corporations. The ability of any one company to extract a percentage from any market without competition does NOT benefit the public in general. Open standards prevent that.
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I'm all for open standards, however ...
P. Douglas 19th Mar 2009
... that doesn't seem to be the issue here, since the legislator didn't advocate moving towards OpenXML or ODF, but rather adopting ODF and supporting Open Source applications.
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Precisely to save taxpayer money!! Supporting two standards would be very
DonnieBoy Updated - 19th Mar 2009
expensive. And supporting the rats nest called OOXML would also result in wasting taxpayer money. He was right to pick the only consensus standard that was passed unanimously and will result in the lowest cost to taxpayers.
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Right, save money
GuidingLight 19th Mar 2009
by forcing users to adapt software that caters to the lowest common denominator.

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Even Microsoft can not name anything lacking in the ODF standard that is
DonnieBoy 19th Mar 2009
needed for MS Office.

The truth is that ODF contains all that is needed to represent documents, it is NOT rocket science. MS formats are a rats nest. Plain and simple.
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I've got a custom made titanium mountain bike to sell you.
kozmcrae Updated - 19th Mar 2009
Fifty bucks. It's all legal too. I should mention, though, that if you need any attachments or parts you'll have to get them directly from me. I use only standard parts, my own standards that is. A new seat will cost you $350. I've also managed to influence the Government to declare my standard as a national standard. Soon the other bike makers will have to license their parts from me.

Sound like a good deal?
0 Votes
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Using OpenXML ...
P. Douglas Updated - 19th Mar 2009
I've also managed to influence the Government to declare my standard as a national standard. Soon the other bike makers will have to license there parts from me.

Using OpenXML (which is an Open Standard) does not require you to pay a licensing fee.
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If Microsoft ever finally implements the standard, we might talk about it.
DonnieBoy 19th Mar 2009
In any case, the OOXML standard is a rats nest and would cost Texas a lot more to implement.
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Not one program in existence supports it.
TripleII-21189418044173169409978279405827 Updated - 19th Mar 2009
Office is a third cousin twice removed from the ratified ECMA standard. Microsoft themselves has stated they are under "no obligation" to support what changes may come, and as far as I know, they are still 3 years away from coming up with ANYTHING resembling a valid standard. (Still slogging through the 3K comments, and VERY VERY low priority)

ODF, however, is supported by StarOffice, OpenOffice, GoogleDocs, Abiword, LotusNotes, KOffice and soon (sooner than OOXML) Office 12 (name?). This is off the top of my head, there are probably 6 more.

So, which one makes sense?

TripleII
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That is not true
P. Douglas 19th Mar 2009
Office is a third cousin twice removed from the ratified ECMA standard.

Not according to this article . The following is a quotation from the article.

Starting with Microsoft Office 2007, the Office Open XML file formats (ECMA-376) have become the default file format of Microsoft Office, the currently market-leading office suite. Microsoft Office 14 will be the first version to implement the ISO/IEC IS 29500 compliant version of Office Open XML.

Therefore Office 2007 is ECMA (Open Standards) compliant, and Office 14 which should be released next year, will be ISO (Open Standards) compliant.

This web site provides information on third parties who support OpenXML. The following is a quotation from the site:

In Germany alone there are over 160 cataloged [German] solutions supporting Open XML.
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In other words, MS still does not support the OSI standard! But, in any
DonnieBoy Updated - 19th Mar 2009
case, it would be foolish and expensive to support two standards. There is a ton more support for ODF, including from MS, and it is a much better standard than the rats nest MS document standards. Texas will get a lot more competition and lower prices with ODF.
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Not one certified compliant.
TripleII-21189418044173169409978279405827 19th Mar 2009
There is NONE, not ONE ISO certified compliant solution. You admit it, so why would you mandate on a standard that NOBODY is compliant to yet?

The standard is not yet even completed with a final version published. We are still waiting for the final version. (A further perversion of the process, 1 month is the mandated time to release a fast tracked standard, but I digress). You are right, Office IS the proposed ECMA standard when it was submitted.

You do remember the 3000 changes and massive rewrites and proposed amendments right? MS wanted it rubber stamped so that they could convince buyers they followed a standard. I will believe Office is compliant when an independant analysis verifies compliance. Regardless, where can I pick up this Office Suite today? What do you mean it's currently vaporware?

Their plan was a failure, get it rubber stamped with no changes, claim it's a standard, lock people in forever in the name of an unimplemetable standard. That plan failed because the standards process, as corrupted as it was, reworked the entire thing.

TripleII
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There is no "OpenXML" standard
Fred Fredrickson 19th May 2009
The term you are looking for is "Office Open XML" (OOXML), a name probably chosen for being easily confused with the terms "Open Office" and "XML".

Even Microsoft can't write documents that are compliant with the voluminous OOXML standard, so there is no chance that anyone else can. The probability of interoperable OOXML documents is extremely close to zero.

I think that was the whole point of OOXML - MS could claim their document format complies with an open standard, yet they can continue to maintain essentially proprietary file formats.

As an example, Microsoft's implementation of ODF if incompatible with nearly every other implementation.

Open stadnards do not guarantee interoperability.
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Your opinion and
bjbrock 19th Mar 2009
not a proven fact. But you know what they say about opinions.
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Die hard conservative here.
TripleII-21189418044173169409978279405827 19th Mar 2009
The CAPITALISM is replacing the facism that has existed for years. I am very conservative, live in Texas, and this is a good thing. I defy you, tell me why a level playing field using an Open Standard is socialism. Can ANY company offer their suite?

I get it, it's socialism if we have any tender where any vendor and ONLY any vendor that starts with the word "Micro" and ends in "oft" is allowed to bid right? We have had fascist control by ONE company for 15 years now, and now that people are breaking free of, people are claiming "Commies", "Socialists", "Cancer".

Open Source, Apple, Symbian, Web 2.0, the world is breaking free of the SINGLE companies controls, and is thriving in terms of innovation and new technologies. Most if not all of this DESPITE Microsoft.

Now, you are confusing Open Standards with Open Source. ODF is a standard, which Microsoft has publicly stated they will support (and no doubt flawlessly). It opens up capitalism to exist again, instead of single company lock in.

As for the "old style economy", happens with every disruptive technology, the sky is falling and then people move on and learn a new better way of making money. From the radio to the car to television to telephones to computers to robots, they "sky is falling" is simply the price of progress. You don't see many people with AT&T roatary phones much anymore, the same "sky fell" when competition in the phone industry opened up.

VoIP is causing yet another "sky falling" scenario in standard telecom. Adapt or go out of business.

TripleII

P.S. Conservative does not necessarily mean Republican.
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please read ...
P. Douglas 19th Mar 2009
... here.
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I did, what's your point?
TripleII-21189418044173169409978279405827 Updated - 19th Mar 2009
State Rep. Marc Veasey is pushing lawmakers to require all state agencies to create and share their electronic documents in open-source formats,
...
Veasey, a local Democrat, says the move could save the state millions of dollars by stopping payments of hefty software licensing fees to such companies as Microsoft and ensure that Texas doesn?t lose any of its digital history. "My bill ensures these documents are always accessible to the public,"
...
Open-source formats such as OpenDocument are "vendor-neutral," meaning they work with multiple programs and can more likely be accessed in the future,
...


Notice the word *could*, and that's Microsoft's problem. They won't be able to charge $659/seat/year for Office when an alternative that supports the documents is widely available. It erodes their price leveraging, maybe getting the fee down to $39/seat with now renewal period.

It is a Bill to mandate and open standard. You are putting the cart before the horse. Here 's where you make a leap
It could also mean that many state workers may see familiar Microsoft products such as Word and Excel replaced with lesser-known competitors on their work computers.

It absolutely *COULD* mean something OTHER than MS Office, that's the nature of competition. Would you be OK with if the mandated open standards but made it illegal to purchase anything other than Office?

The above (and you either bought it hook line and sinker or are trying to propagate the myth) is the entrenched ecosystem stating that Open Standards (and that is all the new Bill is) equates to Anti-Microsoft because it mandates Open Source. It doesn't. If the Bill did mandate ONLY Open Source, then as an open source advocate, I would side with Microsoft. Open Standards should be MANDATED in Government, but at that point, use ANY tool that suits the situation best.

Happened in Mass. They wanted an Open Standard, MS was able to obfu$cate it into mandate for Open Source products to those who don't know the difference.

TripleII

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Socialism? Are Britain's conservatives now Socialists?
DanaBlankenhorn 20th Mar 2009
This constant repetition of the word "socialist"
to mean anything one doesn't like is silly.

And completely beside the point in this case.

The question is what will the government
procure. Open source has made the argument it's
cheaper in the long run. Rebuttal?

As a taxpayer, I want efficiently with whatever
money I pay for government services -- military
services, police services, court services, all
those services supported across the spectrum.

I would assume you would want the same. I assume
you would not want your money wasted by
government in the performance of the duties you
wish it to perform.

Or am I wrong in that?
0 Votes
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GPL'd OSS is socialist
P. Douglas Updated - 21st Mar 2009
This constant repetition of the word "socialist"
to mean anything one doesn't like is silly.

Dictionary.com provides the following definition for the word Socialism:

socialism

1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

With GPL'd Open Source Software (OSS), the ownership of code is essentially given to the community as a whole, instead of to the individual or private organization. That is why people often refer to GPL'd OSS as a socialist system, rather than one oriented towards individuals and organizations - like proprietary software, or OSS under pro-business licenses like BSD.

And completely beside the point in this case.

The question is what will the government
procure. Open source has made the argument it's
cheaper in the long run. Rebuttal?

Because GPL'd OSS is a socialist system, it cannot compete against, and produce results as well as proprietary systems. Therefore similar to the way the Soviet Union produced good economic results initially, which it could not sustain; reliance on GPL'd OSS may produce initial savings, but it will result in the relative stagnation of innovation which is needed to obtain greater and greater efficiencies, productivity, and capabilities over time. Do you need proof? Compare MS Office to OpenOffice, (desktop and server) Windows to Linux, Adobe products to GIMP, Proprietary video manipulation programs to Open Source equivalents, etc.

Therefore if the government selected GPL'd OSS to save money in the short term, it would do so at the cost of our country's future productivity and competitiveness.
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Google competes fiercely using GPL code to build their server network. And,
DonnieBoy 22nd Mar 2009
given the market share that Google holds, it appears that GPL code CAN compete very wall against proprietary.

There are a lot of very competitive companies using GPL code.
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Okay then. This is what you do:
nizuse 19th May 2009
Spend your hard-earned money on Adobe, Windows etc. We'll spend it on, well, fun things because after our work is done (on OO and - say - GIM), we still have the money in our wallet.
What a great thing it is to have choice!
You choose: giving money to companies for software.
We choose: giving our money for something else (or what the heck - why not put in my savings account lol).

G'day.
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Why push ODF? It should be about standards.
Rob Oakes 19th Mar 2009
Every time I see a major push for ODF, I can't help but think, "Why?" If it were about pushing standards, then any accepted ISO standard should be acceptable. And the new .docx is an ISO standard, no matter how much the OpenSource people choose to gripe about it.

At that point, why don't the OpenSource advocates come out and say it. Trying to mandate ODF really is a direct stab at Microsoft. Which is just silly. It would be far better to implement the ISO compliant .docx or include a conversion filter.

Or, perhaps, make much needed improvements in OpenOffice. At every major release, I download it and use it for a few days. While it is almost good enough to replace MS word, it invariably seems that it gets stuck at good enough. All those featurese which some programmer decided were too complicated are things that I happen to need. This includes robust citation support (sorry but Zotero is nowhere near as easy or competent as Word + EndNote), and solid database integration.

Which is why a great many people simply choose not to use it. It's far too easy to find cheap versions of MS office, and I don't mind paying $100 for "the real thing." As the Apple people are happy to remind everyone, convenience is worth something too.
______________________________________

Oak-Tree.us/Blog
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No, states can and should insist on a single standard, as taxpayer dollars
DonnieBoy 19th Mar 2009
are at stake, and it costs a lot more to support multiple standards for the same thing. Also, even Microsoft does not yet support the ISO standard for OOXML. The current docx format is not compliant. Also there is little disagreement that ODF is the best standard, as the OOXML standard is much more complicated and would result in higher costs if selected.
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Did you pay attention to the standardization?
rpmyers1 19th Mar 2009
That standard is not available, and there are no products that support it (yes, I'm including Office)

0 Votes
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ODF migration has issues
P. Douglas 19th Mar 2009
That standard is not available, and there are no products that support it (yes, I'm including Office)

Yes, but converting Office files to the ISO Standards version will result in virtually no errors, while converting Office files to ODF files will result in errors affecting huge amounts of data.
0 Votes
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Only minor formating problems, but, in any case, propegating the rats nest
DonnieBoy 19th Mar 2009
of Microsoft document formats will cost Texas a lot more than just cutting over to ODF and putting that all behind. And then consider the drastically reduced licensing costs from using a true standard where vendors must compete on the merits.
0 Votes
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But that is the problem with Open Office
GuidingLight 19th Mar 2009
they cannot compete on merits.

That is why they continue to push ODF, as they would not to have to compete on merits, just cater to a set of standards set to a bar obtainable by those lowest on the technology curve.
0 Votes
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And, again, not even Microsoft can name what is missing in ODF to
DonnieBoy 19th Mar 2009
support MS Office. The truth is, that document formats are NOT rocket science, and MS file formats are a rats nest.
0 Votes
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MP3 work for you?
TripleII-21189418044173169409978279405827 19th Mar 2009
Ancient technology, doesn't do a lot of things, universal support and everybody has and can use it. (I use Ogg, but I digress). This despite the massive push by Sony, Apple, Microsoft to become the new de-facto standard. There is nothing wrong with universal standards that everyone can implement and use. As for competing on merit, you lose that argument on it's face.

Why would one single person in the world use it if it didn't have a BETTER use case than Office. It ONLY has merit as it's competition advantage. For it to be stealing marketshare and drive the creation of ODF in spite of the interworking problems and the iron grip MS has on all people's tight and c*rlies speaks volumes about how invalid your argument is. grin

TripleII
0 Votes
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Here is your fist valid point.
TripleII-21189418044173169409978279405827 Updated - 19th Mar 2009
There ARE and WILL be migration issues moving from Office .doc, .xls, etc to ODF. It's a shame Microsoft didn't get involved in ODF when they were invited at the beginning of the NON fast track process. Know what, if MS was serious about supporting it, they could PROPOSE all the items to the OASIS foundation and version 1.3 would be ready in 6 months. In the meantime, they are FREE to use the EXTENSIBLE Markup Language for elements not already there. So long as it doesn't corrupt the rest of it, other solutions will ignore it.

Edit: Oh Yeah, IIS enabled backend functionality aside, i am still waiting for the list of things that Office does that ODF can't store. Or for that matter, what Office does that OpenOffice doesn't.:edit

And to be clear, Open Standards should not be, never should be, a MANDATE for Open Source software. It's all about preventing and eliminating lock in, which, unfortunately, is Microsoft's primary business model.

TripleII
0 Votes
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Nobody support OOXML, many support ODF.
TripleII-21189418044173169409978279405827 19th Mar 2009
No, Virginia, Office is NOT OOXML compliant, not even close. Their ETS for substantial compliance on a standard still being written after ratification is LONG after ODF support in Office.

So, why use a standard that NOBODY uses, NOBODY can implement and is still being written? Yes, they got a rubber stamp on it, but even MS has stated they are under "no obligation" to support ANY changes in the ISO standard for OOXML.

TripleII
0 Votes
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Why ODF?
DanaBlankenhorn 20th Mar 2009
ODF is a stable standard that is supported by
(among others) Microsoft Word. The Microsoft
standard, on the other hand, keeps shifting, and
even now you can't find out what the supposed
ISO ooxml "standard" really is.

That's why.
0 Votes
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Because ODF is NOT controlled by Microsoft.
SpikeyMike 20th May 2009
Anything NOT controlled by microsoft will be a superior standard. 'Nuff said.
0 Votes
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It is quite obvious
GuidingLight 19th Mar 2009
they do not want open documents, they just want Microsoft to give them a better deal, EOS.
0 Votes
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Taxpayer money is the number one responsibility of polititions, and, the
DonnieBoy 19th Mar 2009
move to ODF would ensure vibrant competition to provide office suites to Texas, and only a few minor problems in the conversion from the MS rats nest file formats. What could be better.
0 Votes
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Taxpayer Money
Col Mustard 20th Mar 2009
If you bellieve that moving to ODF or Ubuntu for that matter,in Texas or any other place in the world is going to reduce government spending you're fooling yourself. Any possible ssvings will already be spent and additional taxes will have to be collected for training, viability studies, people with disabilities etc. etc. This is just a vehicle for one politician to get name recognition. One of his staffers probably likes BSD.
0 Votes
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Misses the point.
TripleII-21189418044173169409978279405827 20th Mar 2009
Open Standards, universal access, universally available through time. The entire suite of documents in Office 97 and before are in danger of being unrecoverable, and if recovered, lose 50% or more of their formatting. I have trained people all over my office to use OpenOffice to read these documents, it does a better job of preserving format, then save into XP/2003 format if they want.

Now, on training, if you can use a word processor, you can use Office, OpenOffice, Abiword. The slight training is in the obscure functions, and even that is minimal. If 100M+ OO users downloaded from the web can adapt without the "4 week 10 hour a day onerous course", why can't government. Toss in a $250 bonus for all that convert 100% in 2 weeks and it will be adopted quickly.

Now that, as opposed to a constant upgrade treadmill, CALs, enforced hardware upgrades at times, security concerns (The WMP to Office linkage), the upfront price, and then the training in Office 2007, and training every release thereafter...

It alaways amazes me how nothing MS puts out that requires training (Vista, Office, etc) is EVER counted as a negative, but causes the sky to fall when Open Source is considered.

You can read about the French Police, $50M Euro savings since adopting OpenOffice, but that is a tangent. Answer this question.

If Office 2007 will have ODF support soon, and 10+ other vendors support it, why NOT adopt ODF. If the training is so onerous and Office is so economical, keep it. Just use the open standard.

TripleII
0 Votes
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the point
Col Mustard 20th Mar 2009
I don't have a problem with open standards. I just know no one is going to save any money in government on it. Some politicion in France braggs about saving 50 Million to make himself look good but it's funny money; Otherwise they would be able to lower taxes.
0 Votes
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Yet another invalid post.
TripleII-21189418044173169409978279405827 19th Mar 2009
There is a LOT of history over the past few years on the real issue, Microsoft MUST maintain it's proprietary lock in to prevent any kind of competition. It is Microsoft that is the enemy of standards for the simple reason that if they support them, everybody gets a much better deal.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9022878
In a resounding victory for Microsoft Corp., bills seeking to mandate the use of open document formats by government agencies have been defeated in five states, and only a much-watered-down version of such legislation was signed into law in a sixth state.

TripleII
0 Votes
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RE: Texas Democrats push ODF standard
Col Mustard 20th Mar 2009
One might also look at t his link under world adoption.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
0 Votes
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1 out 4 ain't so bad.
wkulecz 20th May 2009
I generally think Mr Veasey is a pinhead, but then I don't get to vote against him yet. I give him credit for being 100% correct on this issue.

Taxpayer funded documents should not be held hostage to proprietary application document formats. It Microsoft's largest cudgel to force updates -- Office N-1 can't read Office N default documents.

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