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  • From: Will R <chtechboard AT yahoo.com>
  • To: Chapel Hill Information Technology Advisory Committee <chtechcomm AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Chtechcomm] Massachusetts dumps Microsoft Office
  • Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2005 12:44:02 -0700 (PDT)

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25845


Massachusetts dumps Microsoft Office

Its the Boston Tea Party again

By Nick Farrell: Thursday 01 September 2005, 07:58
[]
THE STATE of Massachusetts, the people who brought you the Boston tea party,
have joined in
another revolution against good King Billy’s Office software.

The state government has decided that all electronic documents saved and
created by state
employees have to use open formats from the beginning of 2007.

>From then every state document must be in PDF or using Open Office formats.
>The big idea is to
make sure that every citizen one can open and read electronic documents,
something that it is
convinced that VoleWare cannot do.

Microsoft is clearly worried. A lot of people live in Massachusetts and that
is a big thumbs up
for open sauce. However Vole is hoping to get around the problem by applying
recognition from a
technology industry standards body for recognition of its own formats as open
standards.

However, since the new formats, soon to be seen in the next version of
Office, will still include
some proprietary elements, and are specifically excluded under the
Massachusetts proposal.

http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2005/08/31/afx2200406.html

The state of Massachusetts is proposing to make all its workers stop using
Microsoft's Word, Excel
and other desktop software applications and switch to open source software,
said the Financial
Times.

In its online edition, the newspaper reported that the US state said
yesterday that at the
beginning of 2007 it is planning to order all state employees to create and
save documents using
only open format software.

Microsoft's Office software is a closed format software.

The report said OpenDocument, which is used in open source applications like
OpenOffice, and PDF,
a widely used standard for electronic documents, would be the only software
permitted.

The proposal, which is open for comment until the end of next week before it
takes effect, would
give open source software like OpenOffice a huge boost. OpenOffice is created
by volunteer
programmers and made available free of charge.

.....

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  • [Chtechcomm] Massachusetts dumps Microsoft Office, Will R, 09/01/2005

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