OT: Massachusetts Verdict: MS Office Formats Out

[Jeff Vian]

On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 14:31 -0600, Guy Fraser wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-28-09 at 14:26 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
> > Guy Fraser wrote:
> ...snip...
> > > 
> > > If you read the articles on this, that is not an option.
> > 
> > I did read the articles.
> > 
> > > Massachusetts has adopted the Open Document Format and 
> > > expects the vendors to support that format. All documents 
> > 
> > Yes, but if MicroSoft opened up their formats, then they
> > could push to get them adopted as well.
> 
> That was why they decided to do what they did, they wanted 
> a single uniform format. Not a bunch of similar yet 
> competing formats.

I think rather that they are tired of being FORCED to use a particular
piece of software and tied to a particular vendor because the documents
are in a proprietary format.  

Using open formats means that there are many different tools to choose
from.  It also means that anyone using the open formats can use the
document regardless of what OS or document processing software is in
use.