Oregon eyeing open formats

Oregon has a bill up for vote that would recommend the use of open-source format documents for state agencies. While the bill would foster open formats in the state if passed, the wording is much less specific than other proposed state bills that mandate the use of a specific type of electronic document. House Bill 2920 by Representative Peter Buckley proposes that state agencies "disclose public records in electronic form in certain circumstances and, when practicable, in open formats for which freeware is available." If passed, the law would also require libraries to offer freeware for viewing and printing copies of public documents, but only if the requirement "does not incur additional administrative or operational expense."

Though the XML-based Open Document Format (ODF) supported by IBM, Sun Microsystems and others, could be used to fulfill the requirements, the bill's wording as it stands now would not make ODF mandatory. The bill does say that the open format chosen by the agency or library must be open-source and guided by one of the major standards organizations such as the American National Standards Institute, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, or the International Organization for Standardization, which supports both ODF and Microsoft's proposed Office Open XML formats.

[Commander_Spock]

What Is Wrong About This Article???

It states inter alia that "the agency or library must be open-source and guided by one of the major standards organizations such as the American National Standards Institute, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, or the International Organization for Standardization, which supports both ODF and Microsoft's proposed Office Open XML formats". See where it says; "the International Organization for Standardization, which supports both ODF and Microsoft's proposed Office Open XML formats". In other words it appears to be saying that the International Organization for Standardization has already "endorsed" a format that has only been proposed for approval before the conclusion of customary reviews. Just how can this be?

[mwendy]

Marketing laundered through political process

Another clever way to use liberal government and the slippertly slope of justifications to rig the market for one very big NY-based IT coporation.

The lawsn't needed from a public policy stadndpoint, and if I had stock in that NY-based company, I'd be concerned as a sharehoilder that my offerings needed liberal government's help/subsidy to survive in the market place.

Sell short, buddies.

This law and the faulty assumptions it's built upon exists as yet another example of junk marketing laundered through the ever-ready political process.

[Penguinisto]

Wrong again, my dear Astroturfer...

ODF is open source, which means that ANYONE can use it... even your buddies in Redmond, Washington (who incidentally already built a free ODF plugin for MS Office)...

Oregon's requirement specifies Open Source - which means that later generations can actually read the thing... It doesn't specify a brand of word processor.

Have you ever had to get a copy of your birth certificate? If it wasn't copied/notarized directly from a xerox of the original paper document, it likely had to go through half a dozen iterations just to keep it readable to the computer that brought it up for printing. Now it would only have to be kept in one format.

/P

[gracie14]

liberal?

This doesn't have anything to do with "liberal government" A lot of liberals do not support this position at all. including me.

[Penguinisto]

Cool - I live in Oregon :)

It's cool to have a state government on the cutting edge of doing
things right for once... :)

[gracie14]

how so?

How is this "cutting edge"? Makes no sense at all....

[cekortech]

New York

I wish New York would follow the ODF path.
Nothing more annoying than working with an
Attorney who has files backed up on 3.5 inch
floppies in MS office Version 2.