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Story: Legal worries led Massachusetts to open standards

Posted by: Rick Stockton (Tuesday 6 September 2005, 7:07 PM)

LIES AND FUD from Yates:

(1) As "a.c." points out, the K-Office Suite (current release 1.4.1, and all future releases) supports the Oasis OpenDocument format. Like OpenOffice.org, this is a complete Suite, including presentation, spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing components. Yates' claim that the OpenDocument is "specific to the OpenOffice.org Suite" is a BALD-FACED LIE, and the ZDNet author should have pointed this out in the article.

(2) Yates claims that other "document formats" (by which he really means THE PROGRAMS, but he's trying to confuse everyone) don't "concern themselves" with maintaining compatibility with older 'Microsoft Office' document formats. But the simple fact of the matter is: They can't do a perfect job because they all have to reverse-engineer Microsoft's formats, which are hidden behind proprietary licenses, unavailable documentation, and attempted Patents.

His "solution" for this problem, caused ENTIRELY by Microsoft's hiding of it's existing formats, is for Massachusetts to become even further locked-in by moving to Office-12 ??? Of course he resorts to FUD, saying things like "there are many different options", or it's "confusing", because he needs to obscure the problem.

He lies again when claiming that different criteria are being used for "Office Documents" versus "Adobe PDF files". Adobe has provided *full* documentation of the pdf format, allowing other people to create numerous programs which can view them (xpdf, etc.) and even write them (OpenOffice.org, etc.).

The problem is MICROSOFT'S refusal to document it's data formats for unrestricted use (without "licensing" restrictions, or the threat of "patents"). Adobe PDF formats and OASIS OpenDocument formats are free for anybody to use, without restriction... and in fact, multiple choices exist for reading and writing documents in these formats.

Mr. Espiner should not let these lies go unchallenged.