OpenDocument Gains New Fans

An anonymous reader writes "The OpenDocument format is gathering steam, as several influential companies seek an alternative to Microsoft Office." From the article: "The ODF Summit brought together representatives from a handful of industry groups and from at least 13 technology companies, including Oracle, Google and Novell. That stepped-up commitment from major companies comes amid signs that states are considering getting behind OpenDocument. James Gallt, the associate director for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, said Wednesday that there are a number of state agencies are exploring the use of the document format standard."

Unfortunately...

[keraneuology]

Unfortunately, under the terms of MS licensing these companies are prohibited from using MS Office to draft documents or emails discussing using an open document format.

I suggest

[karvind]

Goo' ol' ASCII for text and figures.

Re:Unfortunately...

[AKAImBatman]

To hell with Microsoft then! They can use OpenOffice [openoffice.org] to draft any damn format they want! Cry Havoc, and let loose the dogs of war!

* tongue planted firmly in cheek :-)

Who is James Gallt?

[faqmaster]

Who is James Gallt? Him? Why he's the associate director for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers.

Oh, JOHN Galt. John Galt. It's, "Who is John Galt?"

Re:Unfortunately... it reminds me of Fight Club

[maxwell demon]

(Now watch as this gets modded +5 for no reason!)

First rule of getting moderated: Don't talk about getting moderated!

Re:Prediction

[IANAAC]

Several posts were bizarrely moderated. I think a very angry person got mod points today. :-)

That's because it's... Thursday. The last time something like that happened was on a Wednesday.

Re:Unfortunately...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to our Microsoft sales rep, they won't support the open document format because if they do, they'll have to release Office under the GPL.

Re:DRM in OpenDocument

[flanman]

DRM is absolutely a necessity if OpenDocument is to become a viable choice in secure applications.

If I work on secret stuff and I want to control who gets access to something that I write, I can use DRM.

This is especially useful when I write nasty things about my PHB and want to control who sees my picture of him with his admin assistant.

A pretty easy sell

[Clover_Kicker]

to: [e-mail] ; [e-mail] ; [e-mail]
subject: pissing in Microsoft's corn flakes

Dear sirs.

Would you like to lend your names to an initiative that will annoy Microsoft, and may eventually cut into their gigantic MS Office revenues? (Revenue they use to subsidize the parts of Microsoft that *your* company competes with.)

This initiative involves a segment of the software industry that none of you compete directly in.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely - Open Document Guy.