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United States Software Linux

Massachusetts Adopts Open Standards Strategy 251

Posted by michael from the planning-ahead dept.
prostoalex writes "The state of Massachusetts at a meeting of state information officers adopted a broad-based strategy to move to open standards. The strategy does involve Linux among other open standard solutions, while moving away from Microsoft-based platforms is one of the decisions. State Administration and Finance Secretary Eric Kriss insisted that decision was made on technical grounds and had nothing to do with antitrust investigation of Microsoft by the state of Massachusetts."
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Massachusetts Adopts Open Standards Strategy More

Massachusetts Adopts Open Standards Strategy

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  • equations (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    massachusetts = bed-wetting liberals
    open source = hand-wringing liberals

    massachusetts + open source = ass-blasting good times

  • Text from article (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:30PM (#7068511)
    BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts, the lone holdout state still suing Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) for antitrust violations, will become the first state to adopt a broad-based strategy of moving its computer systems toward open standards, including Linux, the rival operating system to Microsoft's Windows.

    State Administration and Finance Secretary Eric Kriss said Thursday that the decision, adopted at a meeting of state information officers, was made on "technical grounds" and had nothing to do with Attorney General Thomas Reilly's pursuit of Microsoft.

    In the technology industry, the term "open standards" refers to nonproprietary software. Microsoft's software is considered "closed" because application developers and other programmers don't have free access to the blueprints.

    Kriss said the state's decision was driven by a desire to reduce licensing fees but also "by a philosophy that what the state has is a public good and should be open to all," Kriss told The Associated Press. He characterized the decision as the "most visible concrete action by a state government" to move toward open standards.

    A Microsoft spokesman had no immediate comment.

    Microsoft is facing increasing challenges from Linux, which has been developed over the past decade by a global community of programmers who share their work on the condition that it be redistributed freely. It has become appealing to cost-conscious companies looking for an inexpensive means to run their servers.

    Government agencies from Germany to France to Peru have adopted or are considering Linux-based software as a cheaper alternative to Microsoft products.

    • Kriss said the state's decision was driven by a desire to reduce licensing fees but also "by a philosophy that what the state has is a public good and should be open to all

      Sure, just like steel tariffs, agricultural policy, public education and all of the other things designed to promote the public good.

      In other news, Microsoft spokesman John Galt remarked that the company will be relocating to Colorado...

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Taxes? (Score:1, Funny)

    by chill ( 34294 )
    Aren't they one of the highest taxed States in the Union? And they are complaining about costs? If anyone should be able to afford Microsoft fees, it would be Mass. Maybe they don't like the competition -- that MS tax and all.

    • Re:Taxes? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ljavelin ( 41345 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:38PM (#7068563)
      Reducing the cost of IT is always a good thing, even for the wealthiest states.

      If you can save money on IT, maybe you can redirect it to health care or education or better unemployment benefits or debt reduction or even (*gasp*) lower taxes.

      • On the subject of their state healthcare (which, by the way, means Medicaid, or MassHealth, as its called in Mass), what about this "open standards" business carrying over into MassHealth?

        For anyone not familiar with what is THE BIG THING going on in healthcare right now: it's called HIPAA. It's a whole TON of healthcare regulations, being rolled out. This spring a bunch of privacy stuff went into effect, and this fall, a bunch of regulations around data interchange formats. You see, healthcare involves
    • As a Mass resident, I don't think the taxes are as bad as the state's reputation suggests.

      Apart from that, there's a big hole in downtown Boston called the "Big Dig", that sucks in most of the tax revenue so that's why there's none left. :-)
      • As a Mass resident, I don't think the taxes are as bad as the state's reputation suggests.

        Apart from that, there's a big hole in downtown Boston called the "Big Dig", that sucks in most of the tax revenue so that's why there's none left. :-)

        Well... two things to say to that.

        1. What!?!?! Mass has ridiculous taxes. On their face they may not seem that bad... I mean it's a flat 5.9% rate? Wow, a flat rate, that sounds so republican, what's the deal? Well, the deal is that everything... down to RENT is
    • Yes, it is sometimes refered to as "Taxachusetts."

      Being from NY I have no right to throw stones though.

      How's this for a thought? Maybe by moving to open standards and not throwing money uselessly at Washington State and Microsoft everytime they type a simple memo would help reduce the tax burden.

      Or maybe it's just me.

      KFG
  • From the article: Microsoft's software is considered "closed" because application developers and other programmers don't have free access to the blueprints. Microsoft blueprint: 1. Make money! I don't think I've ever seen source code/standards called that before...

    • Re:Blueprints??? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ambush_Bug ( 106102 )
      Without degrading the discussion into an OSS/Proprietary religious war, I don't think the issue is the money/cost as much is the openess. Remember governments get to tax companies, so money for companies == money for govt. I don't know if MS has an office in massachusetts or what, but I'm just thinking about the issue in general here. Basically I see two advantages to open source or at least free as in speech software for goverment use: 1) you don't require recpients of data to use a particular companie

      • Re:Blueprints??? (Score:2, Informative)

        by bdsesq ( 515351 )
        Remember governments get to tax companies, so money for companies == money for govt.

        Not exactly true in this case. I work for the state of Massachusetts and I know that the state spends a lot more on Microsoft products than they take back in from Microsoft. The only return for Mass is the 5% sales tax when someone buys windows or office.

        And don't forget NO ONE is shorter sighted than an elected official. If the entire state government switches to open source tomorrow it will have no impact on taxes b

  • cheaper (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dpa ( 579262 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:34PM (#7068534) Homepage
    Interesting that the article focuses on the "cost" issue of Linux while skirting the inherent problems with soverenty and transparency that proprietary software poses to governmental institutions.

    • Re:cheaper (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @09:28PM (#7069188)
      Well, as it happens I originally changed my own business from an all Microsoft shop to an all Linux shop for this very reason. I got tired of chasing MS "standards" which broke my code, made my data inaccessable ( as it were ) without Microsoft products and yes, charged me for fixes for these problems. Not to mention making me largely reliant on MS for core coding even though I'm a vaguely competent coder myself.

      The thing is that while I can easily quantify the monetary savings (haven't spent one bloody dime on software since switching to Linux as opposed to several hundred a year for a three computer shop. Ok, I'm not a major player. I happen to think small is beautiful), I can't quantify the real benefits.

      Oh, I can enumerate them easily enough, just not quantify.

      What is the "quantity" of not having to worry about license compliance? What is the "quantity" of having all my text and data files in plain ASCII so I can access them ( and even Access them if need be ) with any text editor in any computer system? What is the "quantity" of being able to build my own OS from scratch, from source? What is the "quantity" of not having to wait for a "feature" in Word because I can whip up whatever I need in Lisp, Perl, Python or sed? What is the "quantity" of knowing that mutt won't be running arbitrary malicious code attached to email on my system?

      In short, what is the "quantity" of freedom, power and control?

      American governments, ironically enough, are not geared to think in terms of freedom. They are geared to think in terms of purchase requisitions.

      Hence they're most likely to adopt Linux solutions based on cost.

      They'll manage to get the rest of it for "free" though. Then they'll start to understand.

      KFG

  • Good Move for us! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Goyuix ( 698012 )
    I have really been thinking about getting much more involved in linux (and BSD, etc.) consulting lately, but there hasn't (isn't?) a huge demand in my area. People are generally more concerned about being able to open Word documents without a problem etc.... and feel it is worth it to them to pay the MS tax.

    This comes as great news to me (not because I live in Mass.) because it is paving the road for a lot more job opportunities to open up - which in my opinion is a mutually beneficial thing for the govern

  • Unbiased? Probably. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by metroid composite ( 710698 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:36PM (#7068545) Homepage Journal
    Eric Kriss insisted that decision was made on technical grounds and had nothing to do with antitrust investigation of Microsoft by the state of Massachusetts.

    They probably are unbiased, however this couldn't have hurt. There is a reasonable amount of pressure to support Corporate America, and make a biased decision in favour of an American-made product. Antitrust certainly helps open the doors to other discussions.

  • Intersting that Mass. doesn't want to be seen as boycotting a company they claim is a disruptive monopoly. Perhaps free trade isn't such an American value, after all, when the government(s) won't even give it lip service (while choosing the cheaper, albeit morally superior option).

    Trying to hedge their bet?

  • Technical decisions... (Score:4, Funny)

    by MongooseCN ( 139203 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:38PM (#7068560) Homepage
    State Administration and Finance Secretary Eric Kriss insisted that decision was made on technical grounds...

    Like the virus that got into the government systems recently and caused them all to be shut down? Then again being the state of MA, maybe they thought they could tax the virus to death before it did any harm...

    • Re:Technical decisions... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ljavelin ( 41345 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:46PM (#7068630)
      As an IT professional, I do see that Open Source solutions do in fact save money in the longer term. Five years ago my organization was using mostly closed-source products... and our software budget was several thousand dollars per developer per year.

      Today my IT development organization is virtually 100% open source. We're running Linux on the desktop and use open source development tools. Our software costs have dramatically fallen. Nope, we don't even use MS-Exchange or MS-Office.

      If we extend this to the average user's desktop (versus just developers), we could see an even greater savings. And yes, we're working on it.

      Saving money is always a good thing. Again, even the wealthiest of states, such as Massachusetts, need to save money given the very bad state of the US economy.

      Other states may want to investigate this strategy in order to save $$$.
      • At my IT department, five years ago we decided to hell with computers. We went out and bought everybody pens and paper.

        The end result was a dramatic savings in software costs. We don't even need electricity anymore, we bought all of our clerks candles. In order to cut costs in the winter, we have now supplied each employee with their own brazier and they are required to purchase their own coal to eat their work space.

        We are now nearly eliminated 100% of our ties to expensive, over-priced technology. N
    • Then again being the state of MA, maybe they thought they could tax the virus to death before it did any harm...

      It's actually a very old wive's tale that MA has the highest tax rate- it doesn't. In 2000, it ranked 26th in taxes per $1000 of income(#4 in taxes per capita, perhaps more telling, but still below CT, NY and NJ, all of whom are about $600 more than MA, versus the next lowest from MA, about $200-300). I have no idea what it is currently, but part of the reason probably has to do with having so

      • Massachusetts has the second highest per-capita income in the US @ $37,710 (only CT is higher, at $41k, and NJ is a few hundred bucks behind; NY rounds out the top 5), which does distort the taxes per income.

        One thing to remember are that Massachusetts has, IMHO, the most intelligent tax code in the country (flat income tax and a limited sales tax at basically the same rate).

        Another factor is that Massachusetts is the only wealthy state with a near-Californian devotion to direct democracy (and the fact

  • Linux is getting good publicity now from the grass roots but the BSD people just don't care. So what we learn from this is that people only care about marketting and advertising. And Bsd will never mainstream.
  • This is a good sign, it at least shows one state knows a good thing thats been around a while, maybe Mass can throw in some bids on the federal level for open source solutions. At least this can help open the lines of communications between the open source community and the government. Too bad they'll likely get annexed and slowly reassimilated into the states after M$ and uncle Sam explain that the'yre supporting terrorsit with their commie software....

    -FryCarson; I'm not a doctor, but for $50 bucks I'll
    • Maybe even a Federal standard then? Like, uh... Ada? OSI? CMIP?
    • If a state like Mass was to go full-court OSS then there would be companies and projects that would spring up to support them. The first thing they really need to do is to PLAN!

      I know PLAN is a four-letter word to management types, but a change like this can't be made overnight or they will fail. They first need to do a full scale study of their state's Goverment computer needs and then seek out the solutions on Sourceforge, perhaps even file a few "Ask Slashdots" too. They'll find some big holes that wi

      • Once it is proven that Mass. can interact successfully with the Feds, other states, & businesses, then many more people will take them seriously.

        They will succeed and be _amazed_ at the cost savings. Now if we could just get them to roll some of that dough at schools teaching the kids/their replacements about thinking differently, if you will. :)

        I know that we've been sending/receiving excel type spreadsheets with the states, unions, and insurance/attorney types with no issues. 90% of the stuff goin
    • This is a good sign, because Massachusetts will bear the burden of developing applications that interface with Federal human services, medicare and other services with Linux.

      Then you'll start to see the code & designs that they develop show up in other states, either via conferences/workshops with the Feds or because Accenture or IGS sells the Mass software to other states.

  • Surprisingly Logical for mass (Score:5, Informative)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:40PM (#7068586)
    Most government bodies have no choice but to move away from closed source, propietary standard solutions. They have an obligation to keep public records available for very long periods of time. (READ CENTURIES). Theres no way they can live with periodic knowledge meltdowns from propietary providers going under or the occasional platform shift.

    Microsofts methods of locking your data to their apps will ultimately be seen as intolerable.
    • Guess you never worked in goverment, most likely never in IT and prehaps you've never worked.

      Everybody deals with vendors going bust, it may not be cheap but you deal with it. Migrate stuff to other platforms. Living with this goes with the job.

      Microsofts methods are tolerated because there is no alternative for most businesses. This will change but then so will microsoft. Micorosoft will be tolerated for many,many years to come.

      • Re:Surprisingly Logical for mass (Score:5, Insightful)

        by HiThere ( 15173 ) * <charleshixsn@@@earthlink...net> on Friday September 26, 2003 @10:45PM (#7069503)
        I suppose that you can find for me a copy of our 1960 Journey to work survey. It was last seen on an 200 BPI even parity tape. (10.5 inch, reel to reel). The media was so common that we assumed we'd always be able to read it (until we sort of forgot about it). We'd periodically scan the tape to make sure it was still readable, and otherwise ignore it. Come the day we need it, and none of our vendors have a tape drive that will read 200 BPI even parity. Out tape verifier still says it's good, but we can't read it. Well, there's some outfit in (was it Chicago?) that can read it, probably, but they want more than is in the budget for the project. It's an obsolete project, so it doesn't get a line item on the budget. More time passes, and the tape verifier dies. This doesn't matter much. Nobody is using those files anyway (big surprise, since we can't read them anymore). Now we don't even know whether it's good or not, but we've backed the newer stuff up to microfiche. That'll certainly be good forever. You can even read it with a magnifier if you must... more time passes. Now you'd better be willing to read it with a magnifier, because the microfiche readers have all been replaced with other things.

        I actually left out most of the intermediate forms. And every time one of them died, it took with it records that weren't important at the time the change was happening.

        Guys, this is not good. The formats I'm talking about here have all been open formats, and just by people not paying attention to something that wasn't important at the time, data was irretrievably lost. There are no more copies of the Journey to work data. There are no more copies of the processed & edited for local job counts 1960 Census. They became unreadable. There probably aren't any more predictions made in 1980 to 2000 for what the travel trips would be and where people would be living, and how long commutes would take. But without that, the current models can't be validated. (Not that they would be..it's a differnt group running the models now.)

        This is a report on what happened in just one small government agency. We don't yet have a count on how badly the shift to proprietary file formats is going to hurt us, because up until a decade ago we had the ability to move important data from system to system with only the need to write conversion programs. And we still lost a bunch of the data. With the switch to proprietary formats we may see a data loss approaching 100%.

        That's one way to keep us from learning the lessons of the past.
        • >
          there's some outfit in (was it Chicago?) that can read it, probably, but they want more than is in the budget for the project.

          So your problem is managerial, not technical.

          Your agency could either have budgeted for the preservation by converting to newer or more durable formats and media, even if that means printing; or could shell the money for the said outfit. And refuse new responsibilities until the budget is enough or old responsibilities are waived.

          • That problem is that you can't know which formats will be durable. But yes, there's a managerial component to the problem, I'll agree to that. But that doesn't wash the problem away. And the managers aren't going to change such a basic part of their approach to things. (I.e., focus on what's hot now, and ignore the rest.)

            There are ways in which we could, with hindsight, have made better decisisons, given that we should have predicted that when change happened, our attention would be elsewhere. But we

            • >

              you can't know which formats will be durable

              That's why you need to have a strategy... such as periodically reviewing your storage and the means of reading it, as well as availability of readers; to be able to change when the particular medium becomes unsupported.

              >

              that doesn't wash the problem away

              It is an explanation, not baptismal waters.

              >

              managers aren't going to change

              Indeed, and taking the longer view that is why our culture is doomed.

        • Imhotep Industries Egyptian pyramid and tomb architects Need vital documents and belongings to last several millenia for the after-life? Using our patented pyramid building and tomb decorating techniques, we will design and build a pyramid to match your custom requirements. Guaranteed to last a millenium or your money back! Listen to what one of our satisfied customers have to say: "Imhotep industries really solved all of my after-life storage needs. Before, I always had to worry about floods, looters, s

    • Microsofts methods of locking your data to their apps will ultimately be seen as intolerable.

      On the other hand, if you're really talking about centuries here, then <wild-optimism> the long term trend may be for these currently proprietary formats to become more open </wild-optimism>. This could happen when governments and the public begin to get frustrated at being at some vendor's whim (granted, this hasn't happened much over the past few decades, but in the long run that may well change). E

    • Digital solutions hardly last for centuries. If they want to keep public records available for centuries, they'll put it on microfilm and put the index to the microfilm in a book printed with acid-free paper.

      I think the real reason is:
      a. Cost (lower IT + software cost)
      b. Cost (bargaining chip with MS)
      • Have you tried to find a microfiche reader recently? We had a lot of data backed up to microfiche, and the readers went away. Or backed up on Photo-Digital Chip Store. (Well, that wasn't long term storage anyway. We new that. But when it died, there was no warning, and no recovery.)

        I don't know of any good archival storage. Neither, appearantly do the librarians who are supposed to be in charge of it. But though there aren't any ways to do it well, there are certainly ways to do it worse! And propr
        • Actually I have 2

          I have a complete collection of Astounding and Anolog till 1983 on microfiche. I also have the manuals for programming a Dec PC-350 on fiche. I got the fiche readers when I bought the magazine collection

          Oh Btw if you think EBooks are unpleasant compared to paper, hehehe they are head and shoulders above fiche.
          • Oh Btw if you think EBooks are unpleasant compared to paper, hehehe they are head and shoulders above fiche.

            Only if you can break the copy protection. And if you're a company, only if you can legally break the copy protection.

            Your current reader isn't being made any more, and spare parts aren't to be had. (Or possibly were never made available.)
        • Hardware might be required, but getting a bunch of smart people to juryrig a means to extracting information from microfilm is easy. Reading microfilm is like one of those things that are blatantly obvious. It's transparent and has dark markings on it--hold it up to a light source. If you squint a bit, you can still make out some of the words.

          Given _proper storage_, microfilm is supposed to last a few hundred years. Magnetic platters and optical media can't touch that without a good plan in place to re
          • Given _proper storage_, microfilm is supposed to last a few hundred years.
            True for properly processed silver halide original film. The diazo (blue) copies are much more fragile, and are particularly sensitive to both ultraviolet and ammonia fumes (same underlying technology as blueprints, but on polyester film). But even those keep well in a cool, dark place for at least a dozen years.
          • We had microfiche replacing tons (probably not literally) of printout. We were told that a means of reading it was "right around the corner". Well, we also backed things up on tape, but the tapes were the property of the service center, so when we left we only took as many as the budget would allow, and only the ones that were important *at the time*.

            The thing is, the data isn't important to the managers, only to the techs. Often the managers just want to use it as justification for what they want to do

  • maybe they'll (Score:3, Funny)

    by mattboston ( 537016 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:42PM (#7068595) Homepage
    stop calling us taxachusetts :)
  • ... grasp of all the issues. "In the technology industry, the term "open standards" refers to nonproprietary software." eh?

  • TP? (Score:5, Funny)

    by RealBeanDip ( 26604 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:45PM (#7068622)
    How long before a bunch of open source revolutionaries are seen dumping Windows CD's into the bay?
    • "How long before a bunch of open source revolutionaries are seen dumping Windows CD's into the bay?"

      Totally recycled, but... (I live in Massachusetts too, btw)

      I, for one, welcome our over-taxed, open source, big coifed, alchoholic, ...losing every damned season to those freakin Yankees... overlords with open arms.

    • How long before a bunch of open source revolutionaries are seen dumping Windows CD's into the bay?

      What made the Boston Tea Party memorable was not the fact that tea was being dumped into the ocean but that tea was being ruined and a pun was being made in the same gesture. Dumping Windows discs into the harbor makes them wet, i.e. salvageable.

      The Great Windows Disc Jockey on the other hand, would be something indeed. Jockey . . CD-ROMS . . Music. Hmmm.

      How about a legion of polo players wielding iPods t

      • How about clay (er, plastic) pigeons?

        Those shiny disks explode very satisfactorily when they get hit by 12 gauge buckshot. Now that'd be one geek conference that I would attend.

  • Open standards != Open source (Score:5, Informative)

    by phliar ( 87116 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:46PM (#7068627) Homepage
    The reporter unfortunately slanted the story as MS vs Linux. The state says it chose "open standards, including Linux" -- which seems to imply that it's closed standards that are taboo. If they're talking about file formats, network protocols etc. it is of course the sensible thing to do, since you're not vulnerable to losing your documents if the program is no longer supported, and you're not compelling everyone you communicate with to use exactly the same software as you do. Big difference between this and saying that they're only going to use Linux, which makes it seem as though they're retaliating against MS.
    • By it's very definition, Linux is an Open Standard - you or I or my kids can produce a Linux distribution given enough education and guidance. (Turn about is fair play, BTW)

      Try writing Windows on your own, without previously selling your intellectual discoveries to Microsoft, or investing too much time and effort.

      Using things that *you* have control over is a sound strategic business decision. Those who have a long term vision - in business and those who actaulaay care about providing the public sound, lo

      • Re:Open souce == Open standards (Score:5, Interesting)

        by babbage ( 61057 ) <cdevers.cis@usouthal@edu> on Friday September 26, 2003 @10:16PM (#7069381) Homepage Journal
        Sorry, but I'd define a standard as a widely acception set of conventions that is either formally (de jure) or informally (de facto) specified. That doesn't describe Linux.

        POSIX, to which Linux partially adheres, is a formal, de jure standard for an operating system. Windows, by it's prevalance and the varied implementations (9x & NT families), is sort of a de facto standard, but I'm stretching my definition there just because I can't think of a more solid example.

        C, C++, and SQL are examples of formally specified languages, each with a detailed ISO description of what a language calling itself "C" or "C++" has to be compliant with.

        Python is a de facto standard language, because there are several implementations that provide the same interface (the original C based Python, the later Java based Jython, and experimental variants such as stackless Python). Although there isn't a formal description of what a "Python" language has to be like, there is the original reference implementation that the other variants strive to adhere to.

        Perl is not a standard language, because there is to date only one implementation, and there is no formal description of the language. This is changing with the Perl6 effort, with a formal description of the new version preceding the actual implementation effort, allowing for the possibility of future, formal implementations as well. As a side effect, to maintain backward compatibility there is going to be support for Perl5 on top of the Perl6 runtime engine -- at that point, Perl5 will be promoted to a "standard" language, but until that happens, the term can't be applied.

        The situation with Perl most closely resembles the situation with Linux, in my opinion. Just as Perl is mainly defined by what Larry Wall has wanted it to be, Linux is mostly defined by what Linus Torvalds wants Linux to be -- and the fact that many people contribute to the evolution of the language doesn't change the fact that the major effort has been essentially driven by one individual in each case.

        Now you're right that, "standard" or not, Linux is unquestionably open. But you start out by asserting that Linux is "by definition" a standard, and it seems to me that this suggests a lack of understanding of both the definition for & examples of de facto or de jure standards -- because Linux, open as it is, just doesn't fit either of those definitions. It's open, sure. It's flexible, of course. But it's not a standard. It just isn't. To argue otherwise is just ignorant, and causes the rest of your [otherwise sound] argument to seem less strong than it should be.

        Moral: don't say "$foo is, by definition, $bar", unless "$bar" really is defined as "$foo". If you build up your argument around such an easily falsifiable point, your whole argument can collapse :-)

        <rant />

        Future rants: Slashddot posters that begin their comments with "I have to {agree,disagree}." No, they don't -- you all have free will and some stranger's Slashdot commannd should never be enough to compel you to do anything. Man that phrase is a pet peeve of mine... :-)

        • >

          Windows, by it's prevalance and the varied implementations (9x & NT families), is sort of a de facto standard

          No, it isn't. For a de facto standard, you need at least two interoperable, independent implementations. While MS Windows is composed of many components, like SMB for file sharing, AD for authentication and Win32 or .Net for programming, there aren't yet independent, fully interoperable implementations of any. Samba, Wine and Mono try, but they aren't there yet and it is doubtful if th

      • I hope you know the difference between equality and implication. All apples are fruits; this does not mean that the property of being a fruit is identical to the property of being an apple. Solaris uses open standards like NFS (in fact Sun came up with NFS) but Solaris is not open source.

        Open source ==> Open standards
        Open standards =/=> Open standards
        Therefore Open source != Open standards

  • That's the way it should be! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pointwood ( 14018 ) <jramskov@ g m a i l . com> on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:46PM (#7068629) Homepage
    By using free, open standards, they are able to choose the best tool for the job, whether that be open source or closed source.
  • Government agencies from Germany to France to Peru have adopted or are considering Linux-based software as a cheaper alternative to Microsoft products.
    Whats the one in Peru? Did I miss an OSS development?

  • Think in Lawyer-Speak (Score:5, Insightful)

    by squashed ( 664265 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:54PM (#7068682)
    OK, so this had nothing to do with the antitrust case w/r/t Microsoft. Take it to mean that it is not a strictly punitive measure taken viz-a-viz the case, which could be problematic in all sorts of ways.

    Instead, consider the antitrust investigation conducted by state officials as "The Education of the Great State of Massachussetts" in all matters of Microsoft business practices.

    They have some learning under their belts, and it shows.

  • open docs and the mass courts (Score:4, Funny)

    by Brewst3r ( 608141 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:58PM (#7068699) Homepage
    Even worse than Word, how about publishing stuff in Word Perfect 6.1 [state.ma.us] format?
    • I'm not defending the publication of stuff in Word Perfect, but IIRC, nearly the entire field of law uses Word Perfect instead of Word. The lawyers & judges never started using Word.

      So, since Word Perfect is their industry standard, it's not unexpected that their links point to Word Perfect documents.

  • author doesn't understand open standards (Score:5, Informative)

    by geekee ( 591277 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:01PM (#7068713)
    "In the technology industry, the term "open standards" refers to nonproprietary software. Microsoft's software is considered "closed" because application developers and other programmers don't have free access to the blueprints."

    Proprietary software can also adhere to an open standard. The idea of an open standard is an open interface (file format, API, etc.) that allows sw for various vendors to interoperate. This way you don't even need to see the source to write complementary or competing sw, you just need the spec. Open standard and open source are not synonymous, although the former is a subset of the latter.

    • Re:author doesn't understand open standards (Score:5, Insightful)

      by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <roy&stogners,org> on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:25PM (#7068843) Homepage
      The idea of an open standard is an open interface (file format, API, etc.) that allows sw for various vendors to interoperate. This way you don't even need to see the source to write complementary or competing sw, you just need the spec.

      I think it takes a little more than that. Win32 and the Excel functions are open standards by that definition, but that's not a huge help to the Wine and Gnumeric projects, who have had to do some reverse engineering to make sure their software conforms to the API as implemented by Windows and Excel where that implementation differs from or is a superset of the APIs as published by Microsoft. Even if Microsoft published absolutely everything and followed all it's own specs, they would still leave other vendors at a perpetual disadvantage, because Microsoft gets to see their own APIs and write software which uses them from the most preliminary design phase, whereas other vendors have to wait until Microsoft makes those APIs public, after enjoying a headstart of it's own choosing. For example, Excel has been cloned adequately, but AFAIK the closest thing to an independent Windows API implementation is Wine, which is now 10 years old and still in need of work.

      From an economic standpoint, it's important not just that everyone has access to the standard, but that everyone has the same access. From a practical standpoint it's important not just that multiple conforming implementations are theoretically possible but that multiple conforming implementations (or at least free conforming implementations) actually exist.
      • >
        Win32 and the Excel functions are open standards by that definition, but that's not a huge help to the Wine and Gnumeric projects, who have had to do some reverse engineering to make sure their software conforms to the API as implemented by Windows and Excel where that implementation differs from or is a superset of the APIs as published by Microsoft.

        No, they aren't, because despite being published their faults don't enable interoperability.

      • An open standard must have a written description explaining all parameters. Therefore, simply having examples of a format does not make it an open standard. With this clarification, it is clear that Office documents do not follow an open standard, since there is no way to get a spec for the Office file format from MS.
    • ya ya but the Crush Kill Destroy mentality of Microsofts monopoly all but eliminated the true concept of open/interoperable standards. With the rise of GNU/Linux and Open Source, the term open standards is associated with open source.

      Good point though.

      LoB


    • > Proprietary software can also adhere to an open standard.

      Where the operative word is "can".

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I am glad others are noting the difference between open standards and open source. Currently there is a significant segment of businesses working in the "commoditization market" for open standards. Here are some I can think of off the top of my head:

    - Red Hat Linux
    - MacOS X (sort of, since it's based off BSD)
    - XML based content management systems
    - Microsoft Office 2003 (hehehehe... well they do support some XML output but it's not all that open either)

    I believe that many organizations are still leery of
  • They just felt silly writing their legal briefs for their antitrust suit again Microsoft using Microsoft Word. To say nothing about how easy it would be for M$ to put backdoors in the software and use it against them...
  • oke, it's gotta be said, and i'm a resident. *deep breath*

    MIcrosoft! Now Banned in Boston! oke, maybe not 'banned.' but i have to predict: the headline will come up...

    • I'd have given you a "funny" point if you'd dropped "oke, maybe not 'banned.' but i have to predict: the headline will come up..."

  • I was preparing to write a proposal for my state representative. Now I can drop it and concentrate on my lane splitting [dot.gov] legalization bill.

  • Massachusetts... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 9mind ( 702505 )
    has been moving towards linux inside corporations since 1998. I live in Boston and have worked on 128 (Technology Drive), and have seen more and more interest in Linux from small companies to large corporations. Politicians will always jump on the bandwagon that they see their constiuents wanting. So it's not surprising.

    My small business (not to be posted here for fear of being /.ed :) caters to other small business with low cost linux server solutions and out-sourced IT Services. Unlike other states wh

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