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IBM Software Linux

IBM Stresses Importance of OpenDoc to MA 120

Posted by Zonk from the don't-forget-about-the-penguins dept.
gordoste writes "After announcing this past weekend that the WorkPlace line of products would support the OpenDocument set of standards, IBM has sent a letter to Massachusetts' governor promoting the software. They point out that the software was built in Massachusetts and that the French tax agency saves 10% on their IT budget as a result of moving to open standard software." From the article: "Designed at IBM's development lab in Westford, Massachusetts, the IBM Workplace Managed Client will help protect an organization's investment in corporate data by promoting consistency, reliability and open accessibility of its documents. As you know, Massachusetts is recognized across the globe as an incubator for software development ... What you may not know is that software is major growth engine for IBM, and solutions being developed at these IBM locations are being built on open standards because our customers are demanding choice and control over their information technology."
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IBM Stresses Importance of OpenDoc to MA More

IBM Stresses Importance of OpenDoc to MA

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  • so, first adopt it, then try to sell it w/ letter to governor. Interesting stuff...

    • Regardless... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by porkThreeWays ( 895269 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:33AM (#14193538)
      Regardless, they are fully supporting an open standard. This puts all software on a level playing field. Alternative browsers have gained great amounts of market share recently because they all compete on a (theoretically) level playing field (in practice we all know MS has attempted their own extensions to try and make html not so open standard). So what if IBM promotes their software product. The fact it will fully support open document is good enough. I think all open source advocates want is a level playing field not hindered by market leaders forcing vendor lock-in. We just want an environment where the software speaks for itself.
      • sell it w/ letter to governor

        meant to read as: spam

        meant to say: governor won't read that

        meant to convey: would you read a letter that starts with:

        I'd like to share some information on an exciting new IBM product

        ?

        • Re:spam (Score:1, Offtopic)

          by porkThreeWays ( 895269 )
          I'll admit the letter is lame and I usually trash the 230498234023948230498 letters I get a day trying to sell me software in that manner =P
        • Well if you were the Governor, I bet you would read it (or have one of your cronies give you the executive summary) if the second paragraph contained:

          As the result of acquiring several Massachusetts-based companies, including Rational Software, Lotus Development Corp. and Ascential Software, we now have over 4,000 IBMers based in the Commonwealth

          Basically what he's saying is something like: 'hey pal, we pay a lot of taxes and keep a whole bunch of people in this state gai
    • still better than ms's embrace, extend, extinguish

  • Advertising? (Score:3)

    by sczimme ( 603413 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:08AM (#14193379)

    From the letter to Governor Romney:

    I'd like to share some information on an exciting new IBM product that was built in Massachusetts but is expected to have implications on both a national and international level.

    It would have been nice to make the point without making the letter seem like a cold-call sales pitch. I found the first paragraph a bit off-putting - YGMMV.

    • that's a good thing, actually (Score:5, Insightful)

      by penguin-collective ( 932038 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:17AM (#14193439)
      The non-commercial and public angle is made well enough already by the people who are in a position to make such arguments. IBM is a commercial software vendor and they wouldn't fool anybody into thinking otherwise if they tried.

      Overall, I think it's a good thing that big vendors are advertising their products by stressing the value of open document formats to potential buyers because it shows that the formats are commercially supported and that businesses have an interested to continue to support them. The more commercial sales pitches MA gets for products using open document formats, the easier it will be for them to adopt such formats.

    • Re:Advertising? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:32AM (#14193536) Journal
      Actually, I think that's an excellent first line. It's telling those making the decision that supporting Open Document is likely to have a positive impact on the state's economy (i.e. people are currently employed writing software that uses the standard). That means that suddenly one of the options involves more money flowing in-state - a solution that makes a lot of politicians happy.

    • Re:Advertising? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tdemark ( 512406 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:40AM (#14193594) Homepage
      It would have been nice to make the point without making the letter seem like a cold-call sales pitch. I found the first paragraph a bit off-putting

      As opposed to Microsoft, who, in their correspondence, makes no mention that going with OpenDocument will cost them big money in lost sales?

      I'd much rather a company say "We support X and here is our product that does so" then "You shouldn't go with X for FUD reasons a, b, and c. (And, while we won't tell you this, if you go with X, it will cost us $x million in annual sales)". Give credit to the company with the blatant agenda as opposed to the not-so-well hidden one.

      - Tony

    • I'm with you - this is blatantly a sales pitch. I have no problem with IBM touting their software, but this is one of those things that should be only focused on being better for the people. Follow it up with a sales pitch later, but don't water down the message.

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

        by vidarh ( 309115 )
        Do you seriously think a politician is stupid enough to think a corporation like IBM is doing things just because it's better for most people?

        They're being honest and telling him why they as a company have a stake in ODF, and why that should matter to Gov. Romney, and that's good. It may look like a sales pitch, but it's a sales pitch that targets the right "customer" very well - along with all the other reasons corporate spending in his state is a compelling addition.

      • You're right. They should have let the highest moderated /. poster write their letter.

        Dear n00b,

        U have been pwned by Micro$oft. ...
      • Actually, it's fantastic that IBM is pushing their product. Why? Because one of Microsofts arguments against ODF is that "nobody supports it."

        IBM is saying "Umn, we do!" And IBM is no small player...
      • I disagree completely.

        If I was a politician and I got a letter from someone at a huge multinational corporation telling me how they could help me help my people, and it didn't contain an obvious explanation of what their interest was in this venture, I'd be immediately filled with suspicion. Why is it that they care about this issue? What's in it for them? How are they going to make money?

        By being upfront about what IBM's angle is, the reader doesn't have to untangle what ulterior motive is driving the wri

    • Professional Sales and Marketing needed by OSS (Score:4, Informative)

      by AHumbleOpinion ( 546848 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:52AM (#14193712) Homepage
      "I'd like to share some information on an exciting new IBM product that was built in Massachusetts but is expected to have implications on both a national and international level."

      It would have been nice to make the point without making the letter seem like a cold-call sales pitch. I found the first paragraph a bit off-putting - YGMMV.

      To be honest attitudes like that are part of what holds the adoption of open source back. There is nothing wrong with that attitude, I share it - I am put off too, but OSS needs to get past that "by geeks for geeks" attitude *if* it wants to dominate.

      It *is* a cold-call sales pitch. You can't hide that fact. IBM shows the honesty and integrity not to try to camoflauge things, this maintains their credibility. Secondly IBM has quite a bit of experience pitching products to large organizations and government agencies. I think we should defer to IBM's judgement in this case. Finally, I find the Massachusetts reference brilliant and an example of why we should defer to IBM. They are pitching to a politician. They just gave him the choice to either (1) Embrace local industry and help it compete on a global scale, creating local jobs and tax revenue or (2) give his next political opponent a stick to beat him with during an election for failing to do so, politics is local. Insights like this are how products and technologies are "sold", not via MS/OSS cost benefit analysis. The political will often trump the technical. Is this desirable? No, but it is how things work and OSS geeks need to face this reality. The professional sales and marketing people at IBM, Red Hat, etc do understand this.

      • To be honest attitudes like that are part of what holds the adoption of open source back. There is nothing wrong with that attitude, I share it - I am put off too, but OSS needs to get past that "by geeks for geeks" attitude *if* it wants to dominate.

        My statement had nothing to do with OSS zealotry or any sort of "geeks for geeks" agenda. OSS is a nice idea, but I care more about whether the product/app/etc works and does what I need it to do. I won't use (or encourage others to use) ill-fitting produ

    • Re:Advertising? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by k12linux ( 627320 )
      I think a "we do business in your state and we are basing some of that business on ODF" message might be EXACTLY what Romney needs to hear. He's clearly business friendly.

      Besides most polititians automatically assume that *everybody* has alterior motives when they do something good.
    • Wait, so open formats are good, but large corporate entities marketing products that support them are bad?

      Personally, I think this is one of the most honest and noble marketing pathways a company can take. I've always believed in maintaining my customer base on merit, not on locking someone in by hiding information that they would need to take their business elsewhere. By promoting an open format, IBM is saying to the customer, "We're comfortable that we can provide the best service at the best price. So mu

    • Re:Advertising? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Jason Earl ( 1894 )

      The IBM exec was just making a very important political point. While Microsoft is a big company with a lot of political influence, IBM is also a big company with lots of political influence (and a lot more experience wielding that influence). IBM also has something that Microsoft does not have, and that is a significant investment in the state of Massachusetts.

    • Re:Advertising? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Wellspring ( 111524 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @01:41PM (#14194716)
      They're writing this to a Governor. You don't write letters like that the same way you'd write to your Aunt Charlotte.

      First, the letter is public. So no "hey how are ya" language. Instead, you're basically writing a persuasive essay masquerading as a letter.

      Second, when the letter is received, it will be by a staffer who specializes in IT issues and IT policy. This staffer has probably spoken to the Government Relations (read: lobbyist) guy that at IBM that actually authored the letter. The two guys probably have spoken a great deal on the subject and already know all the arguments. They're just putting it in writing to garner support and document the reasons why OpenDocument is the correct approach. Also, a letter forces a response-- something that can help IBM move things forward.

      By the way, MS certainly has a similar Govt Relations guy in there as well. He's writing letters for Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer's signature as well.

      Third, this is a IT decision last, a political decision second-to-last, and a public policy decision first. There are lots of implications that have nothing to do with the relative merits of MS Office and OpenOffice.org. Open standards are the obvious ones. But also the likelihood that MS would support OpenDocument if it really came to it. MS investment in Mass would be another one (IBM, too). The real news in this letter is that IBM is willing to take a public stand on this. The fact of the letter is more important than its content.

      Anyway, you write these letters in a way to advance a public conversation. It's like a press release or a "major public address" at a graduation or something. It's intended to take a dispute public and make a declaration about your organization's thoughts.

      The mechanics of lobbying is a bit of a mystery to most people. This certainly is one part of it. It's worth understanding some of the basics of how it happens.

  • IBM (Score:2, Insightful)

    by yincrash ( 854885 )
    Of course it's important! to IBM. They are using the standard, and they want a government to support it, which will be, in turn, supporting the use of IBM products because they use the standard.
    • *wrong*

      Even though you live in america(tm) the government has to have their stuff available to all citizens, not just those who paid a fortune for a very specific office suite
      • Readers are still free. It's the creation and editing capabilities that is being charged for.
        • Readers are still free.

          Emphesize added.

        • Re:IBM (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:36AM (#14193563)
          Readers are still free?

          Where?

          It doesn't count as free if you have to buy Windows to run it.
        • Cool where is this free reader for my Linux system? I don't own a widows system at home.

        • Re:IBM (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Sorry? What readers are free? I am typing this from a Solaris workstation. I also have a Linux laptop. As far as I know, Microsoft does not provide any "free" readers for either platform.
      • Not quite.

        The GP was correct in that IBM could potentially sell lots of its software to the Massachusetts government if it adops open standards. IBM could care less about citizens because they aren't the potential customers.

        • IBM could care less about citizens because they aren't the potential customers.

          Why aren't citizens potential customers? I thought part of the push for open standards was so that citizens could read all the government documents without having to spend an assload of money on proprietary software available from only one company.

          • I thought part of the push for open standards was so that citizens could read all the government documents without having to spend an assload of money on proprietary software available from only one company.

            It all depends on your point of view.

            Massachusetts has decided to use open standards for a bunch of reasons - one of which is to make their proceedings more accessable to their citizenry, just as you indicated. IBM, on the other hand, being a for-profit corporation with shareholders to please, has a di

            • Well certainly, but that doesn't mean that citizens aren't potential customers. If MA switches to opendocument, and IBM's products are peachier than the alternatives(OOo and KOffice, Etc.), then citizens may indeed buy them. That's all I'm saying.

              Demanding an open document standard will open up more competition, whereas sticking with MS ensures there is absolutely none. So really, it's in the interests of every other business besides MS to use an open standard. It's also coincidentally in the interest

    • Re:IBM (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mysticgoat ( 582871 )

      Of course it's important! to IBM. They are using the standard, and they want a government to support it, which will be, in turn, supporting the use of IBM products because they use the standard.

      Emphasis added. Do this
      s/products/services/
      and the statement will be more correct. IBM appears to be planning to sell a bundle of FOSS with the services to set up and maintain the package, similar to Red Hat, etc. The distinction is important since it offers MA and other potential clients a way to avoid vend

  • OpenDoc != OpenDocument (Score:5, Informative)

    by santiago ( 42242 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:14AM (#14193415)
    The title's reference to OpenDoc threw me. OpenDoc [wikipedia.org] was an early component architecture developed and then abandoned by Apple in the 90s. Ahh, the days of CyberDog...
    • Since nobody is using the name OpenDoc maybe we can now us it as a short form for OpenDocument.
      • Not a good idea. Just because nobody is using the OpenDoc software anymore doesn't mean the name is no longer in use; people might still want to discuss OpenDoc, and it's a pain to have two even vaguely related technologies use the same name, much less two different office-document-format technologies.

        I think it's much better that we keep OpenDocument separate from OpenDoc. And also, to give the OpenDoc -- ill fated as the project was -- its due. It was a very cool technology, just quite ahead of its time.
      • Actually, the idea came from the guys at Claris who invented it for ClarisWorks back in the day to provide a framework to put bitmaps in word processor pages, or vector art in bitmaps, etc. Apple took their basic idea and extended it to cover tons of different types of data. But it never would have worked because it would have made it impossible to share documents.

        Say you got a blank OpenDoc and added a Excel pane and a Photoshop pane. Now you bring it to a buddy's computer, but he doesn't own Excel or P
        • Now you bring it to a buddy's computer, but he doesn't own Excel or Photoshop... all he sees is the OpenDoc equilivant of "missing image."

          That's not quite how it would have worked. The document would have contained an image and a spreadsheet. He could have edited them with Photoshop and Excel, and you could have chosen to edit them with GIMP and Gnumeric. OpenDoc was all about 'pick your favorite editor'. I won't pretend that 5 years down that alternate universe Microsoft wouldn't have made an Excel pa
        • It was also extremely unstable and crashed constantly back when it was installed by default. That couldn't have helped its chances.

          Interesting - on my Machine (a 7200/90) CyberDog was the only browser that woudn't crash.

    • The wikipedia article that you linked to is excellent. The links to other parts of wikipedia are acually relevant to the article, which is a nice change.
    • I miss OpenDoc. It was like a wonderful pallette you could paint anything on. Fully extensible. I guess you could think of it as web pages as documents. It was too advanced for the time and the idea was too hard to explain so it never really caught on. Curse you Jobs for thinking too far ahead.
      • Steve Jobs had nothing to do with OpenDoc except to kill the project after taking the helm at Apple. OpenDoc was developed by Apple (in partnership with IBM, incidentally) while Jobs was busy with NeXT and his other company was producing "Toy Story".

        In fact, during an event titled "A Fireside Chat with Steve Jobs" in early 1997 (while he was still an "advisor" to Gil Amelio), an OpenDoc proponent blasted Jobs for discounting the technology and accused him of being ignorant. To this, Jobs' response began
    • Apple should donate the name.
    • These posts (like the parent) are karma whoring... everyone already knows that OpenDoc is dead and that some people say OpenDoc as a shorthand of OpenDocument.

      Every single article which makes this mistake gets a whole book of this kind of posts. Enough already. Thank you.
      • and deservedly so - Apple still owns the trademark to OpenDoc and apparently people haven't caught on yet, 'cause they're still using that name for OpenDocument. Should Apple ever revive OpenDoc, there's legal ramifications due to product confusion, and they'd probably win because they owned the name first. I doubt this will ever happen because OpenDoc was essentially a type of OLE and Apple now uses something close to Microsoft's model for this, not their own, but better to stop any chance of this now.

  • At what cost.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by onion2k ( 203094 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:17AM (#14193437) Homepage
    As a result of running software based on open standards, the agency is now saving around 20m per year a considerable portion of the agency's 200m yearly IT budget.

    I advocate and use open standards whereever possible .. but you have to be aware that it's rarely a case of "switch and save". There are other related costs that need to be considered with a large changeover to a different document standard. Not least there's the cost of re/training staff to use new software. Then there's the cost of developing a solution (doubtless IBM has one to sell) to allow access to archived materials at the same time as accessing the new format. Then there's the cost in staff turnover. Iif you're not using MS Office you may find a lot of your secretarial staff are keen to leave .. they need to keep their skills current just as much as the resident IT geeks .. and in the secretarial world 'current' = latest version of Office.

    While it's nice to say "these guys saved 20 million Euros" I wouldn't take that figure as red. They might have saved 20m euros on Microsoft licences (yay!), but what did the change cost elsewhere? Was that 20m euros really an overall saving?

    • Re:At what cost.. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 ) *
      If they spent 200m before, and spend 180m now, it should be pretty easy to tell...
    • The MA people were assuming there was going to be re-training costs regardless of what product they migrated to, so whether it's Office 12 or OO.org is irrelevant. They also made the argument that going to ODF would also save on the hard cost of having to upgrade thousands of PCs to something capable of running Office 12.

      MA did their homework, and I'm assuming similar arguments pertain in the French case as well.

      • This is an excellent point. Office 12 has a completely redesigned UI with a whole new "ribbon" concept. OpenOffice.org probably requires *less* retraining than Microsoft office. It is deliberately similar to the latest versions of MS Office. Throw in the fact that most of the new functionality of MS Office is tied to Microsoft's new server software and now is basically the perfect time to look at an alternative office suite and IBM's alternative office software.

    • Not unique (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tony ( 765 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:37AM (#14193573) Journal
      Not least there's the cost of re/training staff to use new software.

      1. This is true for every major upgrade of MS-Office, as well. It is not unique to switching to a "different" document editing suite.

      Iif you're not using MS Office you may find a lot of your secretarial staff are keen to leave .. they need to keep their skills current just as much as the resident IT geeks .. and in the secretarial world 'current' = latest version of Office.

      See point 1. You just contradicted the whole "training/retraining" point you made earlier. And this is one of the most ludicrous statements I've heard in defence of MS-Office. Granted, I haven't worked in an office dedicated to creating documents since my university-worker days, but I've never met an office worker who would quit their job over MS-Office. Even those that insisted on WordPerfect (back when it was king, and MS-Office was the also-ran) made the transition to another office suite just fine.

      While it's nice to say "these guys saved 20 million Euros" I wouldn't take that figure as red. They might have saved 20m euros on Microsoft licences (yay!), but what did the change cost elsewhere? Was that 20m euros really an overall saving?

      This is an excellent point.

      I think it will be worth it, just because they *are* moving to an open standard. It might cost a little bit up front, but over the next decade, it will save a tremendous amount of money. Hell, just being able to put the office suite licensing out to bid (which you sure as hell can't do if you use MS-Office document formats) should provide a bit of competition, which is good for the citizen or organization spending their hard-earned cash.
    • The overall idea in getting away from MS is not to save money immediatly, but save money in the long run. MS has historically shown us they want to lock you in as fiercly as possible. Staying with MS now just means it will be harder to get away from them in 5 or 10 years. Once they are on a system of open document, they can really switch office suites that support it however they want. They can do testing of new suites within single departments and still exchange documents with everyone else. It isn't so mu

    • Re:At what cost.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by omega9 ( 138280 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:59AM (#14193789)
      Not least there's the cost of re/training staff to use new software.

      Toy with Office 12 Beta for a while. The updates to the interface are not minor. All the shortcuts you're used to are still there (CTRL-C, CTRL-V, etc...), but those exist in any major non-Microsoft office product as well. Moving from Office 2003 to Office 12 (Vista, whatevs) will not be a small step.

      It's actually a key time to consider a different office suite. If you're conserned about re/training on a different product, consider the effort involved in just sticking with Office. You'd probably spend just as much energy updating your staff on the new Office interface as you would introducing them to a different suite all together.

      • I was using O2000 and had to do some work in O2003. The file...open threw me the first time, as instead of a large dialog box appearing, it instead appeared stealthily on the right. Personally, I preferred it the way it was before.

        Changing to OOo can find people wondering where a few things are, but mostly, people get used to it very quickly.

        • I agree -- give me a dialog box over that weird-o right sidebar any day. It's not intuitive at all, and can be confusing to inexperienced users. The first time I encountered that interface blunder I went searching for an option to revert to using the old dialog box system -- but I never found it. I guess it's abiword for me again...
          • I'm an OOo user, but the Base product still really isn't up to it. I've written some detailed technical specs in Writer, and don't miss Word.

            Then again, I wonder if building databases as web-based with something like RoR is a better option.

    • Are you some kind of shill? I ask only because your style of writing, and your arguments, seem very familiar, and they overlook a lot of facts. For example, prior versions of MS Office formats have been reverse engineered already, it's keeping up, especially with patents thrown into the equation now, that's the problem, so reading archived materials shouldn't be(a problem, that is).

      If you're not using MS Office you may find a lot of your secretarial staff are keen to leave

      And the above seems rather pr

    • They are going to save now, and in 2 years, and again 2 year after that.

      The conversion costs are a one-time event.

    • Iif you're not using MS Office you may find a lot of your secretarial staff are keen to leave .. they need to keep their skills current just as much as the resident IT geeks .. and in the secretarial world 'current' = latest version of Office.

      Secretarial Staff?????? Where have you been the last 25 years? Since Apple first put computers on workers' desks (with Visicalc), the secretarial position has gradually disapeared. At this point, it is only a perk of senior management. And, these people are a lo

    • Large organziations have annual training budgets. Each year they can focus on critical training issues.

      With a major software change its possible that the training budget will be spent to fast/quick and additional funds would be needed.

      Its also possible that with a good training staff, computer based training (internet based training too), and so forth that the extra expensive is more of a mole hill than a mountain.
    • Then there's the cost of developing a solution (doubtless IBM has one to sell) to allow access to archived materials at the same time as accessing the new format.

      If they do, they're going to have to be fairly competitive. Sun has a grid based service for bulk translation of documents at what sound like reasonable rates. And then, for ad-hoc access, we have the likes of OpenOffice.org which doesn't leave much room for price gouging.

      So they can't make it too expensive, and there are certainly alternativ

    • Great article about French Tax Agency and Linux (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ZDNet UK has published a long and insightful article about the French Tax Agency move to Linux. Don't be fooled by the article subtitle, this is not so much about OpenOffice.org cost than about the whole excellent open-source strategy at work at the DGI.

      French opt for laissez-faire Linux [zdnet.co.uk]

      Note that I am a contractor for the DGI, and can vouch for the accuracy of the article. Of course, not everything's perfect (schedules, budget, etc.), but for the most part, for a project of this magnitude, this is currently

    • Re:At what cost.. (Score:2, Informative)

      by agingell ( 931397 )
      There is a good article about the french tax office moves to Open source over at ZDNnet http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,39020463,392 36214,00.htm [zdnet.co.uk]

      They have all their online tax systems running on JBOSS, they are running around 4000 Linux servers. The savings are the yearly saving which they are making compared to the cost of running the old proprietary systems. These savings are not the savings on licences from MS alone as these applications would not have originally run on MS. The Desktop roll out f

    • Not least there's the cost of re/training staff to use new software.

      You can tell a real industry drone by the repetition of this tired old phrase. I'm sick of this. I learned MS Office in 1/2 an hour. I learned Open Office in 1/2 an hour. File->New,Open,Save,Save as...,Exit. The buttons do just what the little pictures suggest. There, you're trained.

      What a crock! People, you need training on NOTHING until you get into engineering or design and have to use specialized tools. Any common office tool has

    • Iif you're not using MS Office you may find a lot of your secretarial staff are keen to leave ..

      If your staff are willing to leave a secure job in the public service rather than learn to use some slightly-different software, perhaps you should be looking for new staff anyway. And if the whole public service is using the new software (and the private sector may be likely to follow suit in order to be compatible with the government) the pool of jobs available to anyone who insists on MS software will be s

    • There are other related costs that need to be considered with a large changeover to a different document standard. Not least there's the cost of re/training staff to use new software.

      That's only if the old software does not support the new standard and can't be patched to do so.

      Anyway, if Massachusetts (or anybody else for that matter) decides instead to wait for MS Office 12 (if/when it is ready) to use MOOX format (if/when it is ready) then you still have the retraining costs. If anything they may e

      • There has been no discussion (news blackout?) of the server ties and digital restriction management (DRM) issues that are part of MS Office 12. You get all the standard migration problems plus new functionallity, plus new interfaces, plus dependence on connectivity, plus dependence on server based responses. Not a recipe for a smooth transition. Going over to OpenOffice.org could even be cheaper and easier.

        Amen, brother.

        I have the feeling that MSOffice 12 could be the Itanic of MSFT.

        Cheers,
    • Then there's the cost in staff turnover. Iif you're not using MS Office you may find a lot of your secretarial staff are keen to leave .. they need to keep their skills current just as much as the resident IT geeks .. and in the secretarial world 'current' = latest version of Office.

      Most stupid comment of the year?

  • The Magic Cauldron. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by headkase ( 533448 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:17AM (#14193440)
    I know he seems to have fallen out of favor a bit since the .boom but ESR's Magic Cauldron [catb.org] is still a compelling piece of writing.
    I think IBM is trying to build a cauldron.

  • Doesn't stop with the document format (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wombatmobile ( 623057 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:20AM (#14193461)

    the IBM Workplace Managed Client will help protect an organization's investment in corporate data by promoting consistency, reliability and open accessibility of its documents.

    The document format addresses part of the investment, namely the content assetts.

    Also consider publishing workflows that occurs downstream from the document i.e. web publishing and print publishing.

    Savvy corporations can also effectively leverage open standards such as the W3C's HTML, SVG, CSS and interaction workflows such as those enabled by WHATWG and.or X-Forms to achieve stellar ROI across the publishing lifecycle.

  • Irony (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Eightyford ( 893696 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:22AM (#14193465) Homepage
    Irony: IBM stressing the importance of open standards. (If this were 1985)

    • Re:Irony (Score:3, Insightful)

      by l2718 ( 514756 )
      If this were 1985, we would all be talking about how IBM has decided to publish the specifications for their IBM-PC and IBM-XT machines (down to the motherboard wiring diagrams and the BIOS listing), which are based on off-the-shelf components. This while other kinds of personal computers (e.g. the Apple Macintosh that was introduced last year [1984]) are closed-hardware and can only be bought from specific vendors. The popularity of cheap IBM-PC clones is helping the sales of IBM's machines and making th
  • IBM vs. Microsoft: The new battle.
    Coming soon to your local theater.

    (Steve Ballmer: Except in Massachusetts!)
  • The two seem to go hand-in-hand.

    Now if IBM can just write a program to fully document how and where the money was spent on the Big Dig.
  • Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying that "I'm going to f***ing burry IBM, too!"

  • IBM taking the long view (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @11:38AM (#14193576) Homepage
    I think this is a good long term strategy by IBM. Before you can take on an entrenched monopoly, there has to be an alternative support structure in place. This appears to be IBM building that foundation of standards which will ultimately undermine MSFT's monopoly position.

    Nice to see a company breaking out of the quarter-to-quarter mind set and building a long term strategy for their success. And, oh yeah, a lot of us will also benefit from the sea change.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Covered on Groklaw - this is IBM's counter move (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    IBM's being persuasive in an indirect manner. (but affectively)

    http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200512051 61942401/ [groklaw.net]
  • The same French that are coming down hard on Open source P2P are using other open source projects to save %10 in their tax department, nice way to give back to the movement guys.

    James Shoemaker
  • Over the years, I have switched my document files from .doc -> .rtf -> .sxw -> .odt.

    What happens when a new version of OpenDocument comes out? Do we have to convert again? Will it be like the Word 95 and 97/2k/xp formats that use the same extension, but different formats?

    Yes .sxw (the initial draft of OpenDocument when Sun submitted it for standardization) and .odt are fully documented XML, but what happens in one or more centuries when you just have a .odt file, but the spec was lost to history?
  • Bill gates reading the news over the internet while he eats supper. Suddenly his eyes lock on a story about IBM. He begins to choke on his steakbone...
  • OpenDoc... doesn't that have to do with Copland or Rhapsody or Pink or Taligent or something?

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