Posted on 09/22/2005 6:58:05 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
The activist group, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), released a statement yesterday strongly criticizing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for its recent decision to switch all government computer systems to open-source format.
The new policy would require all state agencies to acquire open standard software, like Open Document Format (ODF), by January 2007.
"It is bad procurement policy for any state to unilaterally lock itself into one set of technologies," CAGW President Tom Schatz said.
(Excerpt) Read more at webpronews.com ...
New York City Examines Law Mandating Open Source
Open source battle heats up over Oregon bill
What's wrong with open source?
Let the leftwing nutcases have their open source. Maybe we can even persuade the DNC to do it, if we're lucky.
That was a parody post right? This is a good thing. People can read government documents without having to purchase Microsoft software. Open standards are good for everybody, except Microsoft.
Open Source is a Chicom/Finnish plot against America, with it's first foothold now in the commie state of MA.
It IS a lot better than adobe PDF format!
PDF was designed for "paper-white" vga monitors that were the same dimensions as a sheet of legal paper - remember the "paper-white" vga's? Excellent quality & very readable.
That's why it is virtually unreadable on a standard monitor.
To some extent, I agree. Why should anyone be forced to use open source software such as OpenOffice (in use by my company for nearly 2 years, and me personally for over 3) that is virtually 100% compatible with Microsoft Office, fully standards compliant, and did I mention it's also free? As in 100% less costly than MSFT?
Honestly, anyone who is too ignorant to use it should go right ahead wasting taxpayer or stockholder money.
I see 2 issues here:
1) A state preventing its agencies / quasi-agencies from using the best, most cost effective tools in lieu of some arbitrary "standard".
2) Agencies being too ignorant to opt to use the best most cost effective tool available on their own.
MA fails on both counts.
"Open Source is a Chicom/Finnish plot against America, with it's first foothold now in the commie state of MA."
ALCOA is calling you, they said your helmet is ready.
Actually, PDF _is_ an open format. Seriously, all Microsoft has to do is publish the specs to all their document formats and they'd be happy. People would even continue to purchase Microsoft Office.
It's backed by radical leftists such as the "Free Software Foundation" whose admitted goal is to make all software free, and who actively campaign against our existing intellectual property laws. For example, they have created a new philosophy called "copyleft" which was designed to combat our typical "copyright".
Communist and socialist governments the world over have latched onto the philosophy, and have passed laws mandating the use of open source software by their governments, often taking free software from the US which they rename to something else and sell for their own profit, such as when the Chinese government takes a free copy of Red Hat Linux from our developers in North Carolina and promptly renames it "Red Flag" and names it the official software of the PRC government.
Now we have liberals here in the US attempting to pass those same laws. The cummulative effect is damage to our technology companies, including even those that are attempting to market open source such as IBM but who has been plagued with tens of thousands of layoffs the last few years.
How's that?
So I am wrong in using Linux for free?
I work for a state court system and after careful analysis and consideration, we swapped ALL of our point of sale systems at the courthouses to diskless (Thin Client) Linux systems starting over a year ago. We're just about finished with the rollout and will have replaced between 300 and 400 MS Windows workstations when it's all said and done.
The whole system runs from a 256M compact flash card, and has thus far proven impervious to viri, worms, and malicious individuals at the console.
We simply couldn't afford the overhead in maintenance that we incurred with Microsoft operating systems and their hefty hardware requirement to run.
OpenSource is good for everybody who uses it. It's only companies like Microsoft who don't like it because it's so obviously bad for their narrow minded ways of thinking. :-)
There is a difference between open standards and open source.
One is obviouly a good thing the other is debateable.
Surely nobody will claim propriatary file formats are better then cross platform ones.
I'm obviosly talking about office task domain, outside early, early phases of software development. I'm not saying VisiCalc should have saved all its data comma delimited, but Excel can and should save it's data in XML. Even custom development should be required to document formats.
Their deep in bed with open source, Howard Dean staffed his campaign with open sourcers and even literally referred to it as "open source politics". All their servers are open source based, and they've even named their latest project "Demzilla" as a tribute to open source.
That Microsoft reorg must really be making people jittery, eh?
So what are you doing on this evil open source based web server known as Free Republic, then?
Communists and socialists will never be happy with the company owned by the richest man on earth, they are obviously polar opposites. BTW, from what I understand the next version of MS apps will disclose their formats, and do already write to existing standards such as RTF and HTML.
That's a great comeback. LOL!!
Huh?
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