[brlug-general] Free software is never a bully.

[willhill]

No, but it is OK to legislate the use of royalty free and published formats 
for public information.  Right now ODF is the best of these and OOXML is not 
acceptable.

A better question would be, "Is it OK to put public documents into a format 
owned by someone?"  How about requiring your checks be written on paper 
blessed by the Church of Elvis?

I hope everyone here agrees that Word and friends are not an acceptable public  
format.  The state should never have to pay royalties to store and share 
information when free formats and software is available and adequate.  You 
and I should never be forced to buy software to use public records or 
communicate with government officials.  Formats that have owners, especially 
an owner like Microsoft, should be history. 

Microsoft's attempt to invert these arguments burns me up.  We've had a couple 
of threads here where no one was able to use the new Microsoft Office formats 
outside of Windows.  Obviously, something is wrong if IBM, Google, Apple and 
everyone else was unable to make translators before the new formats were 
rolled out.  It would be a crime for state governments to start using these 
formats when dealing with the public.  Microsoft is the bully and always has 
been.

Free software is never a bully, Dustin.  Microsoft is free to implement ODF 
and should have years ago.  Everyone else is happy with it, Microsoft is just 
being uncooperative and deserves what that brings them.


On Monday 04 June 2007 9:07 am, Dustin Puryear wrote:
> Is it okay to legislate the use of ODF?