Hucks on ODF in California
Walt Hucks posts another fusillade supporting efforts by California to set ODF as its default office applications format. He thoroughly destroys the FUD coming out of Redmond. (It’s not hard to counter their claims, since they are so outrageously wrong, but Hucks thoroughly takes them on, one-by-one, and links to a wide bibliography of information to back his arguments. He’s made a very useful resource for documenting the issue.)
I completely agree with Hucks when he titles his post “AB-1668 is Good for California.”
And I completely agree with his succinct and clear summation of the importance of ODF and open file formats:
“ODF being an industry-standard format that is not controlled by any vendor will greatly reduce the costs of software to the end-user and purchaser, while simultaneously enabling new and unexpected solutions to be created by ISVs, ASPs, corporate IT departments, and independent software houses. If Microsoft cares about consumer choice and innovation, let them fully-support ODF in their software, so that users will have choice where it matters to users, in the applications that they use, rather than choice in file formats, which only matters to vendors.”