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US government’s reliance on Microsoft means the company gets a free pass

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Re: US government’s reliance on Microsoft means the company gets a free pass

#11

Post by smt88 »

mewse-hn wrote: post #5

Here's a radical idea: One government worker sending a document to another government worker should not involve a proprietary, for-profit data format. With a hardcopy paper document this would obviously be unacceptable, but since digitization and software eating the world, we pay our fees to Microsoft and go about our merry way. I'm middle-aged and tired, I'm not going to fight this fight anymore. Maybe some day legi…

Of all the things to be upset about here, this should be low on the list.

Microsoft Office documents haven't been proprietary for a long time. The formats are publicly-documented and Microsoft maintains open-source libraries that read/write them.

They're all XML-based and unobfuscated (beyond their convoluted design).

There are also many FOSS applications, including LibreOffice, that are perfectly fine as replacements for Microsoft Office.

Proprietary formats are a problem, but not with Microsoft Office anymore.

We should all be a lot more annoyed by PDFs, honestly.

Re: US government’s reliance on Microsoft means the company gets a free pass

#12

Post by lapetitejort »

scarface_74 wrote: post #7
mewse-hn wrote: post #5

Here's a radical idea: One government worker sending a document to another government worker should not involve a proprietary, for-profit data format. With a hardcopy paper document this would obviously be unacceptable, but since digitization and software eating the world, we pay our fees to Microsoft and go about our merry way. I'm middle-aged and tired, I'm not going to fight this fight anymore. Maybe some day legi…

To a first approximation, every word processor can open Word documents including open source ones.

Is that a result of an open standard, or from constantly reverse engineering whatever change Microsoft makes?

Re: US government’s reliance on Microsoft means the company gets a free pass

#13

Post by mostlysimilar »

mewse-hn wrote: post #5

Here's a radical idea: One government worker sending a document to another government worker should not involve a proprietary, for-profit data format. With a hardcopy paper document this would obviously be unacceptable, but since digitization and software eating the world, we pay our fees to Microsoft and go about our merry way. I'm middle-aged and tired, I'm not going to fight this fight anymore. Maybe some day legi…

> Maybe some day legislators will grow fangs and start giving a shit about strategic interoperability.

Not so long as their paychecks require them to not have fangs.

Re: US government’s reliance on Microsoft means the company gets a free pass

#14

Post by paxys »

mewse-hn wrote: post #5

Here's a radical idea: One government worker sending a document to another government worker should not involve a proprietary, for-profit data format. With a hardcopy paper document this would obviously be unacceptable, but since digitization and software eating the world, we pay our fees to Microsoft and go about our merry way. I'm middle-aged and tired, I'm not going to fight this fight anymore. Maybe some day legi…

The legislators do have fangs, but they are pointed towards you.

Re: US government’s reliance on Microsoft means the company gets a free pass

#15

Post by swatcoder »

mewse-hn wrote: post #5

Here's a radical idea: One government worker sending a document to another government worker should not involve a proprietary, for-profit data format. With a hardcopy paper document this would obviously be unacceptable, but since digitization and software eating the world, we pay our fees to Microsoft and go about our merry way. I'm middle-aged and tired, I'm not going to fight this fight anymore. Maybe some day legi…

Every digital document needs to be encoded somehow, and that encoding is going to be a function of supoorted features.

If you're saying that we've reached a point of maturity in everyday digital paperwork documents that we can formally standardize some and move away from vendor innovation, you may be right, but the transition is a matter of timing and discussion because of the tradeoffs involved when that happens, not a rhetorical principle.

Re: US government’s reliance on Microsoft means the company gets a free pass

#17

Post by layer8 »

mewse-hn wrote: post #5

Here's a radical idea: One government worker sending a document to another government worker should not involve a proprietary, for-profit data format. With a hardcopy paper document this would obviously be unacceptable, but since digitization and software eating the world, we pay our fees to Microsoft and go about our merry way. I'm middle-aged and tired, I'm not going to fight this fight anymore. Maybe some day legi…

> should not involve a proprietary data format.

For that very reason, Microsoft turned the Office formats into open standards:

https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/st...

https://www.iso.org/standard/71691.html

Well, at least nominally. The real standard is still Microsoft’s implementation.

Re: US government’s reliance on Microsoft means the company gets a free pass

#19

Post by maxnoe »

mewse-hn wrote: post #5

Here's a radical idea: One government worker sending a document to another government worker should not involve a proprietary, for-profit data format. With a hardcopy paper document this would obviously be unacceptable, but since digitization and software eating the world, we pay our fees to Microsoft and go about our merry way. I'm middle-aged and tired, I'm not going to fight this fight anymore. Maybe some day legi…

That's exactly the reason why Microsoft documents have an open standard, they were essentially forced to do that.

That that standard has several thousand pages and internal inconsistencies, ... well

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Op...

Re: US government’s reliance on Microsoft means the company gets a free pass

#20

Post by generic92034 »

ankushnarula wrote: post #9

It is a sad state of affairs that the most technologically advanced government in history is incapable of rolling its own in-house tech. Taxpayers deserve better.

Are the taxpayers willing to pay higher taxes for IC government employees receiving Microsoft level salaries?
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