[SGVLUG] Mass. open formats meeting

[Dustin]

Groklaw has links to an audio recording of a meeting about the 
Massachusetts Open Document decision:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050922020430117

The recording goes for two hours, but I encourage everyone to download the
recording and listen to at least the opening statements--I listened to the
whole thing and it is well worth your time.  Here is a bit of a
summary/review.  I must say I'm still in shock over hearing government
officials so clearly grasp a technical issue and refuse to be misled by
rich, influential corporations.  There simply isn't any place in my
world-view for such phenomena, even though I'm reasonably comfortable with
easy-to-believe stuff like quantum superposition and relativistic time
dilation. :-)

Since I'm clearly incapable of understanding such an unnatural situation,
consider this summary to be a bit of therapy.  Or chortling, I don't care.

It begins with one of the clearest statements of why open formats matter
to the State I have ever heard, perhaps doubly interesting because it is
couched in a legal language that most of us don't have or at least use
naturally.  I would either invoke issues of freedom and control, or the
simple technical horror of tools which cannot work together.  I would not
have the knowledge or inclination to base it on Sovereignty, though I
think it is approximately the same argument as freedom and control, but
applied to the state as a legal entity rather than the individual (i.e.  
the Sovereignty of the state requires freedom of action and the absence of
outside control).

For good measure, the FEMA website for Katrina victims which could only be
viewed in IE was mentioned as an example of something which they intended
to ensure never happened in Massachusetts.

After that the first comments in the fairly free-flowing discussion are
from the Microsoft rep., so if you make it to the end of Kriss' statement
you might as well hang on for that bit too.  (It did take on the air of
"world vs. Microsoft and it's puppets," mainly because the room was full
of heavy hitters, and all of them besides Microsoft were quite in favor.)  
PJ's commentary doesn't mention that throughout he, or minions <grin>, I
usually couldn't follow the voices, work overtime on their bag of
rhetorical tricks to divert, avoid, sidestep, confuse, and otherwise
subvert the issues which were laid out so clearly.

The answers to one of his first ploys, talking about XML as "just a
container, not a file format" (and AFAICT ignoring the Open Document
requirement entirely) weren't very good, but other gambits were answered
well.  The answer to "what do we have to do to have our format considered"  
was about perfect and zeroed in on some of the issues that Microsoft cares
most about--there could be no patent claims and changes to the format
would have to be in the hands of a neutral body, not one or a few
corporations.  Other outstanding ploys were trying to divert the issue to
one of cost (even though we were told at the outset that cost was a
procurement issue that wasn't on the table), claiming a large userbase as
being open, asking why pdf is OK if they are not (actually a fair
questiona nd there was some good discussion at that point), calling Open 
Document a beta spec. because OOo 2.0 is in beta, suggesting that the 
state needed a more dynamic format to adapt to changing technology, and so 
on.

The last one is particularly silly because most of the things that matter
here are plain text--laws I must follow though I've never heard of them
and cannot be understood without a law degree, for a start.  Unless
they're passing statutes in the form of multimedia files over there, most
of the machinery of government would work just fine with quill pen and
parchment (and, well, that's how it was invented).  Except for the
lamentable shortage of about a million copyists with a fine court hand, of
course.

The best strategy, though, hands down, was attempting to insinuate that
the state of Mass. must be a bunch of pinko commies against intellectual
property in the same room as an IBM rep. who stated quite explicitly that
as the largest holder of IP in the world they agreed with the state that
Sovereignty trumps IP and the Open Document decision was the right one.  
Too bad that the room was full of adults too polite to give that the
answer it deserved.

PJ suggests the MS rep didn't understand the answers.  That is far too
kind, by half.  One does not hit on every possible misinterpretation and
insinuation by accident.  He understood perfectly.  The only problem was
that he was confronted with the astounding spectre of government officials
who also understood perfectly and refused to be either bullied or misled.  
(Though of course the game isn't over yet, and there will be plenty more
opportunities for subversion before we see the policy firmly in place and
followed properly).

Give the guy a little sympathy, though--it was his unenviable job to try
to justify their profitable lock-in while company after multinational
corporation agreed with the state, and do so while appearing to be a team
player and not look like they are trying to bully a government.  I gather
we're not quite at the point where software vendors, even sole-source
ones, can afford to be as arrogant and viscious with a state as the BSA is
with ordinary customers.  (Maybe because ordinary customers can't lose
patience and invent interesting new uses of Eminent Domain, as I recall
some state attorney general suggested about overly agressive IP claims?)

The actors are a bit hard to follow with just the audio, and the
transcript PJ mentions would help a lot.  I may listen again with the
transcript in front of me.

Dustin