File Formats, Alliances and Politics

Politics, what is that?  We are just plain-old imaging folk, aren't we?

Whatever happened to the good old debates of FlashPix vs. JPEG and TIFF?

Well, just after the State of Massachusetts had a hearing on the decision to switch to the Open Document format, Microsoft announced that it will support PDF saving. Is this a coincidence or is old Billy Boy listening?

http://www.eweek.com/category2/0,1874,1866726,00.asp?kc=ewnws100405dtx1k0000599

Microsoft has always hated Adobe and PDF, haven't they?  PDF is a great format for archiving since the specification is open, but try and do it (the PDF 1.5 spec is 1,172 pages). Microsoft hasn't had a long history of doing things to benefit its customers.

Then, a few weeks later, the State Senate of Massachusetts announces a bill to prohibit the I.T. department from standardizing on file formats unless further reviewed by a larger board. Was this Billy's doing again?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2110

About the same time Google announces an alliance with Sun Microsoft systems to support the Star office suit, which also supports the Open Document formats. Remember the cold war and Ronnie Reagan? - "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1866536,00.asp?kc=ewnws100405dtx1k0000599

Wow, this is a lot to digest. 

Why can't we all just go back to using WordStar and TIFF? (Do you remember WordStar? Man you're dating yourself).

-Jim

Comments

[Stan Smythe]

I'd like to take exception with your comment that Microsoft hasn't benefitted its customers. I used to be a Wordperfect fan way back and I still like it's interface better than Word. But it was buggy, and it would keep crashing.

Sure, I didn't like the fact that Microsoft
was pricing MS Office artificially low to force out the competition but from a corporate perspective, downtime as well as price are both important. Having both factors in its favor is why I think Word became the de facto standard.

I think the same factors may apply with the Open Document initiative. Sure I expect Open Document to be less money or at least be competitive with MS Office. But I'd be very slow to recommend that my corporate customers move to a new product unless I had a lot of experience that it was reliable with similar performance.

Should the State of Massachusetts be a pioneer in the changeover? Not with my tax money. Let someone else lead the way.

Stan