Tags: Linux, Microsoft

State of Massachusetts adopts Open Source products

Microsoft gets another setback as the state of Massachusetts deciding to discard the proprietary Microsoft Office for its open source alternatives. The state is now moving to open source products for their documentation purposes. The latest version of the state’s technical reference guidelines says that the OpenDocument format would now become the default format for text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents enabling fully access to future versions of this open source product OpenOffice.

The aim is to prevent any proprietary format in their documents to preserve the access to the documents over a long period of time. Microsoft is known to keep changing their document formats to keep the third party applications from accessing them with newer versions. This leads to incompatibility between the different versions of MS Office application with the files made in them.

As a result, the state has given its nod to the XML-based OpenDocument format, which has been developed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). The latest reference guideline also states that all government documents are to be saved in the OpenDocument format or PDFs by January 1, 2007.

The state is also currently using various platforms for their workstations including Microsoft Operating System and Linux. And they plan to establish a common standard here as well. If they chose to go with Linux, it would lead to more problems for the world’s largest software company.