That's Just Plain DoMB

Sun employee Tim Bray has posted an insightful retort to the propaganda commonly held by those who (wish to) see Massachusetts moving to the OpenDocument format as "costly and unnecessary".

Naturally, the big players who make the big profit are now scrambling to save their outdated cash cow. However, they simply don't have a leg to stand on. Even I - a fairly simple-minded fool when it comes to the understanding of XML and document formats - was able to spot the most egregious of offending statements. It has been "argued" that -

"limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others."

Umm, "OpenOffice" is a program that opens and saves documents in various formats. OpenDocument is one of several formats used by this program but its implementation by other programs is not prohibited at all. In fact, anyone is free to use it when creating an Office-like suite of programs. Yes, even Microsoft is free to implement it in Office 12 - which they have chosen not to.

Although the talking points are weak, they are smooth - designed to throw the uninitiated for a loop. Tim does a great job of exposing the DoMBness of approximately a half-dozen "talking points" here.

Moooo!