Attention all LXers in Florida

Quoting: Sen. Saunders,

My name is Darren R, and I am a registered voter (who does vote) in Cape Coral.

I am writing to you today out of great concern about Senate Bill 1974 ( http://www.flsenate.gov/session/index.cfm?BI_Mode=ViewBillIn... ). I understand that lobbyists for Microsoft have been speaking to the Senate in an effort to change the wording of the bill, in effect neutering the provisions calling for use of open standards for file formats.

It is an outrage to me that anyone would entertain any proposal by Microsoft, or their representatives. They cannot be trusted. This is the same corporation who presented intentially falsified evidence in court during their anti-trust trial back in 1999 ( http://archive.salon.com/21st/rose/1999/02/09straight.html ).

This is the same corporation that has been guilty of dirty tricks since its inception. They didn't even actually *own* the MS-DOS that they were offering to license to IBM back in 1980 - they were also in negotiations with Seattle Computer Products to actually aquire Q-DOS at the same time they were making the offer to license it to IBM, under the name MS-DOS. The history of Microsoft is cratered with tales of dirty dealing and outright dishonesty. Companies like Wang, Stac, and Lotus could give you much more information if they still existed. You can find out more from The Microsoft Collection ( http://edge-op.org/cloweth/MC.html ) by Mr. Christian Loweth.

The wording I want to see remain in the bill is: =============================================================

28 ...(1) By July 1, 2009, the Agency for 29 Enterprise Information Technology shall develop a plan and a 30 business case analysis for the creation, exchange, and 31 maintenance of documents by state agencies in an open format

34 10:16 AM 03/28/07 s1974p-go00-pd3

Florida Senate - 2007 PROPOSED COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE Bill No. SB 1974 Barcode 565342 585-1947A-07 1 that is capable of being: 2 (a) Published without restrictions or royalties; 3 (b) Fully and independently implemented by multiple 4 software providers on multiple platforms without any 5 intellectual property reservations for necessary technology; 6 and 7 (c) Controlled by an open industry organization having 8 a well-defined inclusive process for evolution of the 9 standard. 10 (2) Each state agency must be able to receive 11 electronic documents in an open, extensible markup 12 language-based file format for office applications and may not 13 change documents to a file format used by only one vendor. 14 (3) The Agency for Enterprise Information Technology 15 shall develop rules for state agencies to follow in 16 determining whether existing electronic documents must be 17 converted to an open, extensible markup language-based file 18 format. In developing guidelines under this subsection, the 19 agency shall consider: 20 (a) The cost of converting electronic documents; 21 (b) The need for public access to the documents; and 22 (c) The expected storage life of the documents.

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Contrary to the portrayal by Microsoft boosters, Open Document Format (ODF) is *NOT* a proprietary standard. It is an *international* standard that is freely available for anyone to examine and build software products for. The Microsoft alternative (Office Open XML - OOXML) is a *closed* format that is not even recognised by any government agency as a legitimate standard and cannot be fully accessed by anyone without the purchase of a license from Microsoft.

If Microsoft were to change its formats tomorrow, and there is nothing stopping them from doing so, then what option would government offices have but to pay more money to Microsoft for "upgrades." It's happening much like that today. The Open Document Format standards enable Florida to maintain control of its destiny and its history as contained in the documents and files it stores.

In fact, a case can be made that adopting any proprietary, closed format, such as OOXML, is in fact a violation of the Florida Sunshine Laws which require as much openness in government as is practical.

Adopting the closed formats of Microsoft puts the State of Florida at the mercy of a corporation that doesn't even operate its business in Florida. Microsoft contributes nothing to the State except maybe campaign contributions. They operate no major business locations in Florida and therefore contribute nothing serious in the way of sales tax, property tax or occupational tax.

You haven't heard from me before this, because I didn't even know of the bill's existence. Now that I do know, I will be contacting you regularly about saving the State of Florida millions of dollars annually with regards to Information Technology. I'm hoping that I don't find you mesmorised by Bill Gates' billions in ill-gotten gains. I can see no other reason you would support them.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. I eagerly await your response.

Regards,

Darren R