Lowell Deeds

Last week this blog addressed the ongoing controversy between Microsoft and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. At the center of the controversy is the idea that Massachusetts wants all of its government documents to be created in a format capable of being “saved and opened” by various software…not just Microsoft. This software is called open source. The most popular of these open source programs is OpenDocument. OpenOffice is the open source equivalent of Microsoft Office. Yesterday we downloaded OpenOffice onto two of the registry’s computers to get familiar with theopen source program. OpenOffice contains the following modules: OpenBase- This is a database creator similar to Microsoft Access; OpenCalc- A spread sheet program like Excel; OpenDraw- A graphics program; OpenImpress- A program for the creation of presentations similar to Microsoft’s Power Point; OpenWriter- A word processing program; and OpenMath- for equation building. For fun we conducted an experiment… I created a simple spreadsheet using OpenCalc on one of the computers loaded with OpenOffice. I emailed the spreadsheet to a second computer which did not have OpenOffice…Microsoft Office couldn’t (or wouldn’t) open the open source document. Microsoft calls it an “unknown” document type but gives it the Microsoft icon. This is exactly the Commonwealth’s point …government documents should not be held hostage by a proprietary format such as Microsoft. My original plan was to get familiar with OpenOffice by using it to write this blog… I guess I’ll forget that idea.