Comment Re:Not Quite So Cut And Dry (Score 1) 236
It's sad so many people instantly think "corruption" when the government makes a decision they don't agree with. Isn't it possible Microsoft made a better case for their standard? A decision like this is like a civil court case, the person with the best argument wins.
Of the top of my head, I can think of a few reasons lawmakers (from their perspective) might want to use Microsoft's standard before any others:
1. Microsoft is a very large, very well known company. They will be around for a very long time to support any of their formats.
And, of course, ODF will dissappear tomorrow. Anyone with experience with different versions of MS Office knows that MS doesn't have a great track record with format backwards-compatibility. Will their standard change this? Who knows?Of the top of my head, I can think of a few reasons lawmakers (from their perspective) might want to use Microsoft's standard before any others:
1. Microsoft is a very large, very well known company. They will be around for a very long time to support any of their formats.
2. Microsoft creates a lot of jobs.
Oh really? How many? Where? Do you have corroborating evidence for this, or are you just guessing?
3. Most government offices use Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows for word processing, so Microsoft is the best format to use since the government is already integrated with their products.
I.e. vendor lock in. Standards are meant to allow competition by preventing lock-in, not encouraging it.
You may be right in that this may have indeed been what the politicians are thinking, but to me it's more a cry to educate our politicians (I'll allow the "negotiated instead of bought" for the sake of argument, but it's a crock), it has nothing to do with MS being the better choice.
