OpenDocument Adoption

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

Ben Jackson wrote:
| On Wed, 26 Oct 2005, Gordon Marx wrote:
|
| > On 26/10/05, dsr-ssma at tao.merseine.nu <dsr-ssma at tao.merseine.nu> wrote:
| > > Better service to the people, at lower costs: are these not the principles by which you stand?
| >
| > Probably not...this is Taxachusetts, after all. :--)
|
| I'm confused. Why is everyone afraid of a cost benefit analysis?

Elementary.  They're all afraid that the outcome will go contrary  to
what each desires.

Additionally, there's a serious problem with a cost/benefit  analysis
here. How will they measure costs and benefits? The usual presumption
is that that phrase implies monetary costs and benefits only. So, for
example,  the  costs  or  benefits  of accessible versus inaccessible
"public" documents will probably be ignored, as there's no way to get
agreement  on  a way to measure it in dollars.  So in the "analysis",
such costs or benefits will be tacitly assigned the value of  $0,  as
is usual with things that you don't (or can't) measure).

Also, it seems fairly clear that the opponents of open documents  are
assigning a cost of $0 to using MS formats, since they are discussing
only the short-term costs of conversion, and not the long-term  costs
of  not  converting.   This  is  fairly standard false accounting for
conversions in  general.   Again,  it's  partly  because  it  can  be
difficult  to determine the actual cost of something that you haven't
done.  This is probably not helped by people using the  phrase  "free
software",  which  is  easy  to  attack  by misinterpreting "free" as
"no-cost", and showing that the software isn't free (in this sense).

Anyway, we're talking about politics here.  What are the chances that
the  decisions  will  be  made  on  any  basis  other than power?  In
politics, cost/benefit analyses are conventionally misused to support
your own political position, to the dismay of actual accountants.