Recently I was applying online for an absentee ballot, and the U.S. Government site say "You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader." That is obviously not true; Unix, Linux, and I believe MacOS all have non-Adobe tools for reading PDFs. I suspect whoever build the website did not know this.
I am probably preaching to the choir when I say that requiring Acrobat Reader is bad, because it is like the Government giving Microsoft a monopoly. It also makes things difficult for those who do not have Windows system, like my brother, who moved from Window to Linux years ago, or even me, who has a Windows machine in addition to the FreeBSD machine, but which is down waiting for parts for a month.
I would like to see an organization that would collate the equivalents to Microsoft tools on various platforms, and educate the government about them. I could put together a list, and send it to various U.S. Government agencies, and I suspect it would be ignored. What is needed is something that will write news articles and widely publish information about alternatives, and lean on the Government to mention them on form, or even better, start using open source software, like Switzerland has.
Under the theory of "The squeaky wheel gets to supply the grease," I should probably set something up, but I am 72 years old (old enough to be President!), retired, and spend most of my time taking care of my wife, who is recovering from a stroke, so I do not have the bandwidth to start an organization. I wonder if one of the organizations that promotes open source could do something like this.
I am probably preaching to the choir when I say that requiring Acrobat Reader is bad, because it is like the Government giving Microsoft a monopoly. It also makes things difficult for those who do not have Windows system, like my brother, who moved from Window to Linux years ago, or even me, who has a Windows machine in addition to the FreeBSD machine, but which is down waiting for parts for a month.
I would like to see an organization that would collate the equivalents to Microsoft tools on various platforms, and educate the government about them. I could put together a list, and send it to various U.S. Government agencies, and I suspect it would be ignored. What is needed is something that will write news articles and widely publish information about alternatives, and lean on the Government to mention them on form, or even better, start using open source software, like Switzerland has.
Under the theory of "The squeaky wheel gets to supply the grease," I should probably set something up, but I am 72 years old (old enough to be President!), retired, and spend most of my time taking care of my wife, who is recovering from a stroke, so I do not have the bandwidth to start an organization. I wonder if one of the organizations that promotes open source could do something like this.