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MS Anti-ODF Lobbyist Named As MA Tech Advisor
Andy Updegrove writes "For the last year and a half, Massachusetts has been a battleground between Microsoft, on the one hand, and IBM, Sun and open standards advocates on the other over the state's plans to implement ODF. That effort has sparked similar initiatives around the world that threaten to erode Microsoft's multi-billion dollar profits on Office software. Now, we have a new governor set to take office, and observers are waiting to see if he will continue to support ODF like his predecessor, or back off in favor of Microsoft Office. Last week, Governor-Elect Deval Patrick named a new transition advisory group to make recommendations on the state's IT structure, and one of the eight members he appointed was none other than the Microsoft lobbyist that has been leading the charge to not only defeat ODF in the Bay State, but to gut the power of the State's CIO and Information Technology Division as well. Not a good sign of independence from special interests for an administration that has yet to even take office."
If he can provide a reasobale argument as to why ODF should not be implemented, He should be an advisor. If I were in charge I would want both sides fully represented along with third party experts (which were also appointed). But alas, given the state of US governance, he's likely just there to funnel money to the right people in order to get his way.
I love people who define their own meaning in common terms. The term "Special Interests" is used when someone has a personal gain. The use of standards compliant solutions, be they in IT or any other field, are a benefit to the society as a whole. I sure as hell would not like to go to a Doctors office and be told to take 2 aspirins and expect it to be something else...
A standard is not owned by anyone. DOC files are not standard and are subject to change at the whim of one and only one company. As we keep on playing with words, one day we will no longer understand each other.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Digging deeper, it seems the shill is still an MS employee. Can you really trust someone who says he "will be participating as a private citizen rather than a Microsoft employee" in a committee that affects a significant Microsoft business interest?
Like I said;
The term special interest
The slogan special interest is used for all of these variants, but never to describe political allies. Use of that term, especially in the United States, implies that the "special" interest is not the "public" interest. Many scholars dislike the term special interest, since it carries this loaded, negative connotation. Among other things, it presumes that we know exactly what the general interest (or public interest) is. Some use vested interests or particularistic groups, but in academic literature, these have been replaced by "interest group".
While this comes from Wikipedia it is also how it's defined in a few other paper prints. "Special Interest" denotes not in the "Public Interest". A standard is in the public interest. A proprietary format is special interest, in this case Microsoft.
If we continue playing we can make the words say what we want and no longer understand each other. If you look closely at your definition it implies "not in the public interest". In a sense you make my point.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Let's see what we have here, viewed from an open standards/FOSS perspective, from someone with no prior knowledge of anyone in the group:
i nane.html'>Cullinane Corp), which is kinda sorta threatened by FOSS. That said, who knows where his head is at today.
Technology Working Group:
Chair, Charles SteelFisher, New Media Director, Deval Patrick Committee
Creative director at ALIPES CME. Original Flash site that takes a few minutes to figure out what the hell is going on. I like it and hate it all at once. Wife(?) is director of Strategy at Cogent Research. Verdict: Not promising, but who knows.
Chair, Richard Rowe, CEO, Rowe Communications
Not a lot of info there!
More info in the bio here. Looks like an interesting guy. "He is the author of numerous articles and frequent speaker on the impact of digitization and the internet upon society with a particular focus on access to and preservation of academic, scientific, technical and medical knowledge." That could go either way, but sounds good.
Brian Burke, Microsoft
For what it's worth, this is a broad technology working group (not just on, say, standards), so I don't think it's insane to have MS at the table. But there are software companies with deeper MA roots...
John Cullinane, Principal, The Cullinane Group
Was a trailblazer in the proprietary software industry (a href='http://www.softwarehistory.org/history/cull
Louis Gutierrez, former State CIO and Director of ITD
Former as in about a month ago. He's our man!
Keith Parent, CEO, Court Square
Let's see, found here that they have "Extensive experience with Wintel, Unix, Citrix and Linux platforms" and "Successful migration projects include; VMS to NT, NT to Unix, NT to Linux." Sounds reasonably OK to me, though a little dated!
David Lewis, Private Consultant
I presume this is him. On the board at the Mass Tech Dev Corp, and has done a lot of state IT work, so he's certainly relevant. Can't find anything about him re: ODF.
Larry Weber, Chairman, W2 Group
This talk suggests that Larry "gets it", but I haven't listened to it yet. IT Conversations is awesome, by the way. find the Clayton Christensen talk on open source. Here it is.
All told, as someone sympathetic to FOSS, who thinks FOSS is good for most businesses, I find this group to be well qualified, and apparently with a diverse set of viewpoints on standards and such. Diversity is good. I'll be watching this group as closely as I can.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
If using MS Word and Windows allows them to do thier jobs quicker and/or do them more efficiently then so be it. But if you want to switch away from it, you'd better be able to PROVE it's all going to be worth it, and frankly I haven't seen that, or believe it.
Government officials evaluated their needs and then made a policy based upon what they felt was best for the state. That was ODF. That is not a special interest. A special interest is when some group or company tries to convince the state to do something. That is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, but it is suspect especially when the stated goal of that interest is to make money. Thus MS is a special interest. The ODF format and its external supporters are not.
As for doing things better, allowing people to access government documents without paying a fee is beneficial. Ensuring those documents will be readable in the future is beneficial. Standardizing on a format that allows competitive bids from any and all parties is beneficial. There are all clear benefits of ODF. Standards simply make sense, especially for public applications. If MS wants to be a supplier they should conform to the specifications of the contract as the state stipulated, not try to bribe public officials into changing the contract so that they are the only possible bidder. That is called corruption, whether it is Microsoft or the mob doing it.
No, according to The Friendly Article,
Furthermore
Additionally,
And also,
So I think it's pretty well established that:
- He isn't merely a lobbyist, he's a chief lobbyist
- In all likelihood, he's represented Microsoft's interests (i.e. pushed anti-ODF) for the duration of this discussion
and, therefore, he's more than "supposed" to have spoken on Microsoft's behalf--he is/was a chief in pushing Microsoft's viewpoint in Massachusetts.Can you provide evidence that the advisory post is a full-time job and/or that Burke has left Microsoft, let alone being seen as "disloyal"? Maybe my google-fu isn't up to your ability, but I just can't find evidence to support your allegations.
In what way was my statement limited to Microsoft?! It is my opinion that the rulemakers and regulartors shouldn't be directly involved with the groups they're regulating, be they from Microsoft, IBM, or Linus.
Since you brought it up, the relevant ones (i.e. the "Technology" Committee) are all listed prominently in The Friendly Article, along with their affiliations. Given, I've not done extensive background on them, but neither do they seem to be primary movers in pushing ODF. Can you provide evidence to the contrary? If so, I'll be against them too!
And the Microsoft fanboys immediately post counter FUD to any aspersions cast upon the Great Microsoft! Sheesh. Give me a break and go get informed.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
``But there are software companies with deeper MA roots...''
You mean, you'd rather have Symbolics on the board?
For those who don't know: Symbolics was a spin-off of MIT that made Lisp machines. They had a fairly aggressive policy on intellectual property, which basically drained brains and knowledge away from MIT and their competitor LMI, another MIT spin-off that made Lisp machines. This is what motivated Richard Stallman to start GNU (after furiously working at LMI to compete with Symbolics).
Eventually, LMI went under, and Symbolics is only officially still alive. The Lisp machine IP has been a big mess for years, most of it basically lost, because no-one is in a position to remove the intellectual property restrictions. However, recently some source code for one of the old Lisp machines has been released by MIT, bringing back some life.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
after Microsoft had a "chat" with them, as I recall.
Furthermore, they are misinformed because OpenOffice has pretty good accessiblity support--just not on Microsoft Windows , due to Windows issues and no fault of its own.
Quoth Peter Korn
[note: since this writing, Orca has been released and in Ubuntu Edgy]
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Sorry, don't have an account on Slashdot...but I know Charles SteelFisher personally (I was a volunteer on Patrick's campaign) and I'm pretty sure you can count him "on our side" in regards to ODF, or open source in general at least.
I posted a link here and to other articles from my own blog as well. Keep watching, it's important.
Lynne