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."

Comments

Will It really help all that much?

[CastrTroy]

I don't know if having the world settle on one single file format will help much. I mean, for the web, we have HTML+CSS, but it seems like Microsoft has some "bugs" in their implementation, and since IE is the most popular browser, we're all forced to make webpages that adhere to the MS way of doing things. I imagine the same thing might happen, if ODF was mandated as the standard. MS would make a bug-ridden ODF reader/writer for MSWord, which would still be what most people would use, because that's what they're familiar with, and we'd be stuck in the same boat as we are with HTML. If you didn't use MS Word, then you would end up having a document that didn't look quite the way it's supposed to.

Re:An even more reasonable strategy

[Pollardito]

i seem to recall that there were some "equal-access for the handicapped" advocates that didn't have a buck to make off of MS Office that had concerns

Disagreed

[Anonymous Coward]

This could, indeed, be the situation in some cases. But the distinction between companies and people that are 'monetarily rewarded' as per definition biased in favour of the monetary view, and those 'not monetarily rewarded' (in this case e.g. university researchers) who as you say "dispassionately figure out what the best solution is" is monumentally misguided.

Why is that? Because there are plenty of NON-MONETARY motivations someone can have to bias a statement, research, experimental piece or whatever. Payment in the pocket is simply one type of motivation (and in some/many cases a strong one) - but it goes against the dispassionate science of human behaviour to discount every other of the vast range of similar motivations out there.

Of _non-monetary motivations_ there can be, off hand;

- The size of your department: From an egoistical point of view, the manpower and effort you have authority to direct - the more controversial and 'important' your research appears, both internally and in the world at large, the bigger this would be;

- Your external authority: How many people look up to you and laud you as someone who is intelligent and has important things to say, and invite you to formal dinners with gourmet food, the requirement for which is usually that you have said something that is too complicated for them to think of on their own but which fits their world view (and don't underestimate the number of dinners and lunches a leading C* scientist can get invited to);

- The people in your department from a caring perspective: do you want to keep them? Do you want to give them tasks they like to do? Egoism isn't everything.

- Beliefs that aren't proven: there are every now and then cases of medical professionals who fake data to support a conclusion. Is that always for egoistical reason? How about they believe it to be true but feel their data has failed to prove it and the importance of public attention trumps principles of research?

- Educational sychophanty/hierarchy: Preserving power structures and repeating what you are told by others;

- Your political bias: Every statement that counters or disproves another statement diminishes the perceived authority of the person who made the original one. By association, you can feel that certain political parties are associated by particular views, and have a political desire to make them look bad;

- Your ideological bias: What sort of human is the 'dispassionate' machine-being you speak of? I've never met any of them. As the point above, if you feel someone is "evil", "a bad person", "egoistical" (and if you like the idea of "sharing" but dislike the idea of "unequal income distribution") why would you not have a desire that their authority and influence and image should be dented? I absolutely have. Don't you have a personal wish to make Bill Gates look bad?

- Your pay: I think climate scientists can get moderately more in either the private or the public sector today than a while ago. The same goes for grants - what sort of equipment can you get? What sort of travel and living standards can you get? How useful can you appear to your employer?

- Your friends: You want your friends to enjoy positive experiences in life. Being criticised is not one of them.

All of the above are motivations not to be dispassionate and objective. And a further one is money. While I agree that a paid fulltime lobbyist is far less dispassionate in absolute terms than an average researcher - a large number of researches all feeling a small to moderate bias of each of the types above can (and would) add up.