Open Standards Initiative Fails in Massachusetts

walterbyrd writes "Massachusetts has decided to use Microsoft's Open-XML standard. This decison: 'stands in sharp contrast to the positions taken by predecessor CIOs Peter Quinn and Louis Gutierrez, backed by then governor (and now-presidential hopeful) Mitt Romney. Both Quinn and Gutierrez insisted on including only "open standards" in the ETRM, and withstood significant pressure from Microsoft to give ground and accept OOXML...'"

Comments

Quin was a fool and a crook

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Peter Quinn was corrupt. I'm GLAD to see his career destroyed.

Feature Sets.

[twitter]

Not to mention that the real point of the endeavor was to codify into law the use of a document built for OO.o's feature set, lacking the ability to handle MS's feature set, thereby prohibiting government use of MS's extra features. Basically, codify into law OO.o's feature set. OO.o can't compete with MS on features, so let the law render the feature set competition moot, at which point OO.o can compete on "free as in beer".

This has nothing to do with features or a competitive market. Word has yet to match the feature set of Latex and Word Perfect or Word Perfect's ease of use. The only reason people use Word is M$'s coercive monopoly and marketing power. In this case, Mass. is going to use Word in the future because of obvious government corruption, which overran both technical competence and the will of the people.

This is a stunning blow for Mass.

[twitter]

.if it's rejected as an ISO standard, there is plenty of room for rejecting the present acceptance.

By the time that happens, other roadblocks will be in place. The greenlight to OOXML ushers in acceptance of Vista and the next generation of lock down. Look for select idiots to be pulling wasteful stunts like this and the public to be "served" with M$ only, patented crap file formats. The longer you wait to escape the M$ data trap, the more expensive it gets. The only way to stop the push is to demand free file formats. There is enough resentment at the upgrade treadmill to fight, but the fight is now pushed from a principled stand by leaders to squabbling over fanboy aggression. This makes Mass. State Government a willing tool in the M$ monopoly and upgrade treadmill. People in the state will have a choice between giving money to M$ or not being able to interact with their government.