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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...'"
I guess the good news is how long it took Microsoft to kill it. They are not as good as they used to be with the FUD.
if you read TFA it says that they are including both ODF and Open XML as acceptable document formats.
So while the original intention to only include really open formats is regrettably given up (curiously by an interim CIO, why does he decide that if he is only a temporary hire?), it is not like ODF got dumped for the Microsoft format.
Ya gotta love government corruption! The bottom line here, folks, is that we're getting a view of exactly how ugly politics and business are here in the United States. Because the tech journals have been covering this topic under a microscope, we see what the true stripes of government look like, from our own geek perspectives.
If you think it's just Microsoft, you're sadly mistaken. Most big corporations participate in this sort of shenanigans, and it plays into every law that gets passed and every candidate that gets elected.
Not to worry too much, though. The revolution will come soon enough. (No, it won't be me starting it, nor do I know who it will be, so back off Carnivore/Echelon/whatever)
My blog
Just yesterday I was sitting in the relevant meeting of SNV/UK14 (http://www.snv.ch/), that decides how Switzerland will vote. The chairman (Hans-Rudolf Thomann) explained the following rules:
...) vote against the best interest of their customers and theirself!
- we are here to create standards, not to reject them
- if we reach consensus (>=75%) to vote for Microsoft, we will vote for Microsoft
- if we only reach a majority (>=50%) to vote for Microsoft, we will vote for Microsoft
- if we reach a majority to vote against Microsoft, we will vote for Microsoft
- if we reach consensus to vote against Microsoft, we will abstain
The present spin doctors of Microsoft and ECMA managed to convince Mr. Thomann to reject every serious technical and general concern we had regarding OOMXL by pointing to compatibility reasons. At the end we had a majority _against_ Microsoft but which (giving the unfair rules) results in a Swiss vote _for_ Microsoft. Mr. Thomann was fretting and fuming at the end of the meeting how it can be that successful international companies (we had representatives from IBM, Google,
Yes, this is how the democratic system at SNV / ISO works. After the meeting I could not eat as much as I wanted to puke...
Posted as AC for obvious reasons
It's sad so many people instantly think "corruption" when the government makes a decision they don't agree with. Isn't it possible Microsoft made a better case for their standard? A decision like this is like a civil court case, the person with the best argument wins.
Of the top of my head, I can think of a few reasons lawmakers (from their perspective) might want to use Microsoft's standard before any others:
1. Microsoft is a very large, very well known company. They will be around for a very long time to support any of their formats.
2. Microsoft creates a lot of jobs.
3. Most government offices use Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows for word processing, so Microsoft is the best format to use since the government is already integrated with their products.
This is probably what the politicians were thinking about, and from that perspective, Microsoft looks like the right choice. Most decisions in government are not bought and sold, they are negotiated based on the better argument.