Quinn’s Revenge

Quoted:

So let’s start with the gore—controversial state IT department head goes after Microsoft, powerful/moneyed interests object and try to take away his power, and he responds by quitting—and then go tech-ward from there. ==============

Actually Quinn was doing his job: making Mass. Govt. documents accessable by all and future proof through open standards.

Quoted:

Like most city and state governments, Massachusetts’s executive branch relies heavily on Microsoft’s Office software suite. Quinn had been preparing the executive branch to ditch Office in favor of the non-proprietary OpenDocument file format. By using ODF standards to create all its public documents, the state would be free to stop paying Microsoft’s hefty licensing fees without losing access to its own documents. ODF-compliant files can be opened with a number of competing—or even free—software applications. ==============

That's the same old confusion between document formats and software that Microsoft likes to perpetuate. Office can write to ODF with no monitary or legal restrictions, they prefer not to. In fact, they complained bitterly when a plug-in was written to allow Office to save to ODF. Why? Because it serves Microsoft's monopoly prepetuation interests more than their customers interoperability interests.

Nicely done, moopst! I missed those details in my hurried scan of the article.