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...'"

Re:Actually...

[JonathanR]

How else does he secure a job at M$ when his tenure is up?

Not Quite So Cut And Dry

[Arccot]

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.

The title of the post misrepresents the facts

[xednieht]

In the article is clearly states:

Therefore, we will be moving forward to include both ODF and Open XML as acceptable document formats.

The Open Standards initiative didn't "Fail" it became more open (IMO). Including both formats and letting users choose seems quite reasonable.

Re:It could all still change...

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of "now shove a knife into your throat and twist sideways hard" you don't understand? I troll and you actually come up with an INTELLIGENT ANSWER?

Why did you waste your time on it? You have more important stuff to do, obviously. Don't you get it that you're not going to take back the time you wasted on my stupid post?

We can tell by your answer that you're not a burger-flipping geek who thinks he's a genius. You are a Real Person with brains. Why are you here wallowing in Slashdotshit?