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Microsoft Government Politics

Peter J. Quinn Investigated for Travel Omissions 120

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the corporations-skating-on-thin-ice dept.
tadelste writes to tell us O'Reilly is reporting that a recent story in the Boston News about Peter J. Quinn is nothing more than a desperate attempt to slant public opinion in the Massachusetts OpenDocument frenzy. While we have documents showing Microsoft's lobbyists paying for big trips for the former House Majority Leader and his family to go to England and Scotland, Mr. Quinn seems to be getting the spotlight for incomplete travel records. From the article in question: "On most of the trips, Quinn said, his travel and other expenses were paid for by the sponsors of the conferences. On two of the trips -- to Tucson and Washington, D.C. -- Quinn paid his own way, according to state records and an interview with Quinn."
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Peter J. Quinn Investigated for Travel Omissions More

Peter J. Quinn Investigated for Travel Omissions

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  • Who the hell (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 27, 2005 @12:32AM (#14122127)
    Is Peter J. Quinn?

    • Re:Who the heck (Score:5, Informative)

      by saskboy ( 600063 ) on Sunday November 27, 2005 @12:35AM (#14122138) Homepage Journal
      The link is already getting slow so here's the info:
      Peter Quinn has served as Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts since September of 2002 and Director of the Commonwealth's Information Technology Division (ITD). Mr. Quinn is also Founding Chair of the Government Open Code Collaborative (GOCC). As ITD Director and CIO, under the Executive Office for Administration and Finance, Mr. Quinn is responsible for setting information technology standards in the Commonwealth. Mr. Quinn came to public service following a successful career in private sector IT, most recently as the CIO for Boston Financial Data Services

      http://www.mass.gov/portal/site/massgovportal/menu item.2231afa58be831c14db4a11030468a0c/?pageID=itdu tilities&L=1&sid=Aitd&U=quinn_bio_publicsite [mass.gov]
    • According to the Macc.gov site:

      Peter Quinn has served as Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts since September of 2002 and Director of the Commonwealth's Information Technology Division (ITD). Mr. Quinn is also Founding Chair of the Government Open Code Collaborative (GOCC). As ITD Director and CIO, under the Executive Office for Administration and Finance, Mr. Quinn is responsible for setting information technology standards in the Commonwealth. Mr. Quinn came to public

    • Re:Who the hell (Score:2, Informative)

      by tadelste ( 659411 ) *
      Where have you been? He's the guy Microsoft hates for making the OASIS OpenDocument Format the state standard and opening the door to openoffice.org and Sun's Star Office 8. He's been instrumental in getting government to use open source software. After the ruling Microsoft went bonkers. here a quote from Bernard Golden of IDG: Microsoft has reached out to a couple of politicians in Massachusetts and gotten them to object to the process of this decision. The politicians have raised issues that mandating

      • Re:Who the hell (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Sunday November 27, 2005 @01:11AM (#14122293) Journal
        here a quote from Bernard Golden of IDG: Microsoft has reached out to a couple of politicians in Massachusetts and gotten them to object to the process of this decision. The politicians have raised issues that mandating ODF would also mandate use of OpenOffice and that OpenOffice's open source license would mean that any commercial product that attempted to comply with the mandate would also become open source.

        Wow, two FUD-bites in one quote: (1) mandating ODF would mandate (i.e., force) use of OpenOffice; and (2) vendors that create products compliant with ODF are forced to become open-source. Obviously 200% bull, but an impressive serving of it.

        Not that I doubt the veracity of what you're saying, but do you possibly have a link for this quote? Really, it belongs in a FUD gallery somewhere.

        • Re:Who the hell (Score:3, Informative)

          by ClickOnThis ( 137803 )
          Well ... sorry for replying to my own post, but I found the link. [techtarget.com]

        • Re:Who the hell (Score:3, Informative)

          by morganew ( 194299 )
          A little clarification would be a good idea though --

          #1 It IS a mandate. Page 18 of v3.5 of the ETRM states that documents shall be saved in the ODF format. Not a mandate for OO.o, but a mandate for ODF; the ETRM spells out what programs are currently supported. It's an odd mandate because page 21 that says "oh yeah, you can use pdf as well".

          The fact that they list off supported programs gets a little fuzzy. Government documents often 'require' things by listing off acceptable purchases. Even odder
          • Thanks for the very informative post. I hope someone mods it up.

            Anyway -- if I may add one tiny clarification to your clarification ;)

            #1 It IS a mandate. Page 18 of v3.5 of the ETRM states that documents shall be saved in the ODF format. Not a mandate for OO.o, but a mandate for ODF; the ETRM spells out what programs are currently supported.

            We both agree that ODF is mandated whereas OO.o is not. Bernard Golden's point was that MS has recruited some politicans to shill the FUD that mandating ODF would mand

      • Re:Who the hell (Score:5, Interesting)

        by neillewis ( 137544 ) on Sunday November 27, 2005 @01:17AM (#14122310)
        Microsoft is already paying for development of an ODF converter for MS Office. They'd rather feed smear stories to the press and buy off politicians than give their customers what they want, but they'll readily support OpenDocument if they start losing those customers.

        Either way, it looks like the days of the Office monopoly are numbered, and the 75% monopoly rent profit margin too. Micosoft only has itself to blame if it doesn't want to compete on a level playing field.
        • "Microsoft is already paying for development of an ODF converter for MS Office. They'd rather feed smear stories to the press and buy off politicians than give their customers what they want, but they'll readily support OpenDocument if they start losing those customers."

          And as I keep replying to people who insist the MS will "support" ODF....

          SUPPORT != DEFAULT

          Have you ever been in any MS office product and tried to change the default? I can just about assure you that the default will be (or already is) MS X
          • One of the Massachusets requirements is that the default file format must be, or must be alterable to, the OpenDoc format. I was all ready to give MS the benefit of the doubt, too, reading the Office developer blogs and hearing them talk about how MS has turned a new leaf and is really dedicated to interoperability and open standards. And in fairness, maybe the Office guys believe that.
          • > Have you ever been in any MS office product and tried to change the default?

            Have you? In Word, it's about three clicks.

            A competent administrators should be able to set the default format across the entire organization via Group Policy in an afternoon. This is already common practice for Office sites which do rolling upgrades (eg most people using Office 2006 will want to revert the default back to DOC instead of the XML formats.)
          • As near as I can tell, Microsoft is paying for a filter that will let Microsoft office read OpenOffice documents.

            - Read, not write.

            - OpenOffice documents (as used in OpenOffice 1.x) not Open Document Format

            The project everyone keeps pointing to is unquestionally only an input filter, it won't help you save documents in whatever format it reads, and in the project description it only mentions "OpenOffice format". OpenOffice format isn't ODF, and Open Document Format is not menti
        • [Microsoft would] rather feed smear stories to the press and buy off politicians than give their customers what they want
          When they don't have any actual arguments to fight with, what else can they do?

          Another Microsoft backed lobbying effort was the fake grass roots movement "Campaign for Creativity [corporateeurope.org]", which tried to convince the European Parliament to introduce software patents in Europe, by pretending to represent "artists, designers, writers, photographers, software developers, musicians, engineers, inventors". In reality it was just a site put up by the lobbying firm Campbell Gentry, and financed by companies like Microsoft and SAP.

          This (failed) lobbying effort has how been nominated as one of the contenders for the "Worst EU Lobbying Award" 2005 [corporateeurope.org].

          The "winner" will be selected by an open Internet poll. If you want to donate a mouse-click to the fight against software patents and the companies that try to introduce them by corrupting the political system, you can go to the site and vote online [corporateeurope.org].

          The award is organized by a number of watchdog groups that are working for cleaner and more transparent methods in politics, so although the award as such sounds a bit humorous, the underlying issues are quite serious.

          • I don't want to boost their Google ranking by making the link clickable, but if you want to check out the Campaign for Creativity site for yourself, it is at www.campaignforcreativity.org

            Note that the "www" is reqired. If you just type in campaignforcreativity.org you instead get to a page that promotes the "Advocacy Online" service that the lobbying firm provides.

    • Re:Who the hell (Score:3, Informative)

      by Bacon Bits ( 926911 )

      Peter J. Quinn is the CIO for Massachusetts. He's the guy ultimately responsible for picking ODF over Microsoft, which then resulted in MS making their XML-based document formats for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint "open".

      Groklaw [groklaw.net] already has an article on it basically exonerating Mr. Quinn.

    • The details are there.

    • Re:Who the hell (Score:3, Interesting)

      by patio11 ( 857072 )
      He's the CIO of Massachusetts. A real stand-up guy, I translated for him for three days when he came to Japan. Committed to open source, very concerned about open document formats specifically because he thinks governmental organizations need access to documents in perpetuity and shouldn't lock-in to a vendor.
    • is a man with big big balls... ask m$ [zdnet.com]

  • Guts (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday November 27, 2005 @12:42AM (#14122176) Homepage Journal
    At worst, if Quinn got free vacations at OSS conferences paid by OSS corporations, it will show that at least OSS corporations are fighting proprietary corporations like Microsoft in an arena where victories are won every day: buying political decisions. The OSS revolution is a practical one, not an ideological one (though some ideologues like Stallman can be useful). Maybe once the tiny sector of government that is its technology formats and software is open and transparent, we'll have some luck fixing the political part. Until then, I remember the fortune cookie "it's best not to know how laws and sausages are made".
    • Why? what's so bad about sausages?

      seriously though, this would've been a great opportunity for an object lesson. He should've stored all of the plans and approvals in an old, no longer easily accessable format. Come to think of it, nothing in TFA specifically precludes this from having been his course of action all along...

    • Re:Guts (Score:2, Insightful)

      by 10101001 10101001 ( 732688 )
      The OSS revolution is a practical one, not an ideological one (though some ideologues like Stallman can be useful).

      It's funny you make this comment, given Stallman is the leader of the Free Software revolution, not the Open Source Software revolution. The OSS revolution was created precisely because of a disagreement over this obsessive focus over ideology: OSS's ideology focused more on the practical effects of open software, though with the ideological assumption that open source will always end up prod
    • Uh... I think you meant, "it's best not to know how laws and sausages are made in bed."

    • Re:Guts (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Thing 1 ( 178996 ) on Sunday November 27, 2005 @04:33PM (#14125100) Journal
      I saw a great refutation to that quote, in someone's signature here:

      "The less a man knows about how sausages and laws are made, the easier it is to steal his vote and give him botulism."

      From http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169368 &cid=14119001 [slashdot.org]

    • That sounds like a cop-out to me. Two wrongs don't make a right.

      It would be very practical to bomb MS headquarters, making sure to take out Gates and Ballmer, but I doubt you advocate that.
      • It's not a copout, and it's also not a revolutionary stance. I personally wouldn't take a bribe, or trust a politician who does. But I also realize that politics is not about trusting politicians, but getting things done. That's a bad state of affairs, but only a martyr tries to fix everything at once, without chance of success. Dirty, secretive business is part of the political system, and the secret part is the part that OSS has a chance at changing. Once we've got some tide-turning gains in that fight, w

  • another paid ad (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    looks like scuttlemonkey got his xbox 360

  • Peter Quinn at FISL6.0 (Score:3)

    by Russ Nelson ( 33911 ) <slashdot@russnelson.com> on Sunday November 27, 2005 @01:27AM (#14122344) Homepage
    I met Peter Quinn at FISl6.0. He certainly did not impress me as any kind a politician, much less a corrupt politician. He seemed like a pretty regular guy.
    -russ
    • Just playing devils advocate here.

      Corrupt politicians goal is to look like a normal guy. You can't be running rabid like Jack Thompson and expect people to trust you and vote for you.

      As Pink Floyd put it: "You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, so when they turn their back on you, you get a chance to put the knife in."
  • George Radwanski resigned as Privacy Commissioner of Canada over dubious expense claims. Unfortunately, an investigation did back up the charges. I say unfortunately because Radwanski was an effective champion of our privacy rights.

    All of this is to say that Peter Quinn may be a good person doing good things but, there is a line that may have been crossed... as PJ points out in her article: It is too bad that 3 time Pulitzer winner Stephen Kurkjian didn't wait until he had the full story before publishing h

  • From TF O'Reilly A (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Pamela Jones of groklaw pointed out that representatives for the disabled were demonstrating an unseemly helplessness in raising their complaint. Because several open-source tools support OpenDocument, anyone who wants accessibility added can pay someone to do the job rather than complaining about it."

    So the representatives for the disabled should just "pay someone" to add the kind of accessibility features Microsoft has taken years to develop? Or the government should just "pay someone". Was the time an
    • What are you talking about ? Accessibility comes with third party add-ons. No Microsoft code.

    • Re:From TF O'Reilly A (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "to add the kind of accessibility features Microsoft has taken years to develop?"

      Excuse me sir, you assumptions are showing.

      Microsoft did not develop the products (such as JAWS) that add accessibility features to MS Office.

      If anything, Microsoft hindered development of such products.
  • No matter what he may have done (or not done), the scent of blood is in the water.

  • Taking a page from the Rove playbook (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Sunday November 27, 2005 @01:43AM (#14122393) Homepage
    Don't just attack the message, smear the messenger.

    We complain about not having good candidates to vote for, but what sane person is going to run for office in this sleazy poliical climate?

    Yes, Mass. was proposing an open document format. That would make him a good choice as a keynote speaker at OSS conferences. And they break this on a weekend? This stinks like yesterday's diapers.

    • I sent the following to the Boston Globe Editor:

      Microsoft's campaign against industry standards has sunk to new lows. Stephen Kurkjian's Nov 26th muck-raking article [boston.com] on Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn paints Quinn's personal dedication and industry outreach as potential scandal and corruption. Is a $543 trip to a conference on digital governance by the Commonwealth's CIO really worthy of a front-page article?

      Kurkjian writes "a galaxy of computer companies are listed as sponsors of many of the conferences"

  • The general public of Massachusetts has an opinion about OpenDocument?

    • Re:Public Opinion? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It varies from community to community. In elightened places like Saugus, Massachusetts [saugus.net], it's very much pro open format. There are also backwaters in Massachusetts, though. I'd say the majority is for open formats... Massachusetts is a pretty tech-savvy state on the whole.

  • a political liability for Gov. Mitt Romney (Score:5, Insightful)

    by miked98 ( 126805 ) on Sunday November 27, 2005 @01:55AM (#14122436) Homepage
    This story is a caricature of a purposefully leaked, politically motivated hatchet job that -- to the glee of the "unnamed sources" who served it up -- got past the Thanksgiving rag tag staff and onto Page One.

    It's unclear what this very public investigation about is even about. Misuse of taxpayer dollars? Quinn paid *his own way* to attend two of these technical conferences and was an invited expenses-paid speaker for others. Cozy relationships with corporate sponsors? The article notes that his expenses-paid conferences were sponsored by a "galaxy of computer companies" -- e.g. the free market. Not filling out the proper paperwork? Since when is improper paperwork Page One material? (Maybe Quinn never got the memo about those TPS reports).

    So what is Peter J. Quinn guilty of? Being a political liability for Governor and Presidential Hopeful Mitt Romney. Having one of your employees piss off the bosses of the world's richest software company is no way to kick off your 2008 campaign fundraising drive.
  • "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

    Assumming the "they laugh at you" is the FUD campaigns, I could deduce we're currently experiencing the "then they fight you" stage.

  • I agree that the charges involved are obviously fud that is meant to draw attention away from the real issues. Microsoft and company are using the oldest trick in the book...if you can't dazzle 'em with intelligence, baffle 'em with bullshit.

    However...

    Mr. Quinn, in going up against Microsoft, is challenging the proverbial 900 pound gorilla here. That gorilla is going to use every technique available to him to discredit Mr. Quinn. Mudslinging like this should be expected, and therefore he should have made
  • Can anyone else say "double standard"?

    This is despicable behavoir on Microsoft's part.

  • Groklaw's view (Score:3, Informative)

    by golodh ( 893453 ) on Sunday November 27, 2005 @08:28AM (#14123344)
    See Groklaw's comments at:

    http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200511261 63314567 [groklaw.net]

  • Microsoft Hatchet Job Using The Globe (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Sunday November 27, 2005 @08:54AM (#14123398) Homepage
    Nothing more.

    The Globe is owned by the New York Times, which is Sultzberger being used by Bush and cronies to sell the Iraq War. Now we have the Globe being used by Microsoft to attack the Open Document Format decision in Massachusetts.

    Once a sellout, always a sellout.

    • while this is true... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ...before the election of Bush, at neocon not-close-to-"free" republic web forum, the NY Times was daily ridiculed as being a left wing pinko bedwetting commie newspaper. There were many calls to not use the paper as a source. Funny how things change, isn't it?

      What neither the well meaning but unfortunately sort of naieve grassroots Rs (signified by @ freeps) or Ds (DU et al) seem to be able to actually grok despite all the evidence shoved at them, is that contemporary political society is feudalistic in n

  • We Simply Sought His Advice (Score:5, Informative)

    by Uggy ( 99326 ) on Sunday November 27, 2005 @08:56AM (#14123401) Homepage
    I'm the CTO of Altamente, mentioned in the article. We invited Peter to the conference in Puerto Rico simply because we felt that the government of Puerto Rico needed to hear what Massachusetts was doing with regard to IT. How simple is that? We don't do any business in/with Mass.

    It was a great opportunity for one government to share with another some of the challanges and difficulties of budgeting information technology and one possible solution that Peter's office had proposed. Since we're an open source company, it makes perfect sense that we like what he was doing with OpenDocument.

    It's just a stupid witch hunt. His trip to Brazil, Puerto Rico and most of the far flung conferences were paid by people who wanted to hear what he had to say, what he was doing, and how they could do the same. As many people wanted to listen to Dr. Edgar David Villanueva from Peru, lots of people want to hear what Peter Quinn has to say as well. Same deal.
  • The guy's just lucky his wife isn't a CIA agent.

    or he isn't an Enron snitch:

    http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/baxterautopsy.ht ml [whatreallyhappened.com]

    or he isn't actively investigating the powers that be:

    http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/New s/Frontpage/110805/news1.html [hillnews.com]

    Instead, he just got Swift Boated.
  • "When Quinn who spends-the-dough gets here, all the lawyers gonna jump for joy!"
  • It simply looks as though they're trying to find a way of getting him fired. I would get as much written down and signed in future as I could. I am willing to bet that some officials at Masachussetts are having quite a bit of stuff paid for them on the never never.
  • How much does the Globe make each month from Microsoft contributions? How many times more than is beings discussed here?

    And much has Microsoft contributed to the good Senator's coffers? Why isn't that in the news?

  • The issue here is not one of Mr. Quinn being on the take. I can assure you he is not. In fact, Mr. Quinn believes very seriously in the effort that he has undertaken, and will fight it to the end.

    The real issue here is the antiquated regulations regarding travel in the Commonwealth. I know, because I worked there 20 years ago, and the regulations were antiquated then, and have never been amended to take into account today's business environment.

    Basically, the regs state that all employees that travel ou

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