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Peter Quinn Explains his Resignation 125
JSBiff writes "Peter Quinn, former CIO of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has given an interview to Pamela Jones over at Groklaw, regarding the people, companies, and events surrounding his resignation. He spins an interesting tale of Microsoft, money, and the politics of technology." From the article: "Now the folks that have say here do not know me from a hole in the wall and the funds were for projects that were totally unrelated to ITD. I clearly had set the priorities for the Bond but this funding is for projects like a new Taxpayers System, new Registry of Motor Vehicles system, etc., all projects desperately needed by the citizens of the Commonwealth. Eric Kriss and I always had a goal of making IT 'a'political and now it was rapidily becoming a political football of the highest magnitude. I took this job in the hopes of making meaningful and institutionalized IT reform. All the previous efforts were about to be for naught as political payback." We discussed Quinn's resignation last month.
For or Against? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll give him alot of credit for his perceived honesty in the interview. He seems to have come clean on why he was unable to be successful in his goals, and on the surface he seems to have noble intentions.
Re:For or Against? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:For or Against? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe the Globe should be investigating those representatives, senators and general officers that tried to kill ODF. But they won't. Money talks and bullshit walks.
Re:For or Against? (Score:1)
Unfortunately, with the corruption level of politicians in general (and I am not referring to US politicians in particular here, because they are no worse than most, and a lot better than some), it would be newsworthy if an entity with Microsoft's vast wealth _wasn't_ buying legislative influence. As things stand however, this is definitely a case of "move on, nothing
ODF = choice, DOC = NO CHOICE (Score:1, Informative)
ODF = KWord, OOo, AbiWord,
stop trolling, please
Re:ODF = choice, DOC = NO CHOICE (Score:1)
Re:ODF = choice, DOC = NO CHOICE (Score:2)
You should remember - it is not enough that you give me a choice, I should be able to bail out of the choice and switch to alternatives, too.
Re:For or Against? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:For or Against? (Score:1, Insightful)
Last I checked, which was right now, OpenOffice.org supports exporting to Microsoft Word documents. So, no, he was decreasing choice by removing Microsoft Office, the most popular and widely used office program, from the list of acceptable programs.
If he really wanted to ensure "open standards" then he
Re:For or Against? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, OpenOffice's support of Microsoft Word documents is not perfect, and it never will be because Microsoft will ensure they never have enough information to make it perfect. And that matters. I get Microsoft Word forms reasonably often, and OpenOffice doesn't really handle them all that well. And, there are a number of word processing programs (Abiword being an example) that handle Microsoft Word documents very poorly but handle ODF just fine. So, really, it was increasing choice, not decreasing it.
HTML and CSV are completely inadequate for office documents. HTML is an mediocre display format, and a lousy format for editing.
The question is, who owns the data? When the data is in a Microsoft proprietary format, Microsoft effectively owns the data. You either stay locked in the past forever (not really an option) or pay Microsoft whatever they ask for new software and the ability to read your old data.
It is beyond unacceptable for a government to be in this position. It basically sacrifices sovereignty to Microsoft. What law will Microsoft demand as a price for an upgrade? How much will people have to pay Microsoft in order to send the government a document their software can understand?
Already the deleterious effect of giving Microsoft so much control can be felt in the enormous political wrangling over this. Microsoft has been able to effectively force this guy to resign. It's utterly ridiculous.
Re:For or Against? (Score:2)
http://www.textmaker.de/ [textmaker.de]
There are occasional deals on ebay for it - I already got mine so feel free to bid the next license deal up to the max!
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with TM. My liability towards you is zilch regarding this suggestion, even if you g
Re:For or Against? (Score:1)
It matters if a proprietary format is chosen, and this proprietary format requires proprietary software to read it. What happens when said proprietary format/software is abandoned by the vendor?
Re:For or Against? (Score:5, Insightful)
It contains reverse engineered support, which is imperfect and can be yanked out at any time by one law from congress. Or by MS deciding to put an encryption on next years data model (making reverse engineering a DMCA violation).
Because the rule forces the *government* to release all documents in the ODF format. Previously, the government released it in any format it chose, which most likely was MS Office. Meaning if you don't shell out money for office, you won't be able to read governemnt forms and documents. The state of Massachusettes was forcing people to buy MS products in order to interact with it. Since ODF is a free format (as in beer), that means ANYONE with a computer can now open government documents, where previously only people who bought MS software could. This is the way things should be- government documents should be open to ALL citizens.
If you wish to use MS products, you still can- either convince MS to support ODF, or convert the ODF files to
Re:For or Against? (Score:1)
Re:For or Against? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, he wasn't trying to force YOU to use anything! He was trying to force the Mass. gov't to use open, cross-platform, multi-vendor formats for their public documents! (Note the plural in "formats"--pdf and html are also on the list.) Private citizens creating their own documents would be free to continue using XYWrite or VisiCalc or whatever other stupid, proprietary formats they want their data to become obsolete in.
Friggin Xywrite! (Score:1)
That is all.
Re:For or Against? (Score:2)
Microsoft is making big about reforming, yeah choose wrong and they will make it their life's work to fuck you up. Have you had microsoft marketing litrature sent to all your companies directors
Re:For or Against? (Score:1)
They have several very powerful ones, each with $ signs tattooed on it. These lead to a big pair of buttocks which also have $ signs printed on them, ripe for kissing by corrupt politicos (i.e. most of them).
But what if...? (Score:2)
But what if they don't feel like it [ubersoft.net]?
Re:But what if...? (Score:1)
The following ones in the set are pretty good, too.
Thanks for the link.
Re:For or Against? (Score:2)
And even in your example- yes, it would cause some short term problems with the screws, but long term it would decrease prices of screws and screwdrivers by making them standard. And it would mean no more drawer filled with screwdrivers and never being able to find the exact right size.
Re:For or Against? (Score:2)
You analogy (like most analogies) kind of falls flat. Why is it people never want to discuss the thing they are discussing?
Re:For or Against? (Score:2)
And then, the company that makes the non-free flat head screwdrivers could choose if they would like to sell a bit for their flat head screwdriver that would turn the phillips head screws - and heck - people could choose to spend money on that if they wanted to, or they could get the free one.
Re:For or Against? (Score:1)
Yeah, maybe if the free screwdriver didn't work properly when assembling complicated tables...
Re:For or Against? (Score:2)
Because the whole point of this is that it's actually difficult to write
If you are having problems with "complicated tables" when saving
Re:For or Against? (Score:1)
Re:For or Against? (Score:2, Informative)
The point is not to dictate what software use, but to adopt a policy that ensure that official documents can be opened, edited and converted without fuzz in the future.
Microsoft does not like this so they refuse to support OpenDocument in Word, while others seems to be more positive to interoperability (Koffice, Abiword, StarOffice for instance).
Re:For or Against? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you really want the choice of what format documents are in, why don't you demand that Slashdot post their stories in DOC format, too? Slashdot is forcing you to use HTML right now.
For that matter, the normal thing will be for them to use ODF documents internally, but send out PDFs, since they aren't trying to make the documents they publish easy to edit. So use you be complaining that Slashdot's back end doesn't store their stories in DOC.
Despite the globe article (Score:2, Interesting)
You had comittees and senators and groups who had never paid attention for a second to this space going absolutely crazy about it. One of the hearings it was quinn and his lawyer and like 8 people opposed to him.
Also, politics is irrational. They proposed doing things they had lectured people not to do before.
I suspect it drives out good folks
Is Technology 'A'political? (Score:2)
Re:Despite the globe article (Score:2)
German has it best (Score:2)
Re:German has it best (Score:3, Informative)
Or maybe the 'F' in front was silent for so long as to fall off the word.
As a citizen of Massachusetts (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to this user that the pace of Microsoft releases is increasing (to once a year), and support time for the older formats is decreasing. While I understand that it might be fun to embed Java objects and streaming voice and video in Word documents, it really has no relevence to me, and I doubt to many (most?) users. Certainly not at the state government level, where tables, charts and images are about all you need, and these were handled perfectly well in Word'97 (as they are in OpenOffice). Now, given a choice between paying annually for a new revision of MS Office, and paying a competent Unix/Linux IT guy to administer a bunch of Linux desktops, I'd vote for the latter. I'm thinking I'd get more for my tax dollar.
Re:As a citizen of Massachusetts (Score:1, Informative)
Regarding support, Microsoft now offers 10 years of free patches for the products. Go look at microsoft.com/lifecycle
Their old products are certainly ending their support phases, but Windows XP is I think scheduled until 2011 for free patches. Tha
Re:As a citizen of Massachusetts (Score:1, Funny)
Document accessability is what matters (Score:4, Insightful)
Cost of software is an issue, and certainly an important one.
More important, however, is accessibility and usability of government records. If important data and memos about an issue of today are locked up in a proprietary format which almost certainly won't be completely readable by the then current version of Office software in 2020 and beyond, then this is a real loss for all concerned! Moreover, citizens shouldn't have to own and use a particular piece of commercial software to be able to read documents which their own government produces. That's just plain wrong if there are simple and straightforward alternatives.
Shocked (Score:3, Insightful)
---
The key is to have the government do as little as possible. Then you can make your decisions, and I can make mine. When you decide for yourself, it's a personal question, not a political one. When the government decides, it's always going to be political.
This is the same issue as "decency" filters on (government) library computers. Politics decided that one too.
The only way everyone gets what they want is by taking it out of government hands.
Re:Shocked (Score:1)
kind of like
Swell. Good luck with that, junior.
Re:Shocked (Score:2, Insightful)
What does that mean? Are you saying constituents don't want these filters? Family groups and both political parties wanted them. When you look outside your circle of geek friends you'll see regular people who really don't care and actually approve of crap like this. Essentially, you're just blaming this mysterious free-floating government thing while ignoring the constituents - family groups, christians, etc who deman
Re:Shocked (Score:2)
Obviously, they did want them. That's not the point.
There ought to be no government libraries. If people want libraries, they can build them and provide for them on a voluntary basis and choose the rules based on their whims.
The only reason for government involvement is to take money (and choices) away from people against their will.
A lot of pro-big-government people don't seem to like politics deciding government actions. They nee
Re:Shocked (Score:2)
Sounds to me like someone maybe doesn't understand the role that libraries are intended to play in a democracy as a storehouse for information that people need to fully participate in said democracy. As long as we're going to have some form of government, I'm all for libraries.
Now if you had simply said "There ought to be no governm
Re:Shocked (Score:2)
And you're also for political decision-making, because it's part of the package.
And that might mean Microsoft-only file formats in government documents, or "decency" filters on library computers, or any number of other things. Often, political decisions are going to go against your wishes.
But you're choosing to accept that outcome.
Re:Shocked (Score:3, Insightful)
Libertarian political rhetoric is retarded. You know what happens when a bunch of people work together to provide common resources and to regulate themselves as a community? You get what is called a "government".
Re:Shocked (Score:2)
You only get government (as it's currently known) when the provision of those "common resources" is against the will of some of the people in the community. Otherwise, it's an association, or a charity, or a club, or a company, or some other non-government organization. Force is the difference. Governments force certain people to do things
Re:Shocked (Score:2)
Re:Shocked (Score:2)
It's just wrong to routinely force this choice on folks to finance your luxuries.
Much of government works almost exactly like the Sopranos -- you pay, or else. The folks who pay protection money to the mafia could close up shop and move away too. So hooray for the Capo's justice, I guess.
--
This is off topic though. The ultimate point was that government decisions are political decisions. Whatever side you're
Re:Shocked (Score:2)
Do you know why clubs can't use force ? Because the government uses force against them if they try. In the absence of (current) government, what is to stop those associations from assuming its role ? Nothing whats
Re:Shocked (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell, while we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, unplug your fat DOD funded internet while youre at it.
I love my local library system, both here in the city and when I lived in the suburbs. Being a kid with no money but having access to all the best sci-fi in the world, other fiction, and non-fiction was one of the best things to ever happen to me. Back before computers were affordable it was the place where I could go to get word processing done and even play a game! Right now people without internet access depend on them for the basic information you're spoiled to have. Oh no, the horrors of "big government" (the US government is tidy compared to some of europe and scandanavia its your military thats huge) led to people getting books for free! How will big publishing survive?!?
Go back to watching southpark in your mom's basement. Thanks.
Re:Shocked (Score:2)
It's not the 80s any more. Times change, you might want to consider changing with them. Libraries are anachronistic, and the process is accelerating.
Also, some poor old lady probably lost her house because she couldn't afford the property taxes to pay for your adolescent warm fuzzy. Nevermind that though.
Re:Shocked (Score:1)
That poor old lady would have lost her home irrespective of whether libraries were being funded or not. Tax levels are usually based on what whoever is levying them thinks they can get away with charging -- public services are used as a justification for making people pay taxes rather than being the reason for it. This is why tax cuts never seem to be accompanied by wage cuts or c
Re:Shocked (Score:1)
Ha. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ha. (Score:2)
Let's start with less than they do now, and see how it goes.
Re:Ha. (Score:1)
Re:Ha. (Score:2)
Currently the Federal government spends 20% of our GDP. I'm not sure how much the states, collectively, spend, but I'm sure its substantial.
Lets try less than that. How's about we aim for 15%? Then we can look around, and decide if we can go lower than that.
Re:Ha. (Score:2)
Re:Ha. (Score:2)
Re:Ha. (Score:1)
Re:Ha. (Score:2)
But returned to *whom* is the relevent question. Do I believe that my tax money was well spent on no-bid contracts for Haliburton in Iraq? Hell no.
Now that I'm witnessing the worst excessess of a *Republican* Administration (which followed a Dem Admin that actually did cut spending) after listening to them talk endlessly about fiscal responsibility, I'm beginning to become a big fan of the classical conservative
Re:Ha. (Score:1)
I'm not telling you that the money you've personally invested will come back to *you* specifically, just that the government isn't some financial blackhole where money goes to die. It all comes back out, and it all continues to get spent on other things. That's how the economy works.
Re:Ha. (Score:2)
In the real world this transaltes to "Give me mine, take away his".
Re:Ha. (Score:1)
Re:Ha. (Score:2)
Re:Shocked (Score:2, Interesting)
Only a government as a weight big enough to impose OPEN standard without actually forcing anybody to lose money..but hey, your corrupt representative keep getting lobby money to fuck up anything that benefits the masses.
They key is corrupt politicians, not govern
Re:Shocked (Score:2)
Apparently you don't understand. Open standards are good for some constituencies and bad for others. Politics decides who wins because it's the government.
If you want non-political decision-making, you need to remove the choice from the government. Period.
Re:Shocked (Score:1)
Indeed there's a failure in corrupt politicians, not in presence of a government.
Re:Shocked (Score:2)
I don't know. Who? I know you're relying onthe government for that. How's that going? What was this story about? I didn't RTFA, but the summary doesn't suggest relying of the government is working.
Re:Shocked (Score:2)
Perhaps you might explain how the decision of what file formats the government uses can be taken away from government hands, and in whose hands should it be put to ?
And while you are at it, you might also explain how this helps both Microsoft and everyone else to get what they want, since they want mutually exclusive and polarly opposed things ("Microsoft proprietary file formats" and "non-proprietary open file formats",
Microsoft (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft (Score:1)
For those of you too lazy to read the TFA (Score:5, Informative)
Quinn felt sure that he was the reason the senators were cutting the IT budget. He felt that the whole state was being punished because of him. He believes that the state urgently needs new computer systems to take care of their records (these systems being completely unrelated to the open document controversy) and they will not get them because the senate is cutting the budget.
Since he did not want to see the state and his colleagues in IT getting screwed because of him, he decided to quit.
Which Senators? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone know which Senators? I'd say they're prime candidates for replacement next election cycle, if not actually being taken
Re:Which Senators? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/10/2
I can't tell you for sure who the Senators were that cut funding to Quinn's unrelated IT projects, but I've got a good suspect.
The two people who are mentioned as being probably against the ODF move are one Senator Marc Pacheco, D-Taunton, chairman of the Senate Post Audit and Oversight Committee, and Secretary of State William F. Galvin.
For those who don't want to read the linked article, it's nominally about some manufactured controversy over whether ODF would work with accessibility addons (Braille terminals, screenreaders, etc.) as well as MS Word does. Personally I find this ironic, because I know one blind person who says that the GUI was the worst thing that ever happened to sightless-accessibility in computing; interacting with a command prompt using a Braille terminal ain't no thing, but using a screenreader can be a real pain by comparison.
In my mind the article is pretty well biased against ODF: it opens by saying "Massachusetts lawmakers are questioning an effort by the Romney administration that could jettison Microsoft's popular Office software from thousands of state computers.
Re:Which Senators? (Score:2)
Re: "manufactured" - does anybody have the link debunking this FUD? Or even supporting it should it prove not to be FUD? Real facts would be helpful.
Re:Which Senators? (Score:2)
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Team [ubuntu.com] The Ubuntu accessibility team. "The Ubuntu Accessibility Team aims to raise the level of accessibilty support within Ubuntu and its derivatives." IMO, seems rather preliminary. There's no obvious links to screenreaders or replacements for any of the other programs that sight-impaired Windows users may have come to regard as 'standard.'
Obviously using Linux from the CLI through a Braille terminal isn
Re:Which Senators? (Score:2)
I think most of the complaints come from oooffice users on Windows. gnopernicus supposedly is working OK on linux/gnome.
Apolitical politics (Score:3, Insightful)
Fantastic Logic ! (Score:1)
Re:Fantastic Logic ! (Score:2)
Re:Fantastic Logic ! (Score:1)
Re:Fantastic Logic ! (Score:2)
For starters, "you do expect politics not to be involved in many governmental jobs" should be "You do not expect politics to be involved..." or even better, "You expect politics to be absent from..."
Also, your first post, "Surely you mean then that government run emergency service should be run by politics..." doesn't e
Re:Fantastic Logic ! (Score:2)
Even so, your comparison is flawed. A 911 operator is not a high level government official. As far as the service overall, if you think politics plays no role in quality of service over general areas, you've been severely misinformed. There are have been regular complaints about the service in lower class areas, probably since the introduction of 911.
Re:Apolitical politics (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't understand Government.
The greatest aspect, and greatest failure of our form of Democratic government is that ostensibly, government employees should be apolitical. Elected officials are political; appointed officials and government employees/workers are NOT political.
Some people even actually try to hold to this; the opposite of this, politics among the beauracrats is the purest definition of "corruption".
Re:Apolitical politics (Score:2)
It used to be that the civil service took pride in carrying out their jobs for the sake of public service and not as part of a political machine. It's a shame that that idea seems to be out of the ordinary these days.
Re:Apolitical politics (Score:2)
In fact, most municipalities have inherited political structure from the officials down to the paper pushers at all levels of government. Only when free-flowing exchanges of money happen (as in the case of Philadelphia) does the Federal government get involved and start pros
feigned outrage ... Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Look at the bright side Mr. Quinn (Score:3, Insightful)
You will know the ups and downs of using Office and OpenOffice and have a good idea where to turn for assistance.
Your skills will be in high demand wherever you end up, and you will probably be a lot better off mentally and financially.
Best of luck to you.
MASS IT priorities (Score:3, Interesting)
End result? The PC's the district could afford were outdated before they even arrived, unable to efficiently run even OEM programs provided with them. The Mac lab had few computers and a separate network, and were the only boxes that could run the grade tracking software (provided and required by the state), so the teachers were frequently on them. So hearing that good old MA (48th ranked state in School technology integration at the time of that incedent) is backwards on IT again. Hopefully within a decade or so my town records won't just be in paper form anymore.
Re:MASS IT priorities (Score:1)
Re:MASS IT priorities (Score:1)
Common problem in IT: thinking you're above it (Score:2)
It's had the opposite effect. Computers and networks are tools of calculation and communication, and such things have always been as usable by the forces of politics. It was sheer naievety to believe that they would not be adopted by politicians.
And since such things cost money, no matter how low the learning curve goes, they will be skewed by c
Re:Common problem in IT: thinking you're above it (Score:2)
Voting is useless. The Democrats and Republicans are on the same team. They only pretend to be bitter opponents. The electoral system in this country is just plain fucked. For example, in NC, not only will they no longer put Libertarians (or anybody else) on the ticket, but I can't even be registered as a Libertarian (or anything else). Voting is just to make people *think* that they have a choic
Decisions on IT should be made by IT people (Score:2)
The same is true of just about any government decisions, governments should let the experts in the field make decisions about which is better.
For example, when the USAF was buying the new fighter jets (the one where boeing and someone else were competing), the government did the smart thing and let the USAF decide which fighter was the better one (in terms of performance, purchase price, running cost etc etc).
The same should apply here. Let the IT guys decide wh
What'choo talkin' about Willis? (Score:2)
Re:'a'political? (Score:1)
Re:flake? (Score:4, Informative)
From a government records manager and archivist point of view, his stance makes sense. Archives must be accessible in the future. Proprietrary formats are anathemas to government records and archives.
Re:open == readable (Score:2)
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200512070 20812228 [groklaw.net]
Re:flake? (Score:1)
Bea Arthur?