I’m sure everyone has heard about how the state of Massachusetts decided that they wanted an open file format for its documents. Obviously Microsoft is peeved about it…I can understand their position for the most part…Office is pretty much the standard for documents everywhere. Why try to create another one? Of course, there is the whole argument for having open standards that everyone can use and follow.
But it is interesting to see a Microsoft employee’s opinion on the matter. John Carroll has a post about the choice Massachusetts made:
If ODF swept the business world and became a new, de facto standard for digital documents, I would have zero difficulties accepting the new world order.
Fair enough. But this is funny:
Where I have a problem is when special interests attempt to shoehorn a new standard onto an unwilling marketplace by playing the game of power politics.
Funny. This is coming from the employee of a company that supports quite a few “grassroots” programs. I think Mr. Carroll forgot about all the hoopla after the executive director of a certain group had a recent column published. Fox News even posted a mea culpa for it. And we all know this isn’t exactly the first time Microsoft has done something like this.
Puhleeeze.