Massachusetts Commitment to Open Standards Is Enlightened Say CCIA, OSAIA

File Under: 2005, Open Source

Sep 9, 2005

WASHINGTON — The Commonwealth of Massachusetts should proceed with a proposal to ensure that vital information and documents will be open and available for all its citizens, the Open Source and Industry Alliance and Computer & Communications Industry Association said last night.

In a letter sent to Massachusetts Chief Information Officer Paul Quinn , CCIA President Ed Black urged the Commonwealth to buy only desktop software that can produce documents that comply with a common standard known as Opendocument. PC files created with Opendocument technologies can be read and modified by any of many participating software developers. Microsoft's widely used Office software is the dominant product in the area, but since the company has refused to make public the technical information necessary to assure full compatibility with its Office suite, Massachusetts and others are increasingly concerned about being totally dependant upon Microsoft proprietary product. State officials have said that they fear that older documents will become unreadable with time if they remain consumers of Microsoft Office, and have thus turned to software makers that promise never to introduce incompatibilities such as those that exist in the dominant software product.

It is hoped that Microsoft will ultimately adopt the Opendocument standard, but it has thus far refused to participate in the industry-wide effort.

“The product of this policy should be a market in which vigorous and fair competition will be based on the ease with which users can produce and process documents … it should not be one in which users can be 'locked in' to any incumbent's trade secrets thus blocking competitors ability to enter the market,” Black said.