Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Sliwa, Carol

Titel

Open Dialogue: How Microsoft and Massachusetts Defused a Political Battle Over ODF

Ist Teil von

• Computerworld, 2006-12, Vol.40 (49), p.16

Ort / Verlag

Framingham: Foundry

Erscheinungsjahr

2006

Quelle

EBSCOhost Business Source Ultimate

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Within a matter of days, after he became CIO of Massachusetts last February, Louis Gutierrez confirmed that Brian Burke, Microsoft Corp's government affairs director for the Northeast, had been backing an amendment to an economic stimulus bill that would largely strip the Massachusetts Information Technology Division of its decision-making authority. For Microsoft, the call to arms had sounded several months earlier, when the state's IT division surprised the company with a controversial decision to adopt the Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) as its standard file format. Even worse, from Microsoft's perspective, the policy stipulated that new desktop applications acquired by state agencies feature built-in support for ODF, a standard developed and promoted by some of its rivals. Later, on Apr 11, Alan Yates, general manager, information worker product management group, Microsoft, responded to Gutierrez's e-mail saying that Microsoft would no longer pursue "legislative action" against the ODF policy because that approach had created "such friction" with the state's IT division, Trimarco and Romney.