Eric Lai keesp pokign at that Massachusetts hornets nest. One of these days he's going to crack it open, and it will be back to square one for the ODF Community.  Still missing from his research is the infoamous 300 page pilot study and accompanying web site where comments and professional observations document a year long study concernign the difficulties of implementing ODF solutions and making the migration.  <br><br>

The study was focused on OpenOffice, StarOffice, Novell Office, and a IBM WorkPlace prototype.<br><br>

The results of the year long pilot have never seen the public light of day.  But ComputerWorld is one of the media orgs that successfully filed a court action to invoke the freedom of information act in Massachusetts.  How come they can't find the Pilot Study?<br><br>

At the end of the pilot study period, Massachusetts issued their infamous RFi; the request for information regarding the possiblity of a ODF plugin for MSOffice!  Meaning, the Pilot Study did not go well for the heroes of ODF - OpenOffice, StarOffice, Novell Office and WorkPlace.  Instead, Massachusetts sought an ODF plugin that would no doubt extend the life of MSOffice for years to come.  No rip out and replace here folks!<br><br>

~ge~

ODF officially died on February 28, 2007, at the Advanced eGovernment Conference in Berlin.  Hellow ODEF

Another great commentary from Walt Hucks.  This time his target is the over the top self serving statements from Microsoft about consumers wanting "competition" between standards.  I was a loser in the BetaMAX wars.  At least SONY had an edge in those wars of claiming a somewhat, although leglible, advantge in video fidleity.  Microsoft OOXML has no such advantage over ODF.  None whatsoever.

Walt once again exposes Microsoft as the company you can count on to treat customers as mindless idiots.    Given the choice, customers would choose ODF over OOXML hands down, time after tiem, every time.  But they are not given "the choice".  Mcirosoft spends a lot of spin cycles complaining and whining about IBM and others not providing native support for OOXML.  Incredibly, they do this while announcing loudly that they have no intention of ever supporting ODF nativiely in their own applications?  What's u with that?  Leveraging the monopoly.  That's what.

Finally, someone in Massachusetts is talking and it's the master, Louis Gutierrez.  Wiki Ricki has some nice comments about the ComputerWorld interview with Louis.  As have become his custom though, Rick once again carries the flag (or should i say water) for Microsoft.  Rick's expertise in XML used to be the draw for his column.  Now you have to parse through his comments, separating the nuggets of truth from the torren of bias.  Paid bias.  It's too bad.  Rick was one of the best. 

Whoa, Wiki Ricki is right.  This is a great article!  A must read interview with Louis Gutierrez.  I wonder though, since it was ComputerWorld and the Boston Globe that filed the August 2006 Freedom of Information Act invocation to get all the Massachusetts conversations and meetings, no doubt they were carryign some heavy ammunition into this interview.  Up until this interview it's been next to impossible for the public or press to get truthful information.  This is a good start, and i for one wonder just how far Massachusetts execs are willing to go with their public disclosures?