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More on ODF in Massachusetts

Last week, Walt Hucks of Opportunity Knocks wrote Mass Plus ODF: A Winning Combination in response to an earlier Mass High Tech article ODF and the benefits of going open source.

From Mass High Tech, the greatest strength of choosing ODF is the transparency of the format’s development:

“The OASIS organization provided the forum and the transparency for interested parties to work on the problem in a manner similar to the open-source collaborative development model. The transparency of the process enabled everyone, including the commonwealth of Massachusetts, to observe the process of creating the specification and to have confidence that their needs were being addressed. As issues were identified, such as accessibility for users with disabilities, there was a forum of participation that allowed people to coordinate their efforts to efficiently find solutions.”

Hucks ties this together with some additional research into the ongoing implementation of the ODF standard by Massachusetts (of which there is little news at the moment), and the attempts by Microsoft to derail this so that their own quasi-standard might stand a chance to replace ODF. (Which would be harmful to the state’s interests, the competitive marketplace for software, and indeed, everyone except Microsoft itself.)

Let’s hope things are progressing well in Massachusetts, and that upon their successful migration to ODF, we see a few other states bravely follow.

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