Why must read?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tadelste Sep 28, 2005 10:45 AM EDT |
The ramifications are enormous. People may see this as more than an inflection point. From the article: Microsoft may see Massachusetts as just one state with 80,000 employees across 173 separate agencies along with a handful of contractors that it can let go. But, if you take a step back to look at the volume of diligence that the Commonwealth undertook before it made its decision final — most all of which is public, you can't help but wonder whether Massachusetts just created an online wizard that will make it easier and less expensive for other governments to embark on similar projects. Lest Microsoft think other governments aren't paying attention, it may want to consider who launched the Government Open Code Collaborative (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Utah, Kansas, Missouri, West Virginia, and the cities of Gloucester [MA], Worcester [MA], and Newport News [VA]) in June of 2004 and how the current list of GOCC members and observers has blossomed well beyond the founding group. Not only is the GOCC clearly keeping an eye on things in Massachusetts (see this call for participation from the GOCC), judging by a presentation given by Massachusetts Information Technology Division (ITD) policy and architecture director Claudia Boldman, the Commonwealth considers its involvement in the GOCC an integral part of its overall open standards initiative (not to mention that the presentation was given at the Conférence surles Logiciels Libreset les Administrations Publiques in Quebec, Canada and one can only imagine who else was paying attention!). Take the digital ecosystem that lives around Massachusetts' 173 agencies and multiply that times some number of other states. Throw in some cities and counties and then a dash or two of corporations that see a reflection of themselves in what those governments are doing, and suddenly, instead of a defector, Microsoft has an exodus on its hands. |
| sbergman27 Sep 28, 2005 3:53 PM EDT |
I sincerely hope it pans out in Ma. These things have a way of getting "delayed" (Munich) or reversed (what local government in the UK was that?), or effectively canceled by a change of power (the DOJ case). If someone asked me today what large governments had *actually* switched to Linux *at this time*, I would have to say Largo, Florida, population 70,000. (Appologies to whatever villages half way around the world that I may be leaving out.) Of course, with Ma., we're only talking file formats. But I'll believe it when I see it. Open Source is "doing great" on PDA's... but you can't go to any store and buy one where I live (poplation 1 Million). Open Source is doing great on cell phones. But you can't buy one here. Sorry. Bad hair day. But to be honest, I see a great disconnect between the news I read, and the reality that I see. I delivered a notebook machine to a client today. Not a particularly computer savvy client. But savvy enough that when I mentioned that I had installed Firefox for him to try out, he immediately wanted to confirm that I had set IE as the default browser and not FIrefox. We're on a steeper incline than I usually like to acknowledge. Like I say... bad hair day. -Steve |
| tadelste Sep 28, 2005 5:11 PM EDT |
Steve, You're intuition seems pretty good. But, don't let the turkeys get you down. The Massachusetts ODF is real. It's not a migration to Linux, but it effectively breaks up Microsoft's monopoly. Today, the Australian government declared all agencies will use the ODF. I expect to see it to get out of Microsoft's control before they can do much about it. Of course, all they have to do is add filters and a patch to Office. We'll see. |
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