Of Open Standards, Interoperability and Open Source

[ Thanks to Greenback for this link. ]

"This is certainly a fair point: when Massachusetts opted for open standards, ODF was the only option, but was still somewhat rough. In particular, OpenOffice.org was the only full implementation of ODF.

"But the authors of the paper then go on to draw an erroneous conclusion:

"In other words, the process in Massachusetts was akin to switching vendors for office software. While ODF was an open standard, multiple implementations did not exist, so Massachusetts was effectively locked into OpenOffice.org. This is why we believe in the case of Massachusetts, the open formats policy, as constituted in 2005, was better understood as an OpenOffice policy rather than a policy seeking competition and choice for government."

Complete Story

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