“The action in multiple countries leading up to the closing of
the ISO/IEC JTC1 vote on OOXML has all but erased the memory of a
similar multi-state contest involving ODF and OOXML that played out
earlier this year. That playoff, you may now recall, involved the
‘open format’ bills that had been introduced in multiple
legislatures in the US, including in California, Connecticut,
Oregon and Texas. All of those efforts failed to accomplish
anything meaningful. As I noted in a summary of the rout I posted
on June 10, every piece of legislation was defeated, except for the
one introduced in Minnesota, where a greatly weakened bill passed
that called for the state’s IT department to ‘study’ the open
format issue.“Now, true to the legislature’s instruction, the Minnesota IT
department is indeed studying the issue, and will be reporting back
its conclusions to the state legislature by January 15 of next
year…”