Computerworld: Inside Story: How Microsoft & Massachusetts Played Hardball Over Open Standards

“Less than a week after he became CIO of Massachusetts last
February, Louis Gutierrez sensed a serious threat to his power–one
that was being promoted by a seemingly unlikely source. Within a
matter of days, Gutierrez confirmed that Brian Burke, Microsoft
Corp.’s government affairs director for the Northeast, had been
backing an amendment to an economic stimulus bill that would
largely strip the Massachusetts Information Technology Division of
its decision-making authority.

“For Microsoft, the call to arms had sounded several months
earlier, when the state’s IT division surprised the company with a
controversial decision to adopt the Open Document Format for Office
Applications, or ODF, as its standard file format…”

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