Massachusetts to MSFT: switch to open formats or you're fired

By Cory Doctorow at 11:27 am Saturday, Sep 3

The State of Massachusetts is vowing to require all of its software vendors to supply tools that save government data in open formats that are standards-defined, which will give them the flexibility to change tools without having to rewrite their millions and millions of documents. Microsoft's Office suite doesn't currently comply, and they say that they won't comply later, either:

If Massachusetts follows through, it will be the first US state to require that all documents be created in an open format. Such a move would boost the credibility of open file formats and encourage fresh competition against Microsoft Office, which holds over 90 percent of the world market in office productivity software...

Microsoft and other companies could keep doing business with the state government by adding OpenDocument as a standard file format. The upcoming version of Microsoft Office, due next year, will use a file format based on the open XML document standard, which is similar to OpenDocument.

But Alan Yates, general manager of Microsoft's information worker business strategy unit, indicated in an e-mailed statement that the company isn't interested in adopting the full OpenDocument standard.

Link (Thanks, Matt!)