“The US state government official who had been moving Massachusetts away from Microsoft’s digital document formats has resigned. Peter Quinn, chief information officer (CIO) for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will quit his position, effective January 9, according to an internal memo obtained by the IDG News Service,” Robert McMillan reports for Macworld UK. “Quinn had been behind a drive to change state computers so that they would no longer store documents in proprietary formats such as those used by Microsoft Office and Lotus Notes. Under a proposal drafted by Quinn’s Information Technology Division, (ITD) in 2007, the state would begin a move to the OpenDocument file format, an open, XML-based format used by a variety of products including IBM Workplace and StarOffice.”
“By championing the move away from Microsoft, Quinn became a hero to the open-source community, but he also attracted a level of public scrutiny that disrupted his private and professional life. That attention played a role in his resignation, according to the memo,” McMillan reports. “‘Over the last several months, we have been through some very difficult and tumultuous times,’ he wrote in the memo, which was sent on the evening of December 24 to staff within the ITD. ‘Many of these events have been very disruptive and harmful to my personal well being, my family and many of my closest friends. This is a burden I will no longer carry.'”
McMillan reports, “According to observers, Quinn’s support of OpenDocument had put him in a difficult position, which was made more difficult earlier this year, following the departure of his powerful supporter within Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s administration, administration and finance secretary Eric Criss [sic].”
Full article here.
“Eric Kriss, the former Massachusetts Secretary of Administration and Finance who was Quinn’s boss during most of the ODF evaluation process, said that Quinn found it difficult to handle the personal attacks that followed the state’s high profile move,” Ingrid Marson reports for ZDNet UK. “‘I met with Peter briefly on December 21, prior to his decision, and he indicated to me he was extremely uncomfortable with the personal attention surrounding the open format controversy. Peter is an IT professional who is not accustomed to the rough-and-tumble world of politics,’ said Kriss in an interview with Internet law site Groklaw.”
Marson reports, “Quinn was particularly affected by last month’s report in the Boston Globe, which claimed he had taken unauthorised trips to conferences, according to Kriss. These allegations were investigated, and Quinn was later cleared of any wrongdoing. ‘He found the last few months to be very distasteful, especially the Boston Globe article that seemed to imply some sort of improper influence related to his conference travel,’ Kriss told Groklaw. The Boston Globe’s report attracted a flood of criticism from the technical and legal community. Groklaw described it as a ‘character assassination in an attempt to discredit OpenDocument.’ Andy Oram, an editor for O’Reilly Media, said the article showed that anyone trying to introduce open standards in governments ‘has to be ready for every kind of backlash.'”
Full article here.
More here: http://www.consortiuminfo.org/newsblog/blog.php?ID=1865
And here: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=175700776
MacDailyNews Take: We bet Microsoft would love for the Massachusetts domino not to fall. For if it does fall right, others could follow.
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Related MacDailyNews articles:
Massachusetts plans to switch all workers off Microsoft Office starting in 2007 – September 02, 2005
Massachusetts to adopt strategy to move from Windows to ‘open standards’ systems – September 26, 2003
An error in the original article – it is Eric Kriss, not Criss. I remember when he doled out pink slips to most of the company just before Christmas about a decade back. Avoided having to pay out contracted year-end bonuses (to the newly unemployed, anyway), too.
It’s a shame about the resignation. I thought Quinn’s stance was too good to be true, and alas, it was.
Bastards
But basically, when you think about it for a second, this guy was a real wussy. I mean, come on! Remember the old saying, “It’s not whether you get knocked down that counts – it’s whether you get back up”. This guy was a real wet napkin and not worthy to champion such a great cause.
It’s a lot harder to stand your ground when your family’s getting drug through the mud. It must have been brutal.
Glad he got the ball rolling though.
Hehehhehehehe – Steve Balmer
drug through the mud???
Crack mudballs?
Dragged!
Resistance is futile, muhahahhaa – Bill Gates
Nuclear Kid,
get some perspective and don’t be so quick to judge, we don’t have any idea how his life was affected.
I’m thankfull that someone in his position even tried such a move!
It stands to reason that people should want a free universal open source alternative to M$ domination.
Haven’t they had enough of being a slave to Redmond?
I tell you the truth, it’s the spys in the government who are against anyone who is against M$.
M$ provides a wealth of intelligence info.
That’s why all the top brass at the FBI use Mac’s.
Hey, everyone knows what’s good for Microsoft is good for America.
If business were to drift away from Microsoft there would be millions of unemployed IT weenies all over the place begging for loose change. What about their families?
Microsoft is good, Open source is evil.
We bet Microsoft would love for the Massachusetts domino not to fall. For if it does fall right, others could follow.
The genie has been let out of the bottle. Quinn’s report is making the rounds in every state capitol. Others will pick up the ball because the work Quinn did was excellent, as evidenced by the fact that they attacked him, and not the report.
MSFT can breath easy today, but they won’t have long to enjoy it.
Kudos to Quinn for authoring an objective report, then sticking around as long as he did, after they started attacking he and his family.
POLITICS
Another hero falls. I hope he found his career goals accomplished.
May we all have the strength to carry through our goals as well as he did.
And they call Mac supporters zealots?!?!?
Sad that someone who had the balls to take a stand had to be the target of such scrutiny.
This is just like what happened to Dave Chappelle. You gotta watch who you mess with.
First he saw Bill Gates’ sillhouette in his children’s room in the middle of the night. Then came the voodoo doll that unzipped to reveal a macro virus. Finally, while watching Charlie Rose, Ballmer’s face suddenly came onto his TV screen and stuck out his tongue before shouting “Developers!”.
We ALWAYS win. Always.
Why?
Well, because first there’s the righteous – that’s the Macolytes. 5%
Then there’s evil – hehe, that’s us. 5%
Then there’s apathy – apathy always falls on our side, because thinking and caring is too hard. And the lazy are extremely gullible. 90%
Give up, our Koolaid works better.
I learned the hard way more than once, they don’t teach politics in computer science 101.
the Globe s#*cks–big time. This is typical for them. The facts don’t matter, it’s whatever spin they’ve decided to put on the news that they care about. Sad.
Kate
Seems as though the Boston Globe is one of the Dark Lord’s minions. Give this round to Redmond. But evil always loses, in the end. So too shall Redmond fall.
But the Globe is ultra liberal like Steve Jobs and Gates is more a conservative.
Why doesn´t the Globe take a more open source, liberal, position?
Ahhh….because Gov. Romney is a Republican. They want to do anything they can to put stumbling blocks up in his potential run against the HILLARY in 2008 for President.
The HILLARY is more important than any opensource computer hocus-pocus.
In politics there is always another story behind the cover story.
If you mess with M$ MAFIA, what do you expect?
Just what the open format community didn’t need…another quitter. You would expect Eric might have more of a backbone than this. Quitting just when things are getting hot. I wouln’t call him a hero to the open source community now. I expect most future employers won’t consider putting him in any administrative roles because they’d be worried he’ll quit if things get too hot. Bad career move Eric. What did you expect taking on MS? Yeah war is hell but if you start one, you gotta finish it without quitting.
It’s time to push OpenDocument BIG time! If they want to push with us little guys, then it’s time to push back.
Start sending your various documents to your friends and colleagues in the OpenDocument and even point them to where to download the FREE software. It would be no different than some wise guy or gal sending you a Word document assuming that you have MS Word on your computer!
It’s time to educate the market a little bit and it’s time to say NO to Microsoft!
Where is the outrage in Massachusetts over the fact that this is a POLITICAL decision to begin with. This is clear evidence that their entire system is corrupt, and some powerful people stand to lose a lot of money if this it went open source. That alone should be enough to support an anti-trust case.
Why wouldn’t there be more support for something that should be a pure business decision that will save the state money?