Eric Kriss at MSC about Open Formats and Microsoft.
This morning was a long Massachusetts Software Council meeting. I don't
have time to cover it now, but there is one part I want to get out
right away.
Massachusetts Secretary of Administration and Finance, Eric
Kriss, gave a short speech. I've mentioned him here multiple times,
starting October 8, 2003. He is very high in state government
(reporting directly to the Governor), but has been in the software
industry at one point and reportedly has programmed in PL/1 and Perl.
He announced some additions to their Open Standards initiative. They
are defining “Open Formats”, which include formats that don't need to
have a formal standards body and could come from a private entity. And,
as a surprise, they seem to be coming to an agreement with Microsoft
where Microsoft is going to reduce their restrictions on some Microsoft
Office file formats to fit under the definitions.
…
It looks like I'm going to be on an Information Technology Advisory
Board for the State, so I might be able to follow this more closely in
the future. Feedback, though, should not go to me. Secretary Kriss has
asked for it himself. Discuss this if you want on web sites like
Groklaw and send him a pointer. As he says, this is all an evolution,
and our feedback is part of that evolution. I'm glad to see that
Microsoft has chosen to be part of it, too. [Dan Bricklin's Log]