I was pretty excited that Deval Patrick won the elections here in MA. It was high time to get rid of our current narrow-minded governor.
However, Mr. Patrick has made his first bad decision. He’s basically put a wolf in charge of guarding the sheep. The sheep, in this case, is MA’s progression towards the Open Document Format (ODF). Adopting this format will break Microsofts near-monopoly on office software by levelling the playing field for competing products. This will drive prices down and software quality and innovation up. This can only be good for the people and the state.
So what did Mr. Patrick do? He appointed Brian Burke to the technology transition team. Mr Burke is a Microsoft lobbyist who has been fighting tooth and nail against ODF because it will hurt Microsoft’s near-monopoly on office software. The technology transition team is going to advise the state in matters to do with technology. Including, of course, the transition to ODF.
Sound fishy to you? It sure does to me. Can you say ‘conflict of interest’? Right. I suggest you let Mr. Patrick know at his Patrick-Murray transition website, like I did. Thanks!
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Burke’s only one guy on the team, so I’m not totally disturbed.
That said, I do find this appointment disturbing. It’s not like MS even employs that many people in MA.
I’ve been a strong supporter of Deval since the very early days (met him at a town Dem. committee picnic), and don’t think this appt. is consistent with his grassroots approach.
That said, there is a branch of the Democratic Party that is overly protective of intellectual property (think Hollywood and DRM), and this logic can apply to Microsoft’s “intellectual property” as manifested by it’s closed file formats.
I will attend the tech. working committee meeting to complain about this if I am in town. Will you join me?