Bill drops bomb on ODF in Massachusetts
The Massachusetts Senate today is scheduled to consider a bill that, if passed, would subjugate all IT procurements and state IT department decisions -- including standard setting -- to a special task force.
ZDNet's David Berlind reports that freshly amended text has tranformed an economic stimulus bill into a bomb that could easily blow up the OpenDocument Format's already weakened chances of becoming a statewide document standard.
From Berlind's report:Is public document accessibility for all about to get blown to bits by politics? Berlind also asks: Is the ODF strategically better for the disabled?A lot of political stops are being pulled out to stop the ODF decision dead in its tracks. What makes the political maneuvering unusual is that ODF is small part of the state's Enterprise Technical Reference Model — a much larger and all encompassing technology blueprint for Massachusetts that sets many other standards that haven't received one iota of scrutiny from the state's politicians.