Supporting two standards: Wise, or a Microsoft power play?

In a public forum Wednesday, Massachusetts legislators met with some IT powerhouses to discuss the state's electronic document standards. The meeting centered around the state's controversial decision to mandate use of OpenDocument-based products by Jan. 1, 2007. The idea behind the move was to ensure open access to state documents for years to come, which many see as a valuable service to government customers. But there's one kink in the state's plan of supporting open standards: Microsoft doesn't intend to support OpenDocument in its next version of Office, the leading productivity suite. In the meantime, Microsoft has submitted the XML-based document formats for Office to standards body Ecma International, which intends to create a standard in about a year.

At the conference, Alan Yates, Microsoft's general manager of Microsoft's Information Worker division, suggested the state should adopt both standards, calling such a move "a really wise and easy choice." Some beg to differ, however, and see this as Microsoft simply trying to refusing to truly open up to open standards. It puts Massachusetts in a precarious situation, with many other state and local governments watching closely to see how such an unconventional technology policy will turn out in the long run. Is Microsoft's suggestion that the state support two standards legitimate? Or is the software giant just worried about losing its foothold in the valuable government market?

Blog community response:

"Microsoft could have joined the ODF Technical Committee at OASIS, but they chose not to. Why? If interoperability is your goal, and openness, with no barriers, then it makes perfect sense to merge the two standards, as Tim Bray already has suggested, instead of having them compete. If Microsoft opened up to allow it, by providing documentation of their binary formats, ODF could be modified to meet Microsoft's needs."
--Groklaw

"The implications of a policy that supports the development and implementation of open standards, if done right, would have substantial positive implications over the long run, here in the Commonwealth but also in other states and countries around the world. The Commonwealth's leadership in this area could establish a model for others to follow, as it has so many times before on so many issues."
--John Palfrey

"Microsoft's relationship with the ECMA began fairly early on, but this particular standards body has become much more friendly to Redmond in recent years. C# was parked there as an "open" standard, as was their implementation of the CLI, something which no doubt has given Miguel de Icaza more peace of mind at night in his bid to create Mono. Microsoft's XAML has been rumored to be heading toward ECMA as well, though it hasn't yet arrived. With the Office Open formats heading there as well, especially without any significant backing beyond that of Microsoft, this raises questions about how objective the ECMA committee has become vis-a-vis Redmond."
--Understanding XML