New Microsoft battle over document formats

Saturday, November 5, 2005

By MARK JEWELL
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOSTON -- The Revolutionary War started in Massachusetts, and now the state is firing some opening rounds in a revolt against Microsoft Corp. that seeks an open, proprietary-free format for storing electronic documents.

Gov. Mitt Romney's administration has directed state government's executive offices to begin storing new records by Jan. 1, 2007, in a format that challenges Microsoft's market-dominating Office software, which isn't yet designed to support the new standard.

Massachusetts is the first state to take the step, but others are closely watching the fight.

"It may be the technological equivalent to the shot heard 'round the world," said Joe Wilcox, a Jupiter Research analyst. "If Massachusetts follows through with this plan, it will be a radical departure from how Microsoft and other businesses work with state governments."

Massachusetts' shift to the so-called OpenDocument format seeks to ensure that the state's electronic records can easily be read, exchanged and modified now and in the future, free of licensing restrictions and compatibility problems as software evolves.

Microsoft and other critics of the change have warned in public hearings that the state is narrowing its options by banking on an untested format that may not work with many of the state's Office-based computer systems.

Microsoft also argues that the switch will hurt citizens and businesses using Office who may find state records don't translate well when they read them with their software.

Among the programs that do fully work with the OpenDocument format are Sun Microsystems Inc.'s StarOffice and free products such as OpenOffice.

Microsoft is trying to stem the rebellion's spread to other state governments and the private sector. Businesses sometimes follow the lead of government database managers, and software vendors try to tailor their products to government clients' preferred format.

"There is a lot at stake for Microsoft," said David Smith, a Gartner Inc. analyst. "If this were to become a tremendously successful initiative, it could perhaps open the floodgates to other governments and business enterprises doing the same thing."

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