Massachusetts' Move to Open Format is Close-minded

Massachusetts' Move to Open Format is Close-minded: "Opinion: The State of Massachusetts should not forsake Microsoft file formats, which are 'open enough' for many users. "

There are so many things wrong with this column, I'm not sure I even know where to start. The whole reason MS is what it is today is because it's products are good enough, or open enough, or stable enough. I think what MA is doing is saying good enough isn't good enough. We want something that is better than that, something that anyone can use, not just those that can buy Microsoft's products. That's the opinion part out of the way, now some facts:

While OpenOffice isn't widely supported yet, it has support for MS formats. You can take any OpenOffice spreadsheet and save it as an Excel spreadsheet. Same for all other OpenOffice apps.

OpenOffice hasn't caught on because of people like Coursey telling them that it doesn't do what they need. Anyone who can use MS Office could turn around and use OpenOffice and be able to do almost everything within a day.

Where does switching to Linux figure into this whole argument? Instead of, as Coursey states, taking choice away from people, by choosing an open format he's actually giving them more choice. If they choose OpenOffice they can run it on Windows, Linux, and Mac. If you stipulate that everyone must use MS Office, you are taking away the Linux option (and most Mac users won't touch MS Office unless they are forced).

"...but in the end the state could potentially save a lot of money. It seems, however, that if Microsoft adds OpenDocument support to Office then Mr. Quinn would be satisfied." And what would be so bad about that? The state could save money and people could choose to use MS Office if they wanted. Sounds like a win-win to me. Although I'm not so convinced that MS will ever adopt the open doc format. Why should they? After all, the closed MS doc format is good-enough.