While there certainly has been little reason to doubt where IBM stands on ODF, it was reassuring to see it pledge its support today in a letter delivered to Massachusetts Secretary of Executive Agency Finance and Administration Thomas Trimarco. The letter is signed by IBM's VP of Standards and Open Source, Dr. Robert Sutor (it was Bob, you may recall, who hosted the Armonk Meeting back on November 4.

Bob's letter doesn't hesitate to establish IBM's right to make its opinion heard. It opens as follows:

With all the recent activity around document formats and the strong leadership position taken by Massachusetts, I'm writing to you to reaffirm IBM's full support for the OASIS OpenDocument Format for Office Applications (ODF) standard. IBM, with our nearly 5000 employees in Massachusetts, is pleased to continue our active participation in the open, community-driven OASIS standardization process as well as our support for this important global standard in an upcoming version of our IBM Workplace product. Massachusetts is one of the epicenters of IBM software innovation, which will continue to be a key growth engine for our company. Lotus, Rational and Ascential all call the Commonwealth home and are developing the next generations of customer solutions based on open standards.

As it happens, Massachusetts lost over 6,000 software jobs last year, dropping from 135,00 to 128,600, according to what until recently was called the Massachusetts Software Council.

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