The first day of the Southern California Linux Expo was dedicated to the Open Document Format. All of the speakers at the workshop stressed the importance of an Open Standard to achieve vendor-independence and create conditions where innovation and competition can flourish.

Peter Quinn, the former CIO of Massachusetts, opened the workshop with a summary of the events that surrounded the Massachusetts decision to standardize their document formats. The largest part of the story is familiar to the Groklaw readers, no need to repeat it here. He made it very clear that neither he (nor Massachusetts) were against Microsoft, but that he was just looking for what was best for the commonwealth.

Groklaw