I am hesitant to go head-to-head with an A-lister like Goelzer, but while I appreciate his recent post complimenting my blog, it had a few inaccuracies.

I wouldn’t say that Peter Quinn, the CIO (not CTO) of Massachusetts was forced to resign. He was harassed so much that he felt compelled to resign, but the decision was made to preserve the emotional well-being of him and his family. “Compelled” seems to me like a better description than “forced.”

Also, I don’t think Quinn’s support for ODF is “surprisingly controversial.” Rather, I would say that it is less controversial than I expected. We live in a world where Microsoft’s “PlaysForSure” certification is not lampooning Microsoft, but actually promotes music that works with their players. Myself, I don’t think marking music as playable should be a distinguishing feature.

In other realms, the value of standards is well understood. In mechanical engineering, for example, advertising a bolt as “Actually threads into our nuts” would be seen as ridiculous– a 1/4-20 bolt should fit into any 1/4-20 nut, regardless of who manufactures it.

An elementary school that advertised that it taught a special made-up language that allows its students to communicate with the rest of its graduates (”Talk to all six of your classmates in real-time!”) would find itself short on students.

I’m baffled as to why someone like Microsoft’s Alan Yates doesn’t get laughed off the stage when he suggests that a choice of standards is a good idea, but he doesn’t. The view that Microsoft is a benevolent overlord that protects our computers from nasty h4×0rs and helps us manage our private information safely is repeatably predictable, so the ODF controversy is not surprising.

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