The Massachusetts decision to implement OpenDocument Format (ODF) has attracted so much attention that little has been directed at other end users (governmental and otherwise) that have decided to adopt ODF.  But there are other adopters, and I read of another one just now - the City of Bristol, in England, which will switch 5,500 desktops from Office to StarOffice.  As a result of the decidion, the City expects to save 60% of the costs of using office productivity software over a five year period.  The news of such a significant cost saving is particularly significant for three reasons:  first, it involves a switch to a commercial product (StarOffice) that will require payment of licensing fees rather than conversion to one of the free open source implementations of ODF, such as OpenOffice.  Second, the switch is based upon a full analysis of all costs of purchase, installation, re-training and support.   And third, it involved a head-to-head contest between Sun and Microsoft, with MS pitching hard, but unsuccessfullyl, to avoid losing the customer.

Since I posted yesterday's blog entry about Microsoft joining the ISO voting comments reconciliation subcommittee, I've received some questions about how that process works, and how long it will take. For the answers, I turned once again to Patrick Durusau, the Chairman of the subcommittee, and the Project Editor for the OpenDocument Format submission. And once again he was kind enough to supply the answer, which I reproduce here in full (thanks, Patrick).

 I have been asked about the current status of ODF in the ISO process and the calendar for action on that submission.

ODF was submitted by OASIS to ISO JTC 1 under what is known as a PAS submission. Such submissions are governed by a specific set of rules and procedures.

It was duly balloted and notices were sent to the appropriate National Bodies.

A few days ago, I got an email from someone with news of an interesting development in the ongoing ODF saga. The essence of the tip was this: a few days ago, Microsoft joined a very small subcommittee called "V1 Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface." And it just so happens that this small subcommittee (six companies — including Microsoft) is the entity charged with reconciling the votes that are being cast in the ISO vote to adopt the OASIS OpenDocument Format.

Ever since the surprise announcement by the Massachusetts Information Technology Division last August that it planned to adopt the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and not the Microsoft XML Reference Schema (XMLRS), it's been a tennis tournament between those that support ODF and those that are fans of XMLRS.

As you may recall, the ODF Alliance was formed on March 3, 2006. Given that they've already had, oh, two and a half weeks to change the world, I thought I'd check out the Alliance Website to see whether they had achieved their manifest destiny yet.

It has frequently been observed that the clock of administration support for ODF may be ticking down in Massachusetts. After all, Governor Mitt Romney, who recommitted decisively to continue support for ODF following the resignation of State CIO Peter Quinn, announced that he will not seek reelection in November of this year. On the other hand, Secretary of State William Francis Galvin, an announced opponent of ODF, has stated that he will run for reelection - and believes that he should have a strong say on the subject of IT policy as it relates to document retention.

One of the more bizarre, but less noticed threads in the OpenDocument Format (ODF) story in Massachusetts involves whether or not the many hundreds of municipalities in Massachusetts would be required to use software that supported ODF, or at least be able to work with documents created using such software when they interacted with State government.

I'm not a Boston Globe subscriber (I'm a Times man, myself), so it was alert Standards Blog reader Patrick McCormick who emailed me to let me know that Globe ombudsman Richard Chacon had written something that I'd find interesting, and he was right. Regular readers will recall that Mr. Chacon had promised way back on December 12 of last year to look into the circumstances surrounding the writing of a Globe article that contributed to the resignation of Massachusetts State CIO Peter Quinn.

When it comes to politics and technology, there are always (at least) two opinions. Today, I provide the full interview with Massachusetts Supervisor of Public Records Alan Cote, whose views on ODF differ substantially from those usually expressed in the Standards Blog

Massachusetts legislators on Beacon Hill today will see a demonstration of accessibility features for Office 7, but they won't see the complete picture.