Alan Yates Quotations

We've shipped a version of Office 2003 with an open format and we've expressed more commitment to the approach in our next Office releases. We feel that we're not being given enough of an opportunity to explain how openness is possible.

The product has been extremely successful because it's more usable.

Peter?s travels were public records, and reporters just looked into it.

It gives them the confidence that there is a foundation for documents that is not controlled by just one company but is a real consensus within the industry,

Open Office is fine if you have very limited needs because it was really designed around what Microsoft Office products were designed around 10 years ago.

Openness is very important for us, and for our customers. There's more awareness, but as the situation in Massachusetts demonstrates, we still have more work to do in terms of emphasizing our work with open formats.

We have substantial concerns ... with the definition of 'open formats' in the current proposal.

We're encouraged by the additional and thorough review that the Legislature is pursuing to better understand the costs and issues associated with the existing Massachusetts proposal.

The proposed policy is inconsistent with ongoing dialogues Microsoft is having with other Massachusetts state agencies about how Microsoft products can best meet their data and records requirements for a variety of data types - ranging from traditional documents to pictures, audio, video, voice, voice-over-IP, data, database schema, web pages, and XML information. As we look to the future, and all of these data types become increasingly intertwined, locked-in formats like OpenDocument are not well suited to address these varying data types - as the proposed policy itself acknowledges. It's this need for choice and flexibility that led Microsoft to design Office in a way that supports any XML schemas that a customer chooses, a capability lacking in less functional formats.

We would have liked a greater opportunity to explain how openness is possible with Office. We've found a very positive reaction to our open formats and our approach, and there's a growing awareness there.

There has been a very positive reaction to our open formats, although there's still perception from some quarters that we're the enemy of open source. That's just not the case.

We thought it was important to express our concerns. We're looking forward to having the proposal more thoroughly reviewed, and we welcome the opportunity to explain our comments more fully.

We were surprised by the narrowing of the approach to openness, ... There are many other different options that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has here that many other countries and states are doing.

we talked about doing something along the lines of a record label together, maybe me working as the artist/producer while he provided more of the business mind to things, as well as some of his creative input. And here we are.

As such, this unprecedented approach not only prevents impacted state agencies of the Commonwealth from using many critical and well-established technologies but also runs afoul of well-established procurement norms without due consideration for the enormous costs and technical challenges that stem from the proposal.

public records management is to force a single, less functional document format on all state agencies.

This is a fantastic opportunity to work in the game I have a great passion for but also a great belief in.

This is where the rock stuff comes through, ... If something's happening or about to happen, it's gonna come through Smith's. That's probably one of the reasons I gravitate to hanging out around here, just to kind of keep my ear to the ground. There's that rock energy here.

As we look to the future, and all of these data types become increasingly intertwined, locked-in formats like OpenDocument are not well suited to address these varying data types -- as the proposed policy itself acknowledges. ... We would advise the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to do a thorough evaluation of the costs and benefits before making such a major shift.

The ODF Alliance (Sun, IBM and their friends) apparently want to push ODF as an 'exclusive' standard to the detriment of all others vs. enabling choice among formats such as PDF from Adobe, Open XML, HTML and others.

They come in at the beginning of the week, we evaluate them, we put them in a band, we work with them one on one, we get them on and off the stage and teach them how to work together as a band,