In the same week that a cover-story from ZDNet revealed that a major reason for not disclosing a migration from Microsoft to Open-Source products is the expectation of PR backlash, we see exactly what Ingrid Marson described in principle occuring in Boston.
Peter J Quinn is famous for being the IT officer in Boston who first proposed migrating the state’s thousands of workstations from Microsoft Windows and Office over to Linux and OpenDoc. While this is bound to be an expensive migration, all of the experts agree that keeping state documents in a free and open format like OpenDoc is likely to be the best way to ensure that documents remain readable for the forseeable future.
For having the temerity to suggest buying less Microsoft products, it appears that Peter has the latest latest victim of a powerful PR machine.
Of course big companies like microsoft have people to do their dirty work for them, and in this case it’s globe staff-writers Stephen Kurkjian and Robert Weisman, who no doubt became jealous of Maureen O’Gara’s reputation for bottom-of-the-barrel muckraking.
Strangely enough, their article makes no mention at all of the conflict which has made Massachusetts the focus of attention of both Microsoft and the Open-Source companies. The authors no-doubt felt it would undermine their story to mention that Peter has proposed a migration away from Microsoft products and this would cost the software monopoly many millions in annual revenue. More seriously, this would allow Microsoft’s rivals to get a foot in the door and establish some serious competition.
It’s not a surprise that Microsoft have unleashed their full brigade of spin-doctors, publicists and lobbyists to drag any who oppose them into the gutter.
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