Since Scott McNealy doesn’t have his own blog, I’ll post the email he sent to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts today.

Peter J. Quinn
ITD Director & Chief Information Officer
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
State House, Room 373
Boston, MA 02133

Dear Mr. Quinn:

I am writing on behalf of Sun Microsystems to support and applaud the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on the publication of the Public Review Draft of the ETRM v3.5. Both the process and the outcome provide thought leadership for the public sector across America and around the world.

We feel that requiring the use of an office document format, OpenDocument 1.0, which is standardized by a public process, completely free of legal encumbrances, already implemented in multiple products, not controlled by any one vendor, and on its way to being an ISO standard is enlightened and will pay long-term benefits to the citizens of Massachusetts. These benefits include preserving office document accessibility to the widest audience and for the longest term; an affirmation of the value of open standards in preserving choice and interoperability in software applications. This is also evidence of the soundness of your Enterprise Open Standards Policy, which outlines your rationale for adopting open standards.

Some may contend that the decision is unfairly dictating a software preference. This is entirely wrong; the guidelines make it clear that any applications need only support an open, unencumbered document format. Your guidelines do not limit any vendor’s ability to compete for state business because the required open formats are available equally to all,and participation in their development is equally open to all.

In closing, we’d like to thank the Commonwealth for including us in this process. Please don’t hesitate to call on Sun again in future.

Sincerely,
Scott McNealy
Chairman and CEO
Sun Microsystems, Inc.


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September 09, 2005
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