Left In Lowell

An alert reader sent me a link of an article looking at one of Deval Patrick’s appointees to his Technology transition team, Brian Burke, Microsoft’s Regional Director for Public Affairs.

If you’re just joining this fight mid-program, Massachusetts had become a battleground in the open-source software movement vs. big giant software company (read: Microsoft). This ZDNet blog post gives some (old) details…Romney and his CIO Peter Quinn were opting for Open Document Format, which would open the doors to a number of cheaper open source computer programs which could replace expensive MS Office. (Romney’s peeps occasionally get things right.) The article is old, it says Romney’s favored for reelection, but it gives you an idea.

So to have a Microsoft PR guy [who was known to have shilled for MS] on the team is a little tricky here.

I am heavily for open source software. I’ve used Star Office and it’s a good program (though I do have MS Office myself). In fact, back in the day when I was an admin assistant, Star Office used to help me retrieve MS Office files which had corrupted due to the poor quality of Microsoft’s products (my files had a lot of photos in them, and MS couldn’t handle that for some reason and would sometimes crash). Star Office saved my bacon more than a few times.

I won’t jump to conclusions here, as I do know that Patrick is asking for people of all stripes to be on his teams - people who disagree with him or whose interests do compete. But, I believe that once all the facts are in, open source will be the way to go. With some of the others listed on the team, I expect open source software to get a good hearing. I hope that the new governor’s team will be fair, but this does bear close watching. Brian Burke is a known shill lobbyist for Microsoft, one of the biggest bullies on the block, and I hope his arguments will be taken with a huge grain of salt.

[Update: My reader also sends me another link which has more information on each member of the team, from a poster on Slashdot. His conclusion? Same as mine…that this group should be watched for its final recommendations, but it could be a fair group. By the way, Charles SteelFisher was Patrick’s tech guy, and I think it’s fair to say (though I won’t put words in his mouth) that he “gets it” in regards to open source software.]