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Golly, Was I Too Cynical?

Ten days ago I wrote about the state of Massachusetts' reversed its position on rejecting Microsoft Office in favor of the Open Document Format. I've lived in the state long enough to be extremely cynical about Massachusetts state politics -- although I prefer to think of it as "realistic." I am shocked by the latest development in the controversy. The good guys actually appear to have won one. Maybe I was TOO cynical?

Nah, that's impossible in this state. But it does appear that we've gotten about as close as you can come to a good decision out of the Statehouse: the Romney administration is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.

In a blog entry headed IBM Can't Win With A Thin Envelope I noted that Eric Kriss, a software entrepreneur who formulated the pro-ODF policy while he was head of the state's department of Administration and Finance, and Peter Quinn, who supported Kriss as director of the state's Informational Technology Division, were being sacrificed to Gov. Mitt Romney's presidential ambitions, with Quinn being offered up as a sacrificial lamb, under investigation for supposed conflicts of interest for taking a lot of trips outside the state.

But TechWeb's David Gardner reports that Quinn has been exonerated. Kriss told The Boston Globe that Quinn was traveling because he was in demand as a conference speaker. "I knew of every trip that Peter was taking and I approved them all," he said. "He was in demand at most of these because of the path . . . we were taking. People in other states were anxious to hear about the Massachusetts experience."

I'm still cynical enough to suspect that Quinn's innocence isn't what saved him. With Romney already running hard enough for the Republican nomination that reporters around the Statehouse are marking the days he's in the state on the calendar, he was under attack from some Democrats for doing exactly the same thing he was accusing Quinn of. He probably decided that even though he wanted to do Microsoft a favor, he didn't need to give the Democrats any more ammunition.

And I'm still cynical enough to make this prediction: We'll see a couple of dozen more state governments toy with anti-Microsoft, pro-ODF policies now that the pros in Boston have showed them exactly how to milk the Microsoft cash cow.

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