Blackmoor Vituperative

A panel of political hacks chaired by Senator Marc R. Pacheco is wailing and gnashing their teeth at Massachusetts’ plan to switch to OpenDocument format by 2007-01-01.

Kriss, who is no longer in state government, said Pacheco’s statements were “filled with inaccurate claims, innuendoes, and unsubstantiated charges […] His charges are false and his recommendations deeply flawed,” Kriss said of the report. “I hope other, more responsible political leaders will quickly see through the political trickery that was so sadly on display today.”

[…]

“‘Senator Pacheco is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law,” said Felix Browne , a Romney spokesman. “We are committed to an open standards approach that fully takes into account all accessibility, cost, and statutory requirements.”

(from The Boston Globe, Panel urges Mass. to delay switch to open-document format)

No matter how well-informed, insightful, and overdue a change may be, there will always be people whose vested interests will be damaged by it, and often those people will be willing to impose suffering on everyone around them in order to fight that change. (RIAA and MPAA are two perfect examples.)

Personally, I think there ought to be an investigation into Senator Marc R. Pacheco’s campaign finances. I would not be surprised at all to find a sizeable (yet perfectly legal) contribution from Microsoft in his coffers.