Simon’s Blog

Peter Quinn, CIO of Massachusetts, has resigned his post; effective January 9, 2006. He has been at the centre of the debate surrounding the Massachusetts decision to adopt the OpenDocument format for Office applications, in favour of the Microsoft Office document format. He says he was neither asked nor forced to resign. In other words, he wasn’t fired in everything but name. Rather, he says that a major part of his decision was the recent negative media attention he has received:

Over the last several months, we have been through some very difficult and tumultuous times. Many of these events have been very disruptive and harmful to my personal well being, my family and many of my closest friends. This is a burden I will no longer carry…

I don’t think I have to explain what is likely to have happened here. It’s more than obvious. Mr Quinn is a casualty in a war; and there are often casualities in situations like this. So, from one perspective, this isn’t a big deal. However, I think these events signal that the tactics being employed in this particular battle are rather old-fashioned and (somewhat surprisingly) politically naive. They do little, except belie impressions of reasonable behaviour being made elsewhere. I’m reminded of the following quote:

Before going into battle, understand first the cost of victory

The point is that the cost of winning an individual battle can be so high, that it eventually results in losing an entire war. We don’t yet know the full story leading to Peter Quinn’s resignation, and perhaps we never will. It doesn’t really matter. People have already made up their minds. Whether or not Massachusetts now continues with its current policy regarding document formats, I suspect that in the future, historians may come to see this as pivotal moment…