The heart of the agreement concerns opening access to Office 2003's patented XML extensions. "That was a great concern to us," said Quinn. "We were going to create things that would only be accessed by a specific vendor's reader. We've actually worked through that ... Microsoft was very amenable to the conversation, we're very excited about where we hope this is going to take us all as we go forward, yet at the same time it preserved their intellectual property and rights."
Even though Massachusetts has been a leader in government use of open-source software, Quinn said that protecting intellectual property is important to the commonwealth's software industry. "This is [about] making sure that information is accessible to everybody," said Quinn.
Sources close to the Massachusetts negotiations indicate that the changes will apply to the worldwide license in perpetuity, and that Microsoft will announce the agreement at its event for public-sector CIOs that starts tomorrow.
