Business & Behördenkongress (Mi, 03.05.2006)

The Massachusetts Open Source Initiative

von Leon Shiman (shiman associates)

Mittwoch, 03.05.2006, Saal 6.2, 17:00-18:00 Uhr

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts (USA) has required the use of ODF for Executive Branch Documents by 1 January 2007. We will explain the origins and growth of the Massachusetts Open Standards Policy and it's relationship to "free and open source" software. The critical role of Accessibility requirements wil be described, the active role of the vendor community, and the present obstacles to implementation.

A detailed discussion of policy development and implementation. We will include: a description of the technical and political barriers to implementation; technical and business perspectives from the free and open source community, from the vendors, and from government; a review of accessibiliity support in current desktop techologies; the role of free and open source support, and the structure of Government IT infrastructure. We will also consider the role of public sector policy in defining the future of IT, review legal and licensing issues in procurement, discuss ODF and PDF as "open standards", and the role of "free and open source" development in defining "open standards".

Finally, we hope to show the importance of the role of government and public sector in open source and open standards implementation strategy.

Über den Autor Leon Shiman:

Advisor to Commonwealth of Massachusetts (USA) Information Technology Division on open source policy and implementation. Director and Secretary of X.Org Foundation. CEO Shiman Associates, Consultants. Developer of Media Application Server (MAS) for X.Org. Moderator or LinuxWorld Expo Government Day programs. Formerly, Director of Computing Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, MIT; and CTO, Malden Mills Industries.
Ph.D., MIT, Department of Mathematics.