Microsoft-Backed Group May Have to Hurry on Plug-Ins

"Accessibility is right at the top of the state's list, along with high document fidelity," said Gary Edwards, a co-founder of The OpenDocument Foundation. "We do think we can handle everything that they're throwing at us."

The November deadline set by Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez for the state to receive plug-ins enabling compatibility between Office and the OpenDocument file format could prove to be too tight for a series of open source plug-ins that Microsoft is funding.