A senior state official said Friday that reports about a planned shift to open source software platforms by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts were inaccurate and that the state has no "Freeware Initiative," as stated by a number of software industry lobbying groups opposed to the plan.

Eric Kriss, the state's secretary for administration and finance, said that statements released by groups like the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), based in Washington, D.C., were "very inaccurate." The state is simply considering ways to integrate disparate systems using open standards such as HTTP, XML and Java, he said.

Reports about a plan to favor open source platforms like Linux over proprietary software platforms surfaced in the media last week and claimed that state Chief Information Officer Peter Quinn was instituting a "Freeware Initiative" to invest in open source software such as Linux whenever possible. Those reports followed a leaked memo from Kriss to Quinn, Kriss said.

In that memo, Kriss mentioned Linux but did not say that the state should give any preference to that operating system over proprietary systems such as Windows. No mention of a Freeware Initiative was made in the memo, he said. "I never heard that term. I never said it. We're not pursuing any kind of 'Freeware Initiative' and anyone who is saying that is making inaccurate statements," he said.

"We're seeking systems and components and software functionality that use open standards," he said.

Going forward, the state will evaluate both proprietary and open source products to see how well they fit the Commonwealth's needs, he said.

In evaluating software, the Commonwealth would look at a number of factors including whether it is open source or proprietary software. Among the other factors the Commonwealth will consider are each product's functionality, robustness and cost, he said. When there were open source alternatives to proprietary software that also compare favorably in those other areas, the state would choose those, he said.

"If there are two equally good products and one is available for free, we'd be crazy not to choose that," Kriss said.

However, the Commonwealth might just as easily pass over open source products when proprietary software was clearly superior to the open source alternative or better met the Commonwealth's needs, he said. "The idea is : 'Let the best, most cost-effective technology win,'" he said.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.