To: crisinfo@comunica.org,

When will civil society orgs be doing the same? :)

frt rgds

--c.a.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25845

>Massachusetts dumps Microsoft Office
>
>It's the Boston Tea Party again
>
>By: Nick Farrell <javascript:__doPostBack('_ctl0$lnkEmailForm','')>
>Thursday 01 September 2005, 07:58
>
>*THE STATE* of Massachusetts, the people who brought you the Boston
>tea party, have joined in another revolution against good King
>Billy's Office software.
>
>The state government has decided that all electronic documents saved
>and created by state employees have to use open formats from the
>beginning of 2007.
>
> From then every state document must be in PDF or using Open Office
> formats. The big idea is to make sure that every citizen one can
> open and read electronic documents, something that it is convinced
> that VoleWare cannot do.
>
>Microsoft is clearly worried. A lot of people live in Massachusetts
>and that is a big thumbs up for open sauce. However Vole is hoping
>to get around the problem by applying recognition from a technology
>industry standards body for recognition of its own formats as open standards.
>
>However, since the new formats, soon to be seen in the next version
>of Office, will still include some proprietary elements, and are
>specifically excluded under the Massachusetts proposal.
>
>More in the /Financial Times/, here
><http://news.ft.com/cms/s/e8fc5cce-1a85-11da-b7f5-00000e2511c8.html>
Nearby Tue Sep 6 11:43:03 2005