Belgian Gov't requires ODF From 09/2008

An anonymous reader writes "The Belgian government has decided all government agencies will be required to use only open document standards from September 2008 onwards. One year earlier, they should be able to read them. In practice this means only ODF will be supported, although OpenXML will be considered if it becomes an accepted standard, and enough applications use it. According to a Belgian Microsoft-spokesman, Microsoft is considering supporting ODF (article in Dutch)."

Comments

Yeah, right.

[SpooForBrains]

According to a Belgian Microsoft-spokesman, Microsoft is considering supporting ODF (article in Dutch)

Four little words. Cold day in Hell. Some reason will be found in a few months to delay the decision until Microsoft's format can be considered instead. When it comes to governments, money still talks ... *sigh*

of course, I'd LOVE to be proved wrong, but where is the great German Linux migration, hmm?

Re:Yeah, right.

[fishdan]

The point is that once it has become an issue, it will always be considered as an alternative -- much like the spread of Firefox. Even if odf fails in Germany (which I'm not conceding yet btw), fails in Massachussetts, fails in Argentina, etc etc, one day it will succeed somewhere.

What's really needed here is more than just a top level city/state/country decision. How many people are using odf in their daily lives? What killed WordPerfect was that they could not open Word Documents. Try sending out a few odf's every now and then and do YOUR part to show that it is being used. When you get the email back saying that it could not be opened, you'll have your OpenOffice and Open Document speech all ready to go. "Open Office opens all MSFT documents PLUS odf and does x y and z!"

"considering"

[gEvil (beta)]

MS is "considering" supporting ODF. They will continue to "consider" it and will go so far as to "almost promise" that ODF support will come. Once the Belgian government signs another contract with Microsoft based on the "near promises" and "strongly worded statements indicating that MS will indeed support ODF," Microsoft will decide that it's not feasible. They simply won't have the resources to devote to such a task.

Not yet

[WindBourne]

What is needed is critical mass. Having a USA state and a few small countries (same size as a USA state) move to this is no big deal to MS. Yet.

What is needed is a country like Japan, China, or EU to move to this. Then the party is over.

Re:Critical Mass

[ozmanjusri]

Too bad the 10+ billion dollar a year party's over for the folks up in Redmond.

It's not though. It must be clear, even to Microsoft, that the world needs open and standard formats. It must be evident, even to them, what it is costing government and industry to retain the current closed, proprietary formats.

What they have to weigh that against though, is that every hour they can delay the inevitable change, they bank revnues in excess of a million dollars. Every day they stall competition, they rake in almost thirty million dollars.

One day Microsoft will have to compete on merit instead of format lockin, but until then, every hour of delay they can engineer is a million dollar win for them.