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Call for Asia to Adopt ODF

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the it's-all-about-the-file-formats dept.

Malek Indiam points out an article on ZDNet Asia about a push for Asian governments to wean themselves from proprietary file formats. From the article: "An official from the United Nations has called for countries in the Asia-Pacific region to embrace the OpenDocument format. Sunil Abraham, manager of the International Open Source Network (IOSN) at the U.N., told ZDNet Asia that most governments in the region have already stated their support for open standards, through their respective government interoperability frameworks. He hopes that governments in the region will now extend that support and "seriously consider" the OpenDocument Format (ODF)."

8 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. In other news... by advocate_one · · Score: 2, Funny

    Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates announce whirlwind tours of the far east...

    --
    Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
  2. Who cares? We do. by HugePedlar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One might ask 'who cares', but the rising techological literacy of Asian countries, coupled with the increasing outsourcing of Western companies, means that these nations' policies might well encourage Western governments and companies to standardise on open formats as well. After all, if your Asian employees are already using it and it's cheap, why not make it company policy too.

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    Argh.
    1. Re:Who cares? We do. by mrchaotica · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In addition, if the rest of the world standardizes on Free Software and open formats -- a possibility that seems less far-fetched every day -- the peer pressure might be enough to keep the US from going off the DRM and Treacherous Computing deep end. I can only hope...

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      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    2. Re:Who cares? We do. by ronanbear · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The general public use whatever software they're told to use by everyone else. When it changes it can change relatively quickly and it's very chicken and egg. By the time people even notice it happening it can be too late to change. They never know, understand or care anything about software except to use what everyone else thinks is the best tool for the job.

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      the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
  3. Better use of UN time by alienmole · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why is the UN wasting its time on Asia-Pacific, when it could be recommending that Israel and Hezbollah "seriously consider" adopting Microsoft Office? The shared trauma of dealing with Office will surely bring the two sides closer, eventually leading to a ceasefire after Clippy the paperclip pops up one too many times.

    1. Re:Better use of UN time by HugePedlar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Maybe the UN is composed of many different departments which are capable of doing more than one thing at a time?

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      Argh.
    2. Re:Better use of UN time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Actually, it contains many departments which incapable of doing anything.

  4. Asia is too big. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    About one half of humankind lives in Asia. If linux adoption is to be advocated continent by continent, I propse that we first take over Antarctica. The advantages are clear: 1) With the high proportion of scientists in the local population, linux is already in a good position to take over the remaining computers of the Antarctican continent. 2) Penguins.