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Japan To Adopt Open Software Standards
em8chel writes "Japan has adopted a policy under which government ministries and agencies will solicit bids from software vendors whose products support internationally recognized open standards. Japan thus becomes the first country in Asia to embrace open software standards (PDF), the OpenDocument Format Alliance says in a press release. ODF managing director Marino Marcich is quoted: 'By giving preference to open software formats such as ODF, it is saying that information should be competitively priced, innovative, and easily available to the widest range of people, now and in the future. We hail Japan for its diligence and vision.' The new guidelines are available (in Japanese) from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry."
How is that any worse than offering free software in exchange for signing the Japanese government up to lifelong legal servitude to messers Stallman and Moglen?
Remember, when you sign a communist software license, Stallan doesn't change. Stallman owns you.
Small correction. The ooxml documentation takes a 747 all by itself. The freebies are ina seperate 747.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Stuff that appears in Japan shows up in the U.S. two years later. Yay!
There are 11 types of people in the world, those who know binaries and those who don't.
Apparently, you're one of those who don't.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Hang on, I thought we *liked* "Open".
Crap. I'm confused.