Denmark Chooses OpenDocument Format

Seahawk was one of several readers to write in with news of Denmark's decision to embrace ODF. "On Friday morning Denmark decided to choose ODF over Microsoft's OOXML. For now the decision is only effective for governmental institutions, but regions and municipalities will most likely follow some time in the future. The decision has unfolded over a period of four years, and many open source advocates were fearing the worst, but it looks like the minister finally caved in and listened to what a lot of people were saying." While in transition away from Microsoft Office formats, the Danes may find use for this new OpenOffice integration guide (sent in by reader AdeleWard).

Comments

Re:Wrong decision

[Kjella]

That was very creative, but I was under the impression that it is the invisible hand of the market that is supposed to select the best product, not the government. In so far that the government should be involved, it should do the least possible to alter the market from what it'd otherwise be. Even though "The more openly available, and widely adopted, and patent unencumbered the format is, the lower the barrier of entry to supporting it is, and the greater the amount of software that can support it will be." may be a positive market intervention, it is none the less a quite substantial intervention which libertarians are generally against. The concept that companies that get a too dominant position and have too much lock-in should be reigned in is more something I expect to find in a European socialist economy than coming from a libertarian.

Re:Queue the Complimentary Office 2k7 Licenses in.

[Kjella]

And what happened with that?

People stopped using it in favor of the one that actually followed the standard, and the MS flavor went away.

Let's try that without the historical revisionism. Microsoft implemented a very buggy and incomplete version that killed Java's reputation, and Sun spent 4 years fighting Microsoft in court to kill the Microsoft JVM until they finally got it to stop shipping a JVM. Eventually there was only Sun's version left, but it was only a bleak shadow of what it could have been.