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Australia Mandates Microsoft's Office Open XML

Posted by timothy on from the not-to-be-confused-with dept.

littlekorea writes "The Australian Government has released a common operating environment desktop policy that — among security controls aimed at reducing the potential for leaks of Government data — mandates the ECMA-376 version of Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) standard and productivity suites that can 'read and write' the .docx format, effectively locking the country's public servants into using Microsoft Office. The policy [PDF] also appears to limit desktop operating systems to large, off-the-shelf commercial offerings at the expense of smaller distributions."

1 of 317 comments (clear)

  1. This is why... by GF678 · · Score: 0, Troll

    This is why I can never bring myself to move to Linux and cut ties with Windows entirely. It's just too much hassle when you end up having to interact with content produced using Windows-only software and you cannot guarantee perfect parsing of the file formats used.

    I confess, Windows 7 with Office 2010 has basically meant I've given up. It's time to give up the fight against Microsoft and succumb. There are too many other stresses and important things in life to give a shit anymore about open-source and freedom and whatnot, particularly since you're surrounded by people (real, physical people and not Internet avatars) who don't care about such things and hence you can't have a useful discussion with them about.

    The world is not moving towards greater openness. I don't think we can win anymore. It's fucking depressing.