September 1, 2005

Modern Boston Tea Party: Microsoft Overboard!

Slashdot has this piece about the government in MA opting to switch all document storage standards to a combination of PDF and OpenOffice:

"The switch to open formats such as these was needed to ensure that the state could guarantee that citizens could open and read electronic documents in the future, according to Massachusetts - something that was not possible using closed formats. The proposal, which is open for comment until the end of next week before it takes effect, would represent a big boost for open source software such as Open Office, which is created by volunteer programmers and made available free of charge."

This is a fantastic idea and another win for Open Source over draconian closed standards. I hope to see this repeated elsewhere both in business and government.