Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> __/ [ John Bailo ] on Friday 23 June 2006 16:11 \__
>
> > http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-6087275.html?part=rss&tag=6087275&subj=news
> >
> > "From September 2008 on, all document exchanges within the services of
> > the Belgian Government will have to be in an open, standard format,
> > according to the proposal. ODF is the only accepted standard in the
> > proposal. Earlier drafts of the Belgian proposal had treated ODF and
> > Microsoft's own Open XML format (which is to be included in Office 2007)
> > on equal footing."
>
> It's happening faster than imagined, or faster than ODF gets implemented
> (properly). One nation at a time, openness is like a plague. There are
> dependencies in comminication, whether it is a language, a format, a
> realisation of principles or demand/envy from the public. Some other
> countries in Europe (other than Denmark) have considered similar steps, but
> have made no official statements, yet. The scandinavian are already opposing
> to iTunes monopoly and DRM. France likewise.
This is good stuff. If a bunch of European states do this
individually, of their own accord - ODF implementation, forcing
interoperability issues with online music providers, driving DRM to
extinction - then there's a good chance it'll be adopted officially by
the European Union or European Commission which will basically /force/
it onto any nations which are shy of making such moves because they're
in love with Microsoft too much... There are some countries in Europe
which would happily go down the DRM, intellectual property, zero rights
path if they could. I really really hope that enough of their
neighbours stop them from going down that path.
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