British Government Going Open Source For IT Procurement

[Oskuro]

All I can say is... that it has to start somewhere.

All these compatibility issues people keep bringing up wouldn't be there if Microsoft played nice with format standards. Having an increase in market demand for open formats would, in the long run, compel Microsoft to behave.

The alternative is to keep paying Microsoft (or whatever private corporation might pick up the torch in the future) what in practice amounts to ransom money for our documents.

[phongn]

All I can say is... that it has to start somewhere.

All these compatibility issues people keep bringing up wouldn't be there if Microsoft played nice with format standards. Having an increase in market demand for open formats would, in the long run, compel Microsoft to behave.

Recent versions of Office support ODF (imperfectly but improving) and there is full documentation (ISO/IEC 29500-1:2012 and ECMA-376) for OOXML.

The alternative is to keep paying Microsoft (or whatever private corporation might pick up the torch in the future) what in practice amounts to ransom money for our documents.

People choose Microsoft Office for many reasons despite its costs, you know.