More OpenDocument News

ZDNet has published an article "OpenDocument could 'turn the world inside out'" on the future potential of the OpenDocument format:
"Tim Bray, the director of Web technologies at Sun, said at the OpenOffice.org conference in Slovenia, that the file format developed by standards body OASIS has the potential to transform the world as much as the World Wide Web did.

"Now we have the potential to explode the world again, to turn everything inside out again, if we get the widespread use across the office desktops of the world, of a common, open, unencumbered, reusable data format, namely OpenDocument. So we could see an explosion over the next decade that is like the Web happening again and that would be fun — I'd love to see that happening," said Bray at the conference."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39223863,00.htm

ZDNet Blogs has an opinion piece on the success of the OpenDocument format:
"Thanks to the public nature of the Commonwealth's everyday business, the proceedings and documentation have provided a rare glimpse into more than just the due diligence process that went into one organization's sweeping IT related initiative, but also into the way that Microsoft responds when a public entity such as a U.S. state government is contemplating a policy that could ultimately mean the ejection of MS-Office — one of the Redmond-based company's primary sources of revenue."

Competitive News Criticsm Of Open

Fox News has an article from Jim Prendergast, executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership (an organisation part funded by Microsoft). The article, titled "Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument", is critical of the move to the OpenDocument format:
"Officials in the state have proposed a new policy that mandates that every state technology system use only applications designed around OpenDocument file formats.

Such a policy might seem like something that should concern only a small group of technology professionals, but in fact the implications are staggering and far-reaching. The policy promises to burden taxpayers with new costs and to disrupt how state agencies interact with citizens, businesses and organizations."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170724,00.html

ZDNet Asia also has an article "Call for M'sian govt to rethink open source policy" regarding the Malaysian governments policy on open source software coming under criticim:
http://www.zdnetasia.com/toolkits/0,39047352,39270644-39094244p,00.htm

Slashdot also has readers opinions on these articles:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/29/1222257

Plan by 13 Nations Urges Open Technology Standards

The New York Times (registration required) has an article detailing an international call for open standards similar to the recent proposal in Massachusetts:
"The 33-page report is a road map for creating national policies on open technology standards, and comes at a time when several countries - and some state governments - are pursuing plans to reduce their dependence on proprietary software makers, notably Microsoft, by using more free, open-source software."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/technology/09open.html?ex=1283918400&en=91f207f077cec245&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Further reporting:
International Herald Tribune: http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/08/business/standards.php
The Inquirer: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26093

ThinkFree Office Think Again

"These obstacles are hard enough to overcome on their own. Added to the failure to live up to claims, they may be enough to prevent ThinkFree from gaining a foothold in a market with strong meritocratic tendencies. Even its availability in Asian languages is not the competitive advantage that it might have been a few years ago."
http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/08/31/1340238.shtml?tid=93