Belgian government choses Open Document as standard
2009-01-14 3:39:21 | Tags: belgium, odt, open document, open office, Open Source | Comments »
The government of Belgium ahead of any nation chose to have Open Office their standard and official software instead of Microsoft’s Office Suit. This decision came after the Open Document format was ratified by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) ahead of Microsoft’s XML format that probably needs to wait still some years to get the same rate as OD.
This is a great news for freebee lovers, as I am. I don’t really buy softwares because usually all paying software has a free alternative. I pay only for Windows operating system because I don’t get along with Linux. And I paid for Vegas Video software because there was no really good free alternative for video editing and production. The rest is all freeware. I have a bunch of them and with most of them I am very satisfied. They served me well thoughout the years.
In US, the Obama administration also asked about the benefits of open source software in governmental institutes, but I don’t know if they adopted it as Belgium did. Anyway, Belgian people shook down the mess from the freeware and through a cake into the face of the old age Microsoft Office standard. And that’s great news. I also use Open Office myself for years and I’m just satisfied with it. The software had some lacks of features and their look was not as Word or Excel. This changed over the year as they partnered up with Sun Microsystems and their latest version is not far from Microsoft Office’s usability and look.
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