During FISL, I attended a talk by Erwin Tenhumberg about the Open Document Format. He talked about how OASIS worked to get an ISO for ODF and how important that is in terms of data longevity and data freedom.
Now, think about that for a second. Data freedom. Sounds cool, doesn't it?
Like a march of 0's and 1's burning their underbraws in public - bits do have gender, they're females, I'm convinced.
But back to the point.
When you (or your lawyer) asks for some public document while filing a complaint because your tax returns are taking too long to process, in what format is that stored?
Better yet, what format or application does your government use to store information about _you_?
Do they use proprietary stuff that you need ($$) access to in order to view it?
Why should you have to buy someone's product to read public information produced by a public institution?
What if the company that makes such product goes under in two years?
How would the government understand those docs?
Reverse engineer it?
Keep using legacy versions of the software?
Because of those reasons, and many others, governments and institutions all over the world are adopting the Open Document Format and OpenOffice as their standard.
Because it's free, because it's an international standard and because it should be open.
More here:
Oasis ODF Adoption Committee
ODF Alliance
