"Roy Schestowitz" <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:2211280.9LdVGQltc9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
____/ NoStop on Friday 14 December 2007 02:51 : \____
December 13, 2007 at 1:52 PM EST
AMSTERDAM - The Dutch government has set a soft deadline of April 2008
for
its agencies to start using open-source software - freely distributed
programs that anyone can modify - the Netherlands Economic Affairs
Ministry
said Thursday.
http://tinyurl.com/3ae3ey
I personally believe this isn't groundbreaking stuff. First off all, the
civil servants would be able to wiggle their way out of it by simply
using
the OOXML-to-ODF converter. In fact, this policy could even jump-start
sales
of Office 2007 since the converter only works in Office 2007!
I'd be much more impressed if the Dutch government mandates that all
desktops switch over to Linux, maybe running some Windows program in a
virtual machine for the time being. That would *really* be
earth-shattering
news. So far there are very few mass-migrations in Western nations to
Linux,
and that's disappointing.
