OpenDocument standard reaches state government

[Adam Russell]

 >>At 11:27 AM 9/23/2005, Rich Braun wrote:
 >
 >>>>There was an official announcement yesterday, reported on page E3 
of today's
 >>>>Boston Globe, about an initiative many of us have already heard 
about.  The
 >>>>Commonwealth of Massachusetts has come out cannons blazing against 
Microsoft,
 >>>>Adobe et al in the battle to eliminate the use of proprietary 
file-format
 >>>>standards for legal documents in the government's archives.
 >
 >>
 >>You can read the docs here:
 >>
 >>        http://www.mass.gov/Aitd/
 >
 >
 >There is some perspective presented here:
 >
 >        http://www.consortiuminfo.org/bulletins/sep05.php#feature

I don't think that the idea of open standards for documents is anything 
newer than a few decades or so.
I once worked for a company that made its initial fortune doing work 
with sgml
for the department of energy.
Or that is at least how the story went as told to me. By the time I 
worked there they had moved into
content management systems for online content. Anyway, a quick google 
seems to reveal that
the DOE still uses sgml.
http://xml.coverpages.org/doe-tags.html
Besides the obvious opportunity to make fun of big companies that are 
disliked by many
the whole concept is a big yawner. Like so many things, what was old is 
now new again.