The Dutch government committed to use Open Standards
Great news! The Dutch government committed to use Open Standards. With equal suitability Free Software (as in FLOSS) is to be preferred above Non-Free Software.
From Dutch Government and Parliament: Open standards in 2008 :
It took a few years, but the Dutch government and parliament agreed yesterday to implement open standards in 2008 according to the “comply or explain” principle. This means that all central government institutions should use open standards from April 2008 onward, unless they have a very good explanation. The new policy isn’t just about open standards. When implementing ICT projects open source software should be taken into account as well and should be chosen when at least equal to that of proprietary software.
Read more :
- Dutch Government and Parliament: Open standards in 2008
- Our governement has seen the light: Open Standards and Open Source!
- Netherlands adopts open-source software
- Thread on ubuntuforums
I also blogged about this in Dutch :
I think i remember reading about this on grocklaw but if im correct it was said that the dutch are considering OOXML as on open standard. Even though it has been specifically denied by the ISO so far. If this is the case this is actually a very very bad thing.
Comment by Elias K Gardner — December 14, 2007 @ 3:38 am
Netherlands Adopts Open-Source Software
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gK-eb7SFzG8QLvOOlfdt_cPMnFmwD8TGNLJ80
Comment by ubuntudemon — December 14, 2007 @ 10:45 pm
Isn’t that the same government that already claims that OOXML is an open standard, or am I confusing it with another country?
Comment by Vadim P. — December 18, 2007 @ 1:25 am