Summary: Another Asian country decides to become vendor neutral when it comes to documents which government agencies handle

"Mandatory State use of ODF coming in 2011," says Rob Weir (IBM) regarding this new article and there are already some blog posts about it (in English). The translation says: "When all of the computers in government agencies completed a migration to Open Source at the end of 2011, the government also plans to migrate all the important documents of the country using open document formats (Open Document Format / ODF)."

Further to Weir's rant about Microsoft's FUD against ODF, The Source had this to say about Microsoft's strategy:

Lie. Lie Big. And Stick to It.

One of the things Mr. Weir points out is that through a simple Google search, it’s easy to see how a troop of zombie “tech journalists”, bloggers, and astroturfers simply parrot Microsoft talking points – right down to the exact phrasing.

(The audacity of Microsoft complaining that someone else is “restricting choice” is nearly as amusing as when Microsoft complains of “Google’s monopoly status”. )

Separately, one reader of this site claimed that he explained to Google "the problems they were bringing in by hiring Microsofters."

“[T]here are problems with [Google] not indexing ODF and doing a terribly poor job of it.”
      --Anonymous"Also," he said, "the supply of skilled people is drying up. Not just in IT, but the drought is especially hard in IT."

This reader confirmed that "there are problems with [Google] not indexing ODF and doing a terribly poor job of it."

We truly hope that Google -- like Indonesia and many other countries -- will realise that ODF is here to stay and to thrive (we posted a couple of ODF files this morning). Sooner or later Google will have to accept it fully. Public pressure on Google would help accelerate this. ⬆