Summary: Exciting news from Latvia, confirming that the country is indeed committed to decisions which were made regarding free access

MANY congratulations go to the Latvian people, some of whom regularly send us mail with valuable input and an appeal for help in the form of coverage that sheds light on what goes on there. Techrights covered Latvia in posts such as:

• Latvia's Digital Independence Under Attack by Microsoft
• ODF Alliance Newsletter: Latvia and UK Join the ODF Bandwagon
• Ballmer and Co Meet Officials in Kyrgyzstan, Latvia; Microsoft Ukraine Curses FOSS
• Chinese and Latvian Governments Promote Free(dom) Software and GNU/Linux
• Austria and Switzerland Complain About Microsoft Lock-in, Latvia and Assam Escape Lock-in

Now we have some more good news from Latvia:

• Apple and Google and ODF

  I’m in Latvia today speaking at the Latvian Open Technology Association annual conference – my slides are online. The speaker before me was from the government and made an important announcement; that from now on, all government departments in Latvia must accept documents in ODF.





• ODF Interoperability: Maidenhead ODF Plugfest

  The fifth ODF Plugfest will take place in Maidenhead (UK) in the Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, on February 24/25th 2011.

In addition to these important updates from Phipps and Galoppini, recently we mentioned that the Document Foundation had joined OpenDoc Society. The future looks bright for ODF. ⬆