The Netherlands for open source and open standards

One of the original articles is in Dutch, so here is what an English-speaking blog had to share:

Frank Heemskerk, Minister of Economic Affairs, announced today that ODF will be the standard for reading, publishing and the exchange of information for all governmental organisations. The deadline is January 2009.

"Some of these nations have adopted strong pro-ODF policies."This is spectacular news and it would make a nice addition to the Wikipedia article on OpenDocument adoption. Among the countries that are already listed there you have: United States (particularly Massachusetts), United Kingdom (with emphasis on Bristol City Council), Belgium, Finland, Slovakia, Australia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Peru, and Vietnam. Some of these nations have adopted strong pro-ODF policies.

Elsewhere in the news you'll find articles about the rise of Microsoft Office competitors, including OpenOffice, Google Apps, IBM's Lotus Symphony, and Zimbra, which has just been acquired by Yahoo. Here are some headlines from yesterday:

• IBM giving away social networking



• IBM adds e-mail to hosted software offerings



• Google Presentations beta steals wind from Powerpoint sails

It is worth stressing that Google's Web-based products are increasingly becoming a viable alternative to desktop-bound office suites. The company that suffers the most is Microsoft, so it's hardly surprising that it has begun a FUD campaign. That's just how Microsoft handles competitive threats.

Microsoft is launching an anti-Google propaganda campaign.

Here are some more details:

This, of course, brought Google even closer to rivaling Microsoft's Office suite, which has now spurred a reaction from the Redmond software giant. No, its not new software or updates for the popular productivity suite, but rather Microsoft's own reasoning on why businesses should NOT use Google Apps.

We spotted this type of FUD earlier on [1, 2, 3, 4], amid the OOXML/ISO fiasco. A question has also just been raised to ask why Microsoft Office escaped Europe's wrath.

Over the past decade, government sanctions and monitoring efforts on both sides of the pond have helped level the playing field for competitors, allowing Linux, for example, to gain significant market share in the server operating system software market and Firefox to achieve respectable share of the web browser market against Microsoft’s once ubiquitous Internet Explorer.

How did Office get left out of the equation?

Keen observation there.