[odf-discuss] all government departments in Latvia must accept documents in ODF

[robert_weir at us.ibm.com]

odf-discuss-bounces at opendocumentfellowship.com wrote on 01/24/2011 
02:50:17 PM:
> 
> Via Simon Phipps Blog: 
>  
> 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.
> http://webmink.com/2011/01/18/apple-and-google-and-odf/
>  
> Anyone have thoughts on this mess  "Australia mandates Microsoft's 
> Open Office XML" ?
>  

They are in an untenable position.  If they wanted merely to define a 
desktop environment that requires Microsoft Office, then they should say 
that.  But legally they might not be able to do that.  Ditto for saying 
"Microsoft Office-compatible".

So to get around these problems they seem to be requiring Ecma-376, with a 
wink and nod, with the assumption this is an alternative way to say 
"Microsoft Office-compatible".  But it isn't. 

So this is a disservice to other vendors.  If I wanted to bid for a 
contract, and in preparation I invested in adding Ecma-376 support to my 
app, and achieved 100% conformance with that specification, it would not 
be compatible with Microsoft Office and would be useless for the customer. 


So I think the core of the problem is that they want to specify a 
requirement for compatibility with a nonstandardized proprietary product, 
but by choice or by policy they need to specify that requirement by 
reference to a standard, and the standard they picked was the wrong 
standard.

-Rob