Cynical Nation

I've long thought it ironic that the state that led the nation in a tax revolt with the Boston Tea Party has now become "Taxachusetts," represented by the likes of Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Barney Franks.

Well guess what? They're starting to redeem themselves a bit, by figuratively dumping Microsoft's proprietary Office formats in the harbor. Let's hope this, like the original Tea Party, is the beginning of a real movement.

THE STATE of Massachusetts, the people who brought you the Boston tea party, have joined in another revolution against good King Billy's Office software.

The state government has decided that all electronic documents saved and created by state employees have to use open formats from the beginning of 2007.

From then every state document must be in PDF or using Open Office formats. The big idea is to make sure that every citizen one can open and read electronic documents, something that it is convinced that VoleWare cannot do.

Microsoft is clearly worried. A lot of people live in Massachusetts and that is a big thumbs up for open sauce. However Vole is hoping to get around the problem by applying recognition from a technology industry standards body for recognition of its own formats as open standards.

However, since the new formats, soon to be seen in the next version of Office, will still include some proprietary elements, and are specifically excluded under the Massachusetts proposal.