Tuesday 30 March 2010

Document Freedom Day - let's celebrate and ask for more

Never was document freedom easier to get than today with the open document format (ODF) available for some years. It was originally developed as an open standard in OASIS where it is also continuously maintained in the respective technical committee. And it was submitted and approved as an ISO standard.

Tomorrow, March 31, is again "Document Freedom Day". It is clearly a day to celebrate. Document freedom is an idea, a concept that has got momentum. The open document format is essential for efficient automatic data processing since the data format is openly laid down; it supports competitiveness and choice since everyone can implement the standard and offer innovative competitive technologies on the level of the implementation; it thus prevents single vendor lock-in and prevents that people and citizens need to buy one specific software from a single vendor for reading, editing or crafting documents.

Document freedom is what is needed. Public authorities started to take this up. This is the right way to go forward and should be supported by all of us.

So join in and celebrate Document Freedom Day on March 13 and make this day a starting point for yet another successful year for open document formats and document freedom, promoting more take up of the ODF and progress on openness in this very relevant area.

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