Neil McAllister writes on InfoWorld:
Truly, the world is addicted to Microsoft Office. But beginning January 2007, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts plans to kick the habit. That’s the deadline after which all documents used by Massachusetts state government agencies must be stored in open formats, according to broad technology plans issued by the Commonwealth earlier this month. Currently, approved formats include PDF and OpenDocument, a free, XML-based office document standard used by several alternative office suites.
This is debate that’s hotting up as Microsoft is announcing the next release of Office – “Office 12” at it’s Developers’ Conference 🙂