What about PDF? Been around for ages, has been an open spec for about half of that time. Practically everyone has a reader for it, or can easily get one, a fact recognised by the many governments and organisations that distribute soft-copy documents in PDF format.

Is it your contention that because Sun has OpenOffice - or StarOffice if you want to pay for support - there will be a greater uptake?

avocadia have you got a PDF writer?
I get the feeling Nickolas bought a beta video!

the reason pdfs exist is to permit people using operable files from differnent programs (photoshop, illusrtator, cad programs, word) to transfer them to othes without those programs. for example i can transmit a presentation to a client without them needing the program i used to create it, which it is unlikely that they will own. however pdf isnt really an operable file type, you cant do much with it, and it retains none of the characteristics of the original. so if i pdf'd a word doc to someone they cannot open or modify it in word.

what i think this article is suggesting is an open standard that would be modifyable at both ends. i.e between differnent word processing programs.

> avocadia have you got a PDF writer?

Yes. But I could also write my document in MS Word and use any number of free tools to transform it into a PDF.

Microsoft got a bigger challenge with IBM GSA moving towards a strategy that rips the heart of the organisation out and trevialise all other IT players (Microsoft, SAP, Oracle).

Google positioning the search engine as the 2006 Operating system is another deadly danger.

I think we will see Microsoft declining at a much faster rate than they ever thought possible

"open standards are an “overriding imperative” of democracy itself". Good grief, how on earth did democracy manage before the advent of computers? Methinks the Massachusettians are being a bit precious here.

At least it's a change from the usual anti-Microsoft arguments. Nick, as an economist you probably followed the US anti-trust cases against Microsoft, which attracted comment by many leaders in the field such as Hal Varian. The general drift of comment and analysis by economists in this field was that the advent of Microsoft led to great reductions in price and increased value for money for consumers, few considered that there were serious public benefit grounds for the anti-trust actions.