So another government has decided to eschew Microsoft proprietary standards in favour of open standards of document formatting. This time it is the Belgian government who has mandated use of ODF by September 2007. The migration will start by 1 January 2007.

Belgium is the second government (first country) after the state of Massachussetts to embrace open document format (RFC 2161.) The full text of the proposed standard can be read here. Belgium is a small country by any standards with approximately 10 million users. But industry observers note that it is a significant move as Belgium's capital, Brussels is the head quarters of the European Union. If Belgium starts using ODF exclusively then the othe EU members will have to use software that is compliant with ODF. Interestingly currently neither Microsoft Office not WordPerfect is compliant with the standards though Microsoft has promised to include some compatibility measures and Corel has been a staunch supporter of open standards. As of this writing only OpenOffice and Sun StarOffice are compliant with ODF so it would be interesting to see the response of both Microsoft and Corel.

Already Windows Vista is not recieving any great reviews and I personally am very disappointed in what I saw in Windows Vista and its limitations. Although its only in Beta stage but you get a fair idea of what the final product will be.