The Boston Tea Party of 2005

Posted by VISITOR on Oct 15, 2005 12:50 PM EDT
http://www.technetra.com/; By Alolita Sharma
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The State of Massachusetts recently adopted the OpenDocument Format (ODF) setting a landmark precedent to support open standards for all document exchange between the state and its customers -- businesses, citizens and other government entities. This decision signals a big win for open source software (OSS) and open standards adoption in government.

The State of Massachusetts recently adopted the OpenDocument Format (ODF) setting a landmark precedent to support open standards for all document exchange between the state and its customers -- businesses, citizens and other government entities. This decision signals a big win for open source software (OSS) and open standards adoption in government.



No taxation without representation. The decision by the modern state recalls the signature event of an earlier Massachusetts: the Boston Tea Party of 1773 where American "Sons of Liberty", dressed up as Mohawk Indians, jumped onto British East India Company ships and dumped 45 tons of tea into the Boston harbor to protest King George III's increase in taxation on the American colonies. Throwing overboard proprietary document formats is the equivalent message to the kings of today's software industry that the right to freedom and open standards for documents and data is worth fighting for. What Massachusetts has done may be more effective in practice than all of the anti-trust activity to date of the US Department of Justice (DOJ)...



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