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Microsoft could get the boot from the French government if a new recommendation from an official advisor is adopted.
DISIC (Direction interministérielle des systèmes d'information et de communication de l'État) has recommended that French authorities ditch Microsoft Office tools in favour of the Open Document Format (ODF). DISIC is responsible for harmonising and reducing the costs of all state computers, including government ministries, state and regional departments and local authorities, and sees ODF as the best way to make them all interoperable.
According to sources, an initial draft of the report envisaged outlawing Microsoft's Open XML altogether, although with some agencies using tools specifically developed for use with Open XML, DISIC relented.
However, the final version strongly encourages the phasing out of Microsoft's ware in favour of ODF.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by ledow on Saturday July 25 2015, @12:06PM
AKA "How to get a discount on your licensing renewal from Microsoft"
Why would you bother to ban Microsoft tools, so long as the end-result was saved in ODF?
The fact that it's mentioned means it's either a) a direct threat to MS or b) a way to generate bad press for them because of an unexpectedly large bill.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @12:41PM
It also could be to reduce compatibility issues with formatting differences between .odt and .doc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @03:28PM
It's not 2004 any more. Everything can open .doc and .docx files. They're a de facto standard for shoving documents around networks; even and iPhone can display them natively.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:00PM
Libre/Open Office do not handle them perfectly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @08:18AM
either that or LibreOffice is opening them perfectly and Microsoft Office doesn't comply with it's own document format specification
would it really be that surprising?
(Score: 1) by tekk on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:43PM
Most plain documents work perfectly, but in my experience everything goes to hell once you start throwing tables around. The Libreoffice algorithm for handling tables is somehow different from Office's, so they all end up the wrong size and don't match; OpenOffice's is even worse.
(Score: 1) by tekk on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:49PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @12:52PM
I don't think this is a way to get more licenses or else it wouldn't have been pushed through so aggressively.
This appears to be an agency with it's head very much together, microsoft is a creation of a (hostile?) foreign power, and it doesn't work for shit with ANYTHING else.
The ms .doc format was mutated during competition to remove its ability to be easily read, this maneuver made it untenable for most operations that require interoperability.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @01:58PM
Translation: Proprietary software to squeeze more money out of your pocket into M$ piggybank.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @02:51PM
Why? Because the government has no business using proprietary software or formats.