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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2015, @03:45PM
Schools are a training ground for business. Therefore they too use Word.
Nonsense. Schools are supposed to educate people (as in real education, not just turning people into corporate drones), not force them to use proprietary software and proprietary formats that do not allow education. It is awful that it's even allowed for schools or governments to use proprietary software; the only possible reason I can see for bringing in proprietary software is if you want to educate people on how to reverse engineer it (which should be 100% legal).