It's a big day for open source fans here in the U.S. of A., where an area known to be a hotbed of rebels (remember the Boston Tea Party?) has taken aim at the world's dominant data-processing software suite and formally eschewed its use. That's right: Massachusetts has given Microsoft the boot; opting instead to use OpenOffice, a free suite designed to be interoperable with Office programs but based on a file format which is publicly available and not proprietarry to any one individual company.
The government offices will still use the Windows operating system, but they will install OpenOffice and distribute public-record documents in its so-called "open" data structure. This change will remove the commonwealth's (yeah, it's one of Those Four that aren't actually "states") dependence on Microsoft software, in addition to removing the requirement that citizens possess the Office suite in order to access and view public records.
So when will they all go to Linux as an OS?
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