From the Financial Times:

The state of Massachusetts has laid out a plan to switch all its workers away from Microsoft’s Word, Excel and other desktop software applications, delivering what would be one of the most significant setbacks to the software company’s battle against open source software in its home market.

The state said on Wednesday that all electronic documents “created and saved” by state employees would have to be based on open formats, with the switch to start at the beginning of 2007.

Wow. The Commonwealth joins Beijing and others. Anything that spurs competition and openness in desktop apps is good, IMO. (Thanks to Amanda Michel for the link.)

(PS: “Boots” in the title is a sort-of autoantonym.) [Technorati tags: microsoft wordplay]

Categories: Uncategorized dw