Massachusetts's authorities might start a revolution should they decide to stick to their decision of using only open source formats for official electronic documents.

Currently, the decision to give up on Microsoft's proprietary formats, doc,.xls or .eml (Word, Excel, Outlook) is not final, but the Massachusetts state authorities would like to have only Open Office and .PDF formats starting from 2007 .

The authorities will take a final decision only at the end of next week; this would represent a warranty that every citizen could use electronic documents.

For OpenOffice, this would mean a big step forward, the suite being used until now only on emergent markets, while for Microsoft, a favorable decision would mean a lot of problems, since it could trigger a chain reaction.

Microsoft plans to launch an Open XML format for the Microsoft Office documents for the next version of the suite, which is due for launch in 2006.


It's highly unlikely that among your favorite applications, there isn't an IM client. There's a broad offer, and even Google has entered the market. This week, Softpedia News is inviting you to choose your favorite IM client.