Open Source Petitions

As I was using Google reader to look through blogs I subscribe to, and blogs my friends thought worthy of sharing I somehow landed on ooxml which, if you have not been following is a good response to what appears to be Microsoft abusing an international standards body. I would say the petition on their site is worth signing.

More importantly that site led me to another site that is petitioning governments in general to adopt a better mindset towards software. The Hague Declaration is good stuff, and articulates many of my ideas about why open source matters and why people should care. Awareness is a big part of bringing about change. If you like the petition at least encourage people to read it.

2020 update

Microsoft loves open source now, and MS office is losing relevance quickly. Libre Office is pretty dang good, but fewer people care, and file formats are not something I think people worry about much these days. If people want to collaborate on office docs they often use Google docs or some similar cloud thing, and the files are something that rarely get exported, right?