Noticed this post and link on Digg today. Basically it means that Norwegian government agencies (federal, state and regional) will be required to publish documents in an open format, that is in a format that uses software that is free and accessible to everyone. And that means *not* Microsoft.The formats covered in this regulation, which goes into effect in a year, are:

• HTML for all public information on the Web
• PDF for all documents where layout needs to be preserved
• ODF for all documents that the recipient is supposed to be able to edit

ODF is the one most people won’t recognize. It’s stands for Open Document Format and is essentially the generic version of MS Word. It is available as part of the OpenOffice project suite of freely downloadable office programs. The suite includes Writer, Math, Impress, Draw, Calc and Base.I’ve been using OpenOffice on my Mac for a little over a year now. After forking out a bundle for Adobe Creative Suite I was a bit cash-strapped and wasn’t ready to fork out another bundle for the Microsoft office suite. OpenOffice works beautifully, though I also had to install X11 to my operating system. I still can’t quite figure that out, but it all works and that’s all that matters.  With OpenOffice you can open Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other MS-specific documents without any problem. One issue I found when I first got my Mac was there were no PowerPoint viewers (the free app that allows you to view a presentation) for my operating system. But with OpenOffice I didn’t need to wait for Microsoft to come up with a new viewer app that works with Tiger OSX.I hope this new regulation is the start of a broader movement that will make electronic documents accessible for all. 

• Open Office website