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Participation Required a Microsoft License — Until Citizens Pushed Back
Here’s something that the me that was growing up in the days following World War II never thought I’d say, but gee it’d be nice if the US government could learn to respond quickly to the will of the people the way the EU seems to do.
On Friday, FOSS Force republished an article from The Document Foundation/LibreOffice website about an oversight by the EU Commission that played right into the hands of proprietary software vendors — specifically Microsoft. It was also drop-dead stupid, which might be why the will of the people was so quickly heard and heeded.
The article was by Italo Vignoli, TDF’s co-founder and major spokesperson, and it called the EU Commission out for failing to follow its own rules.
It seems that after years of calling for open standards, vendor neutrality, and digital sovereignty — while recommending open formats for public sector digital services — the Commission pulled something of a boner. It published a form for its citizens to fill out and return, seeking their opinion on the Cyber Resilience Act, which among other things is supposed to protect the EU from things like being held hostage to costly proprietary formats.