[mtgx]

None of those problems are anywhere close to being insurmountable. You just need competent people in the government to implement the right policies and ask for the right things in laws.

Just an example: if the EU as a whole said that by mid-2018, all document services and tools that work in the EU need to support ODF by default, then that is what would happen, and this issue would disappear.

The problem is you still have too many people that aren't too interested in making this happen in the EU, and even fewer people that have the competence and power to require all the right stuff to make it work. But all of it could be fixed with enough public pressure and political will.

Your solution seems to be to just throw our hands up in the air, because there's too little momentum right now to make the necessary changes.

[dhimes]

None of those problems are anywhere close to being insurmountable. You just need competent people in the government

What's the word that means the opposite of tautology again?

[matt4077]

What's the word that means "uninformed person spewing tired cliches" again?

The EU bureaucracy is actually pretty good regarding open standards. They publish most documents in html/doc and pdf, see for example http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/?uri=CELEX:520...

They have also adopted the Akoma Ntoso standard internally, meaning all legislation is crafted in standardized semantic xml (as well transcripts, court proceedings & decisions etc). The public launch should happen some time early next year, and it'll allow anybody to do the kind of fun stuff you can do with a meticulously annotated, machine-readable history of 40 years of governing.

[dhimes]

I seem to have hit a nerve.

[emp_zealoth]

It is tiring to hear "goobermint so uncompetent" every single thread on HN