A new law has been passed in Norway which will make Government, state and regional agencies, authorities and services start publishing documents using the following open formats: HTML, ODF and PDF. They will be able also publish in other formats, but they must always publish in one of these formats from January 1st 2009. Futhermore, in 2014 the published documents by institutions must have been converted and made available in one of the three formats. These mandates will make every citizen able to feel free to choose which software they want to use to get access to public information. Using open formats in publication doesn’t force people to do use a particular software (in many cases private software).

I have just one objection, PDF is not a truly open format. The PDF format is maintained by Adobe solely. It’s true the PDF specification is a published specification, but an open format is generally maintained and added to by a community. Anyway, I’m proud of the Norwigian goverment.

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