When governments maintain their public records electronically, does a member of the public have to buy something from a specific company to read those records? The rational, fair, democratic answer has to be "no."

The Massachusetts executive branch agrees in blunt and perceptive language: "A public record, once stored electronically, must not require a proprietary computer program to read it; it should be readable by many different word processors, spreadsheets and other productivity applications, regardless of vendor."

Simple, isn't it? A public record on paper requires no one to buy anything. Everyone can read it. And it more or less keeps forever. That's a good standard, and Massachusetts will soon require public records be held in OpenDocument Format.

from C|Net