The subject of open document standards grows in importance not only for the technically- minded, but for anyone who uses a computer to work on editable documents. Across the board, standards are crucial.

Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global grassroots effort to promote and build awareness of the importance of free document formats in particular and open standards in general. If you have ever received a document from a friend that your software could not open, then you know the frustration of proprietary formats.

The problem with the battle between HD-DVD and BLU-RAY was they were identical standards for high-definition video players. The arguments over high-definition digital video standards has a salutary lesson for the world of document formats. Once the dominant owner of all document formats, the ubiquitous .DOC, .XLS and .PPT file types, Microsoft is attempting to force all computer users to standardize on their latest efforts. This new format goes by the unwieldy name of Office Open XML (OOXML).

New York has become the latest U.S. state to ponder whether to use open standards for government document formats, though the move is not necessarily good news for proponents of the ISO standard ODF (Open Document Format).

Is lack of standards compliance an anti-trust issue? The Opera folks think so. Yesterday, the Norwegian browser-maker submitted an anti-trust complaint against Microsoft to the European Commission.

Today, activists in 37 cities around the world are raising awareness for Open Standards and open document formats. In workshops, talks and other events, they are explaining why Open Standards and Free Software are crucial to a free and competitive information society. "It's great to see the power of the community behind Document Freedom Day", says campaign coordinator Fernanda Weiden.

Document Freedom Day is a global day for document liberation. It will be a day of grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of Open Document Formats and Open Standards in general. Every year on the last wednesday in March, we celebrate his day.

Some commenters think I was unfair to IBM in my last post. There I took Big Blue to task for its announcement that it intends to wage war against Microsoft in the world’s standards bodies

"Today is Document Freedom Day: Roughly 200 teams from more than 60 countries worldwide are organising local activities to raise awareness for Document Freedom and Open Standards.