Just a footnote - open source software is often more secure and harder to crack. Just a thought. 

Spain, Macedonia, and France have already gone to open source. See story in today's New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11ubuntu.html

Great idea. The government could set a new precedent for the open source movement, and save a good deal of money in the process.

Not to mention the fact that many open source platforms (Linux, Open Office, etc.) are inherently more secure and more easily customized.

This is quite frankly, ridiculous!  Open source software is good, but not for a widespread government-backed infrastructure.  Open source is not a well kept secret, people just don't want to use it.  It is still in the stoneage compared to anything else.  Most pdf files are created from MICROSOFT office documents anyway.

I can't speak for the "whole government," but I can say beyond a doubt that open source software (from the operating system on up) is easier to acquire, about as easy to install, much more stable, and far more secure than the presently available closed source alternatives (e.g. Microsoft). I've personally used open source software exclusively for the past 2-3 years on my home network, and in local wifi hotspots, and have no complaints.  The cost, alone, of closed source and proprietary software and applications would have prevented me from being anywhere near as productive as I have been over that period.  Presently, I'm a member of my local open source user group, and I include over a dozen open source packages and applications in the courses I teach.  Note:  If its good enough for several European governments to have made the switch, then maybe we should come off our high-horses and give it an honest evaluation...?

Cheers;
the0wl

Side note:  OpenOffice 2.4 and up have a built-in convention that will save (and read) .docx or .doc (Microsoft Word) and .odt (open document text) as PDF files -- an ADOBE invention (not Microsoft).

Cheers;
the0wl

@TJustin:

The point of requiring open formats like pdf is symbolic and it opens the door to people who don't care to create their pdfs from word docs (like myself).  It does not close the door to someone who likes Word, it just ensures that Word (and it's cost) is not required to participate.  pdf was once a closed format but adobe wisely opened the spec.  Microsoft could do the same, but it would destroy their "lock in" strategy and thus their bottom line, so they are probably unlikely to.  But they are in trouble in any case at this point.

I'm not going to get into a linux vs. windows debate.  I intentionally did not bring that up.  Just wanted to say that open source is open and free and good enough.  Suffice it to say open source works fine for me (programmer/computer geek/use it for everything), my sister (uses it for music, IM, email, web) and my mom (email, web, word documents, scanning, faxing, etc.).  They don't need a lot of help from me, after I set it up.  It does not crash or stop working/slow down over time.  It just keeps doing it's job, so they can do theirs.

PDF is not open source though, the specifications might be open but the software to create PDF's is not open source.

Yes on the open source software for some major goverment services.  Imagine open source voting system software, medical records (EMR), tax reporting!  

No to the inane idea that the White House reject non-open sourced file types...