It's really the fallout of a (IIRC) 2012 consultation on what sort of
standards the UK Government should use. FSFE sent a mailing asking people to
write in. The conclusion was open standards first.
The UK, like the rest of the EU, has a large part of its private/real economy
made up of SMEs (Small to Medium Enterprises) and so it's really a no brainer
on a pork barrel like basis for the UK Government to give UK (and therefore
EU) businesses a cut of their contract budgets. Open standards are the only
way to go if you want to do that.
Besides, with the EU Competition Commissioner investigating Microsoft for
stacking the committee that voted OOXML a standard, the UK Government was
unlikely to adopt it.
Another factor is the UK has had stringent cuts and there's nothing like
being short of the money to throw the economic inefficiency of the
proprietary software business models into stark relief. When the cost of
producing proprietary software is at most 5% of the license fee then their
business model is so easily open to price competition.
Of course, as RMS is keen to point out, we have to teach economic and other
convenience converts (e.g. super computers, mainframe, server room / data
center, and embedded where GNU/Linux is endemic) the meaning of the freedoms.
