Permanently reordering fields in data (shp, gdb) without using FME or another ETL tool

I just confirmed that ogr2ogr can do this. Specify your field name order on the -select switch. For instance, if I have a shapefile with two fields, "Name" and "FolderPath" (in that order), but I want a new shapefile with "FolderPath" first I would do this:

C:\Temp>ogr2ogr -f "ESRI Shapefile" re_order_ogr.shp re_order1.shp -select "FolderPath,Name"

The ET GeoWizards tool will do this, and it looks like the free version will do it without any limitations on the number of features.

The QGIS "Table Manager" Plugin now also has the ability to perform this task easily with no command line necessary.