The Future Is Open: The OpenDocument Format

Daniel Carrera writes "I've written an article for Groklaw describing the OpenDocument format: 'I asked Daniel Carrera, an OpenOffice.org volunteer, if he'd please explain the OpenDocument format. How does a format get chosen? And is OpenDocument on the list of acceptable formats for governments like the State of Massachusetts? We are all concerned about proprietary formats and standards, and more and more governments are adopting policies requiring open standards, it's a very important subject.' It's currently being considered by the EU Commission as a candidate for an official format."

Comments

It has always baffled me...

[krudler]

Why people never even consider that something else exists other than MS Office. It's not just a philosophical argument, everyone I know has ran into problems with a .doc from a different version that doesn't open. It is hard for some people to do work at home, then bring it to work/school and use it! If it's a .doc, it should work in every version of work. The same goes for all the other formats.

Krudler

Re:It has always baffled me...

[pdiaz]

Because in these days most of the people that use computers are not computer experts (not that this is a bad thing though)

If they have a problem with microsoft word, they don't usually blame the program. For them there is no distinction between the software that runs on their computers and the computer itself. They blame the computer, because they don't know better.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[yotto]

Software?

To most people Microsoft is synonymous with computers period.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[fm6]

It's not just a philosophical argument...

Indeed, the philosophical argument is of no interest to anybody except a few geeks. But there are a lot of practical reasons to want alternatives to MS Office. Not just the reasons you mention, but issues of cost, and of problems caused by overdependence on a single notoriously flaky company.

But if you're baffled by people's adherence to MS Office, then you've never used this kind of software in a real-world environment. Being able to pass a file around without interopeability problems is crucial. Given the messy kind of data most people have to deal with, the only way to do this is to standardize on a specific set of tools from a specific vendor. In the past, you had real competition between Microsoft, IBM/Lotus, WordPerfect, and others. It was inevitable that one company would win the desktop application wars, though I wish it wasn't the same company that also won the desktop OS wars.

If you're going to end this monopoly, you're going to have to overcome the same social and economic forces that drove Lotus and WordPerfect into niche status. There's more to doing that than simply coming up with a technicallly supperior or more open product.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[doj8]

Actually, I used to write document conversion programs many years ago (back when dedicated word processors were still common). There were a couple of document formats which did support forward compatibility. It's been 25 years, but I believe IBM was one. The other escapes me (maybe Aquarius?). (I guess you can count SGML as supporting forward compatibility too.)

Basically, an older program could read any version of the document format. When it encountered elements it did not recognize, it retained them, but ignored them for rendering purposes. So, when the document was saved, the ignored elements were saved with it. A newer version of the word processor could then use them, even after the older version had edited the document.

You are mixing programs and document formats. The two do not have to have the same behavior.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[yagu]

..., But if you're baffled by people's adherence to MS Office, then you've never used this kind of software in a real-world environment. Being able to pass a file around without interopeability problems is crucial.

I am STILL baffled... I have attended meetings where I worked where people literally were not able to print or view agendas, etc. ahead of the meeting because of the incompatibilities among the microsoft applications! Were it not so counter-productive to the work at hand, it would have been funny. (And this was/is an almost every-meeting event.)

Re:It has always baffled me...

[808140]

You know, I'm not sure that's the case as much anymore... or really that it ever has been, actually.

The reason is simple: Apple. Now, Apple has taken a second (third?) seat to MS-based PCs for a long time and I think they probably will continue to do so for the forseeable future (ie, I am not an Apple zealot). But Apple remains a name-brand that exists in the public, non-geek consciousness. While their current success is due almost entirely to their iPod, in most people's minds, they remain a computer company.

I believe that part of the reason that alternative browsers like Firefox are beginning to gain ground is because of MS's discontinued support of IE on the Mac. Despite the fact that not many people use Macs, many of the people that do are not geeks, and those "not-geeks" were forced to consider the browser question in a more realistic way when MS discontinued Mac support. Up until then, they likely considered (as most people do) that IE was the internet.

Now they know better, and as you've probably noticed on Slashdot, Mac-types are a loud bunch -- even the non-geeky ones. They use Firefox or Safari and they make a big fuss about it. They're convinced of a conspiratorial anti-Macintosh agenda on the part of, well, pretty much everyone and they complain loudly when things don't work well on their macs. Nowadays, this includes websites.

My point in all of this is that MS has been the big bully in the industry for a long time. Apple, Sun, IBM -- all would be exactly like MS if their roles were reversed (IBM in fact was, at one time) -- but as it stands, all would like nothing more than to see MS toppled.

Individually, each of these companies represents a feeble marketshare. Together, it still isn't much, but it's enough, I think. They have the users required and the lobbying power, too, to really make a difference. IBM and Sun have always had the problem of being companies only IT people really know much about, due to their lack of penetration on the desktop. Apple, on the other hand, is widely seen as a desktop system normal people actually use, and so Apple being on board hopefully will make more non-industry folks aware of what's going on. Unfortunately, these three companies haven't been keen on cooperating on things like formats precisely because of the lack of open standards -- none of them wants to allow a competitor to dictate the structure of any format.

Each of them produces its own office suite; each of these is MS Office's bitch. By making sure that their office suites all interoperate 100% with an open format, and by lobbying governments (especially non-American governments) with arguments about (American) vendor lock-in, I believe they can make in-roads into ODF adoption.

If governments use it, large companies and contractors will be forced to use it as well, even if infrequently. They will quickly find MS Office's inability to save into these formats annoying (which will not force them to switch to another office suite, but which will cause them to lobby MS to support the format).

Big companies = big clients = big money. Add this to the fact that any law requiring a government to adopt an open format that MS Office doesn't support will make the use of MS Office illegal in a de facto sort of way, because of its non-compliance.

If (and that's a big if) all of this happens, if the laws pass, and IBM/Apple/Sun manage to cooperate for a change, I expect that MS Office will include support for a usable subset of ODF. What they will not do -- what they will never do -- is make it the default format. Further, they will likely ensure that some features of their doc format cannot be saved in ODF, allowing them to pop-up the little box that warns the user that "some formatting information may be lost, proceed?"

This will make little difference to governments legally required to avoid doc, but this will be enough to prevent widespread adoption in the private sphere.

From a user's perspective

[bigberk]

For a similar discussion, but from the perspective of an OpenOffice.org user, check out this article (even though it's really talking about OO.org, there is a section where it goes into the advantages of open formats for data interchange and longevity/archival). The XML format discussed there is I believe the same as OpenDocument

Re:It's nice to be optimistic but...

[game kid]

Years down the road, when everyone is still using Microsoft formats, I'll be sure to remember the prophetic vision of this article.

Agreed. What MS Office will always have (and Lotus/Apple/et al. before that had) is ad money. They can sell to the schools and offices that move formats in the first place.

Over the years, people at home bought/received WordPerfect/MS Word/etc 'cause they needed them to use the formats they used at school and work. What OpenOffice.org needs, I think, is an even larger word of mouth (or mouf?) campaign. People have to know it exists, that it can be used with the suites still used at work, and, of course, that it's a free download and legal to copy.

Actually..

[Rezonant]

After all complaints about the slowness of Adobe Reader 6 they have sped up version 7 A LOT. It starts almost instantaneously and even performance within the program is much better.

Not true. Move on.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Why people never even consider that something else exists other than MS Office

First, Word Perfect is still King in law offices and certain other niche areas. But two words: "Market Saturation". If you need to communicate with the majority of people and business out there, if you're not sending .doc you might as well just send a random string of characters, so it's a matter of if you want to do business or not.

everyone I know has ran into problems with a .doc from a different version that doesn't open

Also, most people don't have problems opening Word docs that are not the latest version, this is simply an anecdote perpetuated by people that don't like Microsoft. Right now, I have Office 97 (which I actually have owned since about that time) at home, and have never had any problems opening brand spanking new Word docs.

I support open document formats because it promotes competition in the areas of application user experience that count like usability. I would very much like to see OpenOffice mature to a point where most people including large companies would feel safe transitioning. But repeating these discounted "stories" of version incompatibility help no one.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[gardyloo]

most people don't have problems opening Word docs that are not the latest version, this is simply an anecdote perpetuated by people that don't like Microsoft.

Great. But the point is that no one, if the program were committed to being more compatible with past versions, should have problems. I have problems opening Word docs in several versions, whether they were created on older versions or on the newest ones. And many people I know do, too.
I don't care if 70% of people who use Office haven't had compatibility problems. I DO care that at least half of the people I work with do or have had problems with it. When you say "discounted 'stories'", I take some offense, because those stories should NOT be discounted, and they aren't apocryphal -- many are true!
There are rarely problems with postcript files or .pdfs, and they look much better. There are NEVER any problems with .rtfs, or with plain .txt documents, and even though these don't have the bells and whistles of many Word formats, they're always readable, and always editable.
There's a higher standard than Word, and there has been for a long, long time.

I don't hate Microsoft, but their compatibility issues are ridiculous.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[civilizedINTENSITY]

The biggest problem our campus printing shop has is incompatibilies of versions of MS Word due to different computer labs running different versions (97 thru 2000 Pro). Mostly this seems to relate to embedded graphics and the formating of text around said emedded object. This isn't anecdote perpetuated by people who don't like Microsoft, this is historical fact related to using the campus printing shop, acknowledged by them as well as students.

Some classes required bound reports (Software Engineering did...), and your only hope is PDF. Crappy formatting isn't an option in a "professional" report.

Wishful thinking

[JAFSlashdotter]

While I honestly hope the OpenDocument format catches on and wins out in the end, I really think it's not going to make a major impact until Microsoft Office & Works save in OpenDocument format by default.

I find that in my experience, most MS Word users have no clue what different file formats are, why they'd care to change, or even that they CAN choose a different type in the "Save As..." dialog. The only time it ever becomes an issue is if the version of Word / Excel / Powerpoint that they're using at work is significantly newer than the one they have at home . If they don't let that completely stop them (maybe "Clippy" shows them how), they learn to choose "Microsoft Excel 97" from the list if they want to take work home. That's the only time they are likely to differ from the default. And when they do that, they get warned what a bad idea it is, because features or formatting may not be available.

No, I doubt the future is open, unless Microsoft makes open the default.

Re:OpenOffice

[Xtifr]

No, I've never looked at an OOo document in notepad; that would require installing a system that runs notepad, finding a copy of notepad, and installing it. That's an awful lot of work to go through to get a crappy plain-text editor that's nowhere near as good as the ones I already have installed. :)

I have looked at OOo documents in Emacs - many times - and it all looks pretty straightforward to me. With a bit of practice, I bet I could write OOo documents in Emacs. I'd hardly call that a nightmare.

I'd think that you were just unaware that OOo files are zipped, except that your second sentence implies that you did find text in the document, which seems like it would have been hard if you hadn't unzipped it. So I have to assume that you're just ignorant of XML. No, it's not a "freaking nightmare", it's a simple, pretty straightforward format.

And, just to complete the trifecta of you being wrong, I'd like to point out that .doc files DO have text you can decipher. I routinely use the UNIX strings command to extract the readable text from .doc files. Before OOo/Abi/etc. had usable MSFT filters, that was the only way I could read .doc files. And it actually works fairly well, if you're only interested in the content, and unconcerned about the format. Which is why I still often use strings to read .doc files. (The strings command loads a lot faster than OOo or even Abiword.)

It seems the Irish Government has copped on

[Milton Waddams]

They release their documents in OpenOffice, PDF and .doc format.

Re:Actually True...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Just because you've never seen something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

I said MOST people. Also, try PDF for resumes, they get there just the way you want them to, no one can change them (without difficulty)...

Re:Massachusetts is a Commonwealth

[RmanB17499]

You're correct and it's not socialistic or communistic or anything else.
Commonwealths "States" of this country are Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Virginia. VA doesn't have a Secretary of State -- they have a Secretary of Commonwealth.

Curious why some states are commonwealths? Read the FAQ -- Why is VA a Commonwealth?
Starts with: There is no such entity as the "State" of Virginia. While generally categorized as a state, Virginia has been the "Commonwealth" since independence from Great Britain. Virginia is first of four states that are Commonwealths, to include our daughter Commonwealth of Kentucky, which was formed from Virginia in 1792.
Finally, Puerto Rico is technically a commonwealth, but that's under a different situation, since it is not a State of the Union. It's just the name and form of its local government.

Each State of the Union is guaranteed sovereignty and a repulican form of government: thus they really are like 50 mini-countries.
However, they each agreed by compact upon admission or ratification of the Constitution for the original 13-states that they would have a Government of the United States of America (USG) to operate in certain areas and that this government would also be a sovereign, too.

How each state wants to operate in its sovereign form is up to the people as long as its republic in nature. If New Jersey would like to call itself the "Free and Independent Peoples Democratic Place of the Principality of New Jersey, formerly known as the State of New Jersey." That's up to itself.

However, from the point of view of the USG each state is just like any other state. That's why we just call them the fifty states. From the national point of view: All states are equal in that they have two senators, elect the president via the electoral college through whatever selection process the state would like to select, and can't be destroyed by Congress.

Re:OpenOffice

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

No, I've never looked at an OOo document in notepad; that would require installing a system that runs notepad, finding a copy of notepad, and installing it. That's an awful lot of work to go through to get a crappy plain-text editor that's nowhere near as good as the ones I already have installed. :)

Notepad has become a generic term much like Kleenex, Xerox, Coke, etc. I really don't feel like explaining what "vim" is, what "vi" is, and how the two differ, every time I want to say I opened something in a text editor. If you ask someone for a Kleenex, do they say, "No, but I have a Puffs Plus (or whatever); would you like that instead, or shall I go buy a box of Kleenex?"

The OpenDocument Format

[demon_2k]

Obvious point : This could help solve most of the compatibility problems between different Office suits. Your work document may one day open in your frineds OpenOffice word processor and look 100% thesome as in you MS Office.

The problem : Digital Rights Management. Ms might have or might open their XML document format. Other suits might open their format.

However, can a application be an owner of a license? You could have a DRM'ed document created using Ms Word that is in an "open format" but, only Ms Work is licensed to open it or you are only allowed to open it in Ms Word. Anything else is considered a hack and you could me prosecuted under DMCA.