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...

[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...

[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.

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.

It seems the Irish Government has copped on

[Milton Waddams]

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

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.