ODF Alliance Continues to Grow and Build Out

Andy Updegrove writes "As you may recall, a new organization called the ODF Alliance was formed on March 3 of this year to support the uptake of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) by governments. Yesterday, the ODF Alliance issued a press release announcing that it has more than tripled its membership to 138, has appointed a Managing Director with strong European experience (Marino Marcich), and is lobbying countries globally to vote for ODF in ISO. Overall, the picture is one of a growing organization that plans to be around for awhile, and particularly hopes to make its impact in Europe, from which a large number of its members have arrived, where governmental interest in ODF is highest, and risks to government CIOS therefore lowest."

Comments

Full list of members:

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Full list of members can be found here (and FAQ here)

I note that Apple is not a member - I suggest all slashdotters write to Apple to support ODF & join this alliance. After all, Apple is no longer relying on MS for a browser - why rely on MS for an office suite?

Re:Full list of members:

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Heh, I think getting them to even add OpenDocument support would take precedence. Their Pages program, for example, has its own proprietary format but can export to HTML, text, PDF, Word... and NOT ODF.

Re:Full list of members:

[xirtam_work]

Apple relies upon Microsoft making Mac software enormously, at least at present. The presence of Mac Office in the market place is a boon for Apple. One of the probable reasons for the current lack of a Spreadsheet in the iWork suite (which only includes Pages & Keynote) is an agreement between Microsoft and Apple.

OpenOffice.org also does not run natively on Mac OS X. There is a clunky X11 version which is slow and horrible. I've heard of Koffice running on OS X but not seen it working myself.

So, with no native applications using ODF on the Mac it's not surprising that Apple aren't a current supporter. I agree that AppleWorks and iWork should add on support for it in the future. I would be great to see an ODF framework released for the Mac that can translate between PDF/Quartz and ODF that would allow documents to be saved in and imported via ODF easliy for all applications in the future. This would be a huge boon for OS X, just like native support for PDF was to me when OS X was first released.

Re:Full list of members:

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenOffice.org also does not run natively on Mac OS X. There is a clunky X11 version which is slow and horrible.

NeoOffice, on the other hand, is an OO.o fork that runs just fine and is much ahead of the OSX X11 version of OO.o. Too bad it's still based on OO.o 1.1 and can only read ODF...

Re:Full list of members:

[MMC Monster]

Can ODF be compatible with the Apple office software (Pages & Keynote)?

Keynote does some pretty fantastic stuff that is probably not compatible with the ODF presentation format. Otherwise, it would be great, even if ODF has to be revised to handle keynote.

Re:Full list of members:

[Sentry21]

Apple is no longer relying on MS for a browser - why rely on MS for an office suite?

They're not.

ODF support would be nice though.

Re:Full list of members:

[mrchaotica]

I would be great to see an ODF framework released for the Mac that can translate between PDF/Quartz and ODF that would allow documents to be saved in and imported via ODF easliy for all applications in the future.

Too bad such a thing doesn't make sense. PDF/Quartz is a presentation format, and contains information like "draw this character at these coordinates," while ODF needs semantic information like "this text string is the title of the document, which happens to be of type 'thesis.'" Converting from PDF to ODF would be like trying to convert a bitmap into a vector image, or a binary into source code.

Re:Full list of members:

[xirtam_work]

I'm not sure I agree with your comment. Much of the Quartz display model is based on PDF. This is an outgrowth of NeXTSTEP (the forerunner of OS X) using 'Display Postscript' for it's display, from what I understand Quartz's similarity to PDF allowed Apple to implement PDF as a first class citizen on the Mac. Being able to convert ODF, which does contain formatting information along with content, to Quartz layout information would be very similar to converting it to PDF. So in effect you're accusing me of saying converting a ODF document to PDF is nonsense. Am I right?

Re:Full list of members:

[mrchaotica]

No, I'm saying the opposite. Converting from ODF to PDF makes perfect sense -- it is, in effect, "rendering" the document. It's analogous to compiling a program, or printing a vector image, or whatnot.

What I said didn't make sense was going backwards -- from PDF to ODF, which is what I thought you were asking for in your previous post (i.e. instantly having "ODF support" from all applications by virtually "printing," which is how the PDF support works).

Re:Full list of members:

[Cal Paterson]

OpenOffice.org also does not run natively on Mac OS X. There is a clunky X11 version which is slow and horrible. I've heard of Koffice running on OS X but not seen it working myself.

The quicker they open all their code, the quicker people are going to do it. FOSS people are generally only interested in helping people who reciprocate.

Re:Full list of members:

[ClamIAm]

Better yet, write to Apple and state that (like me) you won't buy their products until they show a true commitment to open (and patent-free) standards.

Re:Full list of members:

[andreyw]

So it's "much ahead", while still being based on 1.1. So which one is it?

Re:Full list of members:

[mikefe]

Who do you mean by they (OOo?), and what is not open? (If they == apple then I understand.)

Re:Full list of members:

[Cal Paterson]

They was meant to be apple.

On reading though that again, I realised that I was using "they" to refer to Apple, when in fact, grammatically, it was representing OO.o. Another human here ;).

This is encouraging

[endrue]

But does anyone feel as though this will really take off? I do not know a whole lot about this but I like the idea. Getting people behind something and getting them to take action are two different things.

- Andrew

Re:This is encouraging

[Trigun]

shamelessly stolen from my website:

Open Document Format (odf, or .odf) is ... doomed to failure, unless we make it useful.

As it stands right now, ODF is nothing more than a rallying cry. The geeks of the world are tired of being held a slave to business demands. They don't want to have to support Microsoft Word, they want more flexibility, more control, and more fun. As of right now, they don't have the tools to do any of it. The tools are easy enough to build, given the right motivation, but what tools need to be created? And more importantly, how will they interact with each other?

At the top of the list, I see the need for an enterprise-grade versioning and repository server. One that is connectable from anywhere in the enterprise, with flexible security and controls that integrates into the enterprise architecture. That might seem like a lot of buzzwords jammed into one little sentence, so I'll expand on that. Instead of saving your document to a file, it will save it into a server. The server will save the document, and save subsequent changes. It will have the ability to give you the old version if you've bunged up completely. It will allow you to take the file home, work on it, and bring it back to the enterprise. If Bob works on the file, it will branch that file, and keep track of the changes that happen. Finally it will allow you to merge the branches, so that you don't have a million disparate file revisions which have no resemblance to the original file. Support for this should be built into the program that you use to edit the file, without a need to call an external program.

Next, there should be more leveraging of XML translations. Using the aforementioned server as a data source, data should be able to be pulled and new documents created, using an XML translation. Think of the high level manager that wants a report summarizing all of the departments monthly financials. Instead of having someone make the report every month, the report is auto-generated. Any changes in any of the source files is automatically mirrored into the new report. Translations could be leveraged so that all the reports could be (more or less) viewed in any web browser or e-mail client. Statistics and graphs could be added to the company's website, and translations of translations would work the same.

After that, there needs to be a wizard to do all of this. Now, I know that this is going to sound very MS Access-ish, but a business would have a standard template for a great deal of its memos, spreadsheets, faxes, and everything inbetween. If there's one thing that a company is good at, it's creating bureaucracy, and this is a natural extension of that. The wizards would use that structure and create the needed transforms. The suits could point and click until their hearts content, generating millions upon millions of reports and feeling like God on the third day. Us geeks would have already purchased stock in toner companies, so things would be good for us, even though we already realize that the documents are, with the right transforms, completely portable, and we can read the latest financial data from our PDA's on the bog.

Lastly, there needs to be management tools, from server to desktop. Auditing software, role management, whatever we need. Those are the tools that the open source community excel at. These would all be built on an as-needed basis, and they would be quick in coming. Once adoption takes off, I'm certain that other software will leverage the power and flexibility of the system, and be able to use it as a data source as well, providing even more reason why opendocument would succeed, but only if we actually make it useful for what it is and what it's supposed to be: A data source as well as a presentation engine.

If we don't, however, it will fall by the wayside, used only by geeks and the technical elite.

Re:This is encouraging

[g2devi]

> At the top of the list, I see the need for an enterprise-grade versioning and repository server. One that is connectable
> from anywhere in the enterprise, with flexible security and controls that integrates into the enterprise architecture.
> That might seem like a lot of buzzwords jammed into one little sentence, so I'll expand on that. Instead of saving your
> document to a file, it will save it into a server. The server will save the document, and save subsequent changes. It
> will have the ability to give you the old version if you've bunged up completely.....

Isn't this called Subversion/Clearcase/CVS/Bitkeeper/....?

Re:This is encouraging

[NewWorldDan]

Really? Because I happen to be opposed to open document standards. They stifle innovation. You get boxed into a shortsighted format that's usually inadequate for your needs. While the idea of a generic standard that you can use with any program sounds appealing, in practice, it just doesn't work. It's kinda like communism. In any event, there are a plethora of generic open formats out there for use if people so choose. Plain text, RTF, DBF, just to name a few of the less exotic ones.

Re:This is encouraging

[Trigun]

Yes, but more than that. CVS/subversion/WebDav/whatever can be the ultimate backend, but there needs to be better integration with programs like openoffice. If you have to use a third party program to save the document into the repository, then nobody is going to use it. Put it in the options as "Save to server" and then people will use it.

Re:This is encouraging

[endrue]

Believe me, I am all in favor of sending documents in plain text all the time. But I think that this is a good, realistic approach to some kind of standard. I agree that it is good to have options but from a developer's point of view it is also nice to know that you can output a _formatted_ document and have everyone be able to see it the say way you did (without having to use a PDF).

- Andrew

Re:This is encouraging

[richlv]

svn probably would be the best bet (it has versioning, braching, merging and other features), but it is for plaintext files. so this would require something that could use change information from the documents and represent it meaningfully. merging also could be a problem as it would require both server and user interface support.

there were some talks about svn ability to pipe data through other software for storage or ability to work on "container" files (like zip in odf), but that would still be insufficient.

about your second point - that is doable right now, it is awfully easy for an average coder to integrate odf into whatever appliances. it's just that every company will want different data, different reports and automatisation. creating software that could do all this for all the countries probably is near impossible today (it might take off after we have serious ai :) ). if a company needs such a functionality, it probably is easier and more efficient to hire some person who could write up simple data mining interface that would just unzip contents, get the data and produce the report (actually that probably could even be scripted in the most simple cases).

i'm not quite sure what you meant with management tools, though :)

Re:This is encouraging

[somersault]

You mean open document standards like SGML, which was made a standard in 1986, and from which we have HTML and XML as a subset? If you try to make a document standard/language too all-encompassing, then it just becomes too complicated for average joe to use comfortably (and requires more bandwidth/memory-space, and more complex software to parse it).

Proprietary standards should be unnecessary with languages like XML (though it does create rather verbose files). It's not open formats that are needed, it's a good solid open standard. SGML is a good example that by no means does a standard have to be short sighted, or inadequate, and that the main reason for proprietary formats are:

1) sometimes if you are just doing a small task, you want to use the simplest tools that you can

2) sometimes if you are doing a specialised task, say you had to make your files as small as possible and hence didnt use any metadata, or 2.1) you are just lazy, 2) Companies like Microsoft trying to hold off competition, because they dont want people to judge software on its own merits. If Word and OOWriter both saved exactly the same file, and only the front end was different, what do you think most people would choose? Even if OOWriter wasn't as good, it is free after all. Thankfully it appears to be rather good (though I dont find myself having to word process very often, I'll admit. I just wish they included a fully functionaly Outlook equivalent with OO

Re:This is encouraging

[somersault]

*ahem* I admit that my webpages aren't always perfect on the first try, and I do find HTML rather dull compared to proper coding ;) that should have been a newline and a 3 instead of the last 2 in case someone thinks I'm on crack

Re:This is encouraging

[Trigun]

Management tools: I.E. Ability to finalize documents, remove documents from the repository, control access to the documents, display revisions and users who revised, accessed, etc.

Re:This is encouraging

[richlv]

ahh, ok. i just assumed that is going together with versioning system as it would be pretty useless without such tools. svn has all that functionality... still for plaintext only :) (except "finalize documents", as i missed that one again ;) )

Re:This is encouraging

[Trigun]

Also, using XML mining and standardized forms, a wizard could be greated to generate conglomerate reports from other reports using transforms and data-mining/screen scraping techniques. Ex. Grab pie chart from April 05 and place on current page. Using the repository as a data source, if the data changes in April 05, the pie chart would be automagically updated on the new report. Which could update your webpage, or your PDA, or whatever.

So, the whole thing would be like SVN on steroids, with a nice GUI interface.

Re:This is encouraging

[tehpwn]

how about, ooffice /nfs/remote_file ? unless you insist on reinventing the wheel :)

Re:This is encouraging

[mrchaotica]

No, it should have been a series of list items (<li>...</li>) inside an ordered list (<ol>...</ol>)!

Re:This is encouraging

[holloway]

My software is working on the presentation engine part -- from MSWord/OpenDocument to HTML or DocBook or RSS. It's called Docvert.

Re:This is encouraging

[richlv]

hmm. what about it ?
if i understood you correctly, keeping files on a shared location is in no way comparable to versioning server that can branch data, merge changes, manage commits/updates...

Re:This is encouraging

[somersault]

1. that's far too advanced for me ;)
2. thanks

Re:This is encouraging

[Trigun]

Looks promising. Added to my bookmarks.

Re:138....?

[EraserMouseMan]

I think it's 138 organizations, not individual people.

The hard part

[SapphoComet]

The hard part will be keeping infighting to a minimum. Many times, organizations like this set out with great intentions and admirable goals, only to become very ineffective when infighting and internal empire-building take place.

Re:The hard part

[Gothmolly]

Seeing as this is largely a European bandwagon, I say your prediction will be true in 1-3 years.

Re:The hard part

[zootm]

Agreed. North American infighting is far more efficient.

Oh great, the government again

[darjen]

Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but...

I have a lot of reservations about getting the government involved with open source standards. The whole idea of government in the first place seems anti open source, anti competitive to me.

Then there are privacy concerns. Nowadays, governments all over the world are bent on destroying our civil liberties. Especially since they are so involved in forcing DRM and copyrights on us. Once they are involved, what's to stop them from forcing design decisions upon the standards which make it easier for them to control and watch us?

Also, governments have a great track record of using technology to kill, murder and destroy societies. I wasn't personally involved with ODF, but if I was, and saw that they made the government more effecient killing machines in war, I know I would definitely be opposed to this usage.

Re:Oh great, the government again

[Silver Sloth]

Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but...

Yes, you're just being paranoid. Governments are run by civil servants who just love standards and if they come on board then it forces everyone else to. If you can only submit somethign to your local govenment in ODF then you're not going to use M$ Word, are you? Unless, of course, M$ Word has embraced the ODF. See how it works.

And, at the end of the day, if governments use ODF to write the plans for the Doomsday Machine it's not a misuse of the ODF anymore than it's a misuse of paper when it's printed.

Re:Oh great, the government again

[dugjohnson]

As much as a libertarian as I am, and as much as I would NORMALLY agree with your sentiment, not this time.

This is not a government action...these are members of governmental organizations participating to come up with a standard. Governments become a problem when they mandate (they got da guns, doncha know) a standard without really working through an open process. In this case, there are enough other players, and there is no good way to mandate via force, so that this remains an open participatory exercise, at least in theory. (We can assume normal human hubris will reign supreme like in any committee and it will not go smoothly....but the fact that governmental groups are involved is irrelevant. It happens with most ANY committee.)

The organization with the gun, in this case, has been Microsoft, with their dominance of the desktop and the office suite. By making it difficult to impossible to pass documents easily to other programs, Microsoft has forced a monopoly of convenience. An ODF standard, with enough large organization participants, can make interactivity simpler, make translation seamless, and open the door for other players in the Office Suite game. And it will be because of concensus, not fiat. Now if only the United Nations could play so well.

Re:Oh great, the government again

[Proud like a god]

Yes, you're paranoid, or plain illogical.

A democratic government getting involved in open standards, in so much as using them, allows that government to be free of vendor lock-in for itself and its citizens viewing and using its own documents.

As for privacy concerns, surely you would be more worried about a government that sticks with proprietry or secret standards and formats for its documents than one, that considers a well designed and documented standard with no apparent DRM involved?

As for causing death and destruction, there is as much relationship between an open document format and such things as there is with all government's continuing usage of dihydrogen monoxide. ;)

Re:Oh great, the government again

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean that no one is watching you...

Seriously, you might want to take a chill pill, ritalin, or whatever you use to calm down. I used to work for the US government and I can tell you that they are so far in bed with Microsoft that they aren't going to support ODF at all unless Microsoft does. Microsoft's usual "embrace and extend" strategy won't work with ODF, so they are trying to ignore it for the most part. If I was you, I'd stop worrying about whether ODF might be used to make evil governments more effective or you're just going to be another OCD nut job. I'm sure that #1 on your list of evil governments is the USA government and you seem to have overlooked the fact that they are Microsoft's biggest supporter. I have lost count of how many times some US administration lackey has bitched to China, Russia, etc. about software piracy on behalf of Microsoft. Are you offering to give up Windows? Didn't think so. Windows, not ODF, is what the US government runs. Frankly, supporting an open document format is contrary to how I saw the government operate when I worked for them. It would be much likely for them to support a format that quickly becomes obsolete and then the documents become impossible to open.

Frankly, I'm starting to think maybe your post should be modded as "troll". I may be giving you more credit than you deserve for thinking that you can't really believe the stuff you posted.

Re:Oh great, the government again

[PrescriptionWarning]

Corporations with too much control over information can be just as annoying as a Government with too much control... the only difference is that the Government (or the people in it) want your vote and loyalty. The Companies just want your money.

Re:Oh great, the government again

[darjen]

If you really wanted to discuss what I believe, I think you'd want to at least be a little more civil rather than resorting to name calling. I was trying to be a little more civil in my post than I have been in the past but I guess it's still lost on some people.

Yes, I do believe all governments, including the USA, are evil. Also, your point about them being in bed with Microsoft is well taken.

Re:Oh great, the government again

[darjen]

Yes, I suppose ODF is open precisely because it can be used by anyone, including the government. I don't know, maybe I'll have to go back and rethink some things.

Re:Oh great, the government again

[darjen]

You make some good points, but where you lost me somewhat was here:

By making it difficult to impossible to pass documents easily to other programs, Microsoft has forced a monopoly of convenience. An ODF standard, with enough large organization participants, can make interactivity simpler, make translation seamless, and open the door for other players in the Office Suite game.

Microsoft only has guns/monopoly because of government protection of their patents. Without this cartel, open standards would probably be much more in use than they are now. In a market setting, MS would only have power so long as their products are able to maintain relevance. Otherwise customers wouldn't be forking over cash to them left and right.

Re:Oh great, the government again

[dugjohnson]

If you are saying the government is protecting Microsoft's format because of patent issues, then I have to disagree strongly. If there were no patent, then Microsoft wouldn't publish ANY of their specs, but would keep it secret. To work with Word, you would HAVE to have their product, and if there are enough users (by, say, giving a dumbed down version of Word with the OS) you effectively force people to use the Word format.

In the beginning of Microsoft Word when they were not the uber suite, they supported all KINDS of formats, because the dominant players were WordStar and WordPerfect. But once they got to a level of dominance on the desktop and a depth of penetration of their standards, they stopped supporting import from other vendors. WordStar gone. WordPerfect all but gone. Because if I am using WordPerfect and want to send you a document and you use Word, I have to save mine as Word (or RTF), because you cannot import my WordPerfect document. And eventually, I get bored and/or frustrated with the process and just get Word to make my life easier. Monopoly by convenience.

ODF means that a lot of desktops can mandate compliance, and the market opens up, again for the same convenience reason.

Re:Oh great, the government again

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Microsoft's usual "embrace and extend" strategy won't work with ODF, so they are trying to ignore it for the most part.

What makes you think this? Right now they are still attempting to push several less standard "standards" so they have less work, but should those efforts fail what is stopping them from using the usual embrace and extend? HTML is a more stringently defined and controlled standard, but they've managed to embrace and extend it just fine. No, they are not ignoring it because they have no other plan, they're pretending to ignore it because they still have hopes that they won't have to embrace and extend it, which would be more work and cost them money.

The real fight will come when (if) ODF is widely excepted and MS tries to ship an intentionally broken version of the standard (as they do with HTML).

Re:Oh great, the government again

[jopsen]

No offence but I think you are getting paranoid :) Remember the government is here to help everyone, not to be a pain in the ass. Cause if that all the government is to you, the why don't you vote for dictatorship or chaos... :) - where are you if you can't trust your own government... I'm from Denmark - Europe so it not a problem to me :)

I have a lot of reservations about getting the government involved with open source standards. The whole idea of government in the first place seems anti open source, anti competitive to me.

I really can't follow you on this one. Open standart is pro competitive, and if the European Union decied to force Microsoft to include native support for .odt, that would be fine by me, actually I think it is a good idea. By the way if you from US (which I assume) I would understand if you could not trust Bush, or just couldn't trust the american implementation of democrazy...

Any real interoperabilty?

[porneL]

Is there a free, small and easy to install plug-in that provides ODF import in popular versions of MS Office?

I can't just send ODF files to people with attached note "Download 50MB of OpenOffice or switch to Linux and KOffice".

Re:Any real interoperabilty?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're locked in.

Re:Any real interoperabilty?

[zaguar]

Actually, it's not 50 MB, it's - 76.3 MB, at least for The latest release for Windows (OOo_2.0.1_Win32Intel_install.exe). I think that that it is rubbish. I had to torrent it FFS, to ease the load on the servers. But I suppose a lot of people torrent Office suites!

Re:Any real interoperabilty?

[ZachPruckowski]

Why should they send a Word file to you and basically imply "Spend $300 on Word, and waste 300 MB of space on it."

Re:Any real interoperabilty?

[richlv]

too bad i already commented here - i would gladly spend my modpoints on that ;)

Re:Any real interoperabilty?

[ToasterofDOOM]

Because most people already have word, and for those that don't, word file support is almost universal, and even when they cannot view word files there are innumerable small word file readers/filetype translators. As much as I love ODF that argument is worthless for the most part.

Re:Any real interoperabilty?

[ZachPruckowski]

Word Readers have to be sought out and installed, and most of them (the non-MS ones) are capable of making mistakes in the more complex stuff.

Lastly, what about when Office2007 comes out, and the formats change? It'll take months or years for people to reverse-engineer the new formats.

The other thing that bugs me is that it's mostly basic text that people are sending in Word form. I mean, it's like a list of twenty names and times, and they make a Word file that could just as easily be a .txt or a .rtf

Re:Any real interoperabilty?

[Shimbo]

I can't just send ODF files to people with attached note...

You can if they ask you to.

Re:Any real interoperabilty?

[donaldm]

Well if enough people did this maybe business would realise that there are other document formats other than Microsoft's *.doc format (it is NOT a standard just something that has been erroneously accepted as one) and they better support it. Sometimes you just have to make a stand and I think this is what the EU is trying to do.

It never ceases to amaze me the lemming mentality of Business when it come to using propriety formats and how they seem to think that it allows for portability and interoperability (Biz talk) when that format is under the control (ie. Intellectual Property) of one company. What is even stranger is that format sometimes cannot even be read properly by the same companies software after a few years. So if you are part of a council, hall of records .... etc were they need to be able to keep documents for 100's of years then using something that has a closed format is a rather a stupid move, hence the need for an Open, Portable Document format.

Please look at the history of standards, get yourself in the right frame of mind before you do and it is quite fascinating, particularly when you relate it to today's society.

Yes I have worked in a Standards Laboratory hence my signature.

Re:Any real interoperabilty?

[lwriemen]

Sure just open in OpenOffice and export to PDF, or open in some other office application, print to file with a postscript printer driver and run ps2pdf and then send it.
Same interoperability we've had for years. ;-)

Re:Any real interoperabilty?

[knaapie]

It never ceases to amaze me the lemming mentality of Business when it come to using propriety formats and how they seem to think that it allows for portability and interoperability (Biz talk) when that format is under the control (ie. Intellectual Property) of one company

Well, most companies are not worried about document formats, they just want to be able to communicate with anybody (within the company or outside of it) in a straightforward way. At the moment, using MS Office provides the way to do that 99.xx% of the time. So why care whether MS Office is using a proprietary format?

What is even stranger is that format sometimes cannot even be read properly by the same companies software after a few years.

That's true, but for most of a business's documents (legal documentation are an exception) that's not relevant, because the document will be outdated or superceded by a new version of the content.
Apart from that I doubt whether ODF can be made backwards compatible indefinitely, which means you would run into the same problem.

Re:Any real interoperabilty?

[Bert64]

And MSOffice for mac weighed in at 600+mb, not sure about the windows version, and didn't include a drawing program or a database by default (tho it did have a mail client which openoffice doesn't).

No point complaining about size when the nearest competitor is much larger... If you don't like downloading 75mb of openoffice, you can always buy a copy on CD.

Re:Any real interoperabilty?

[holloway]

PDF and Postscript lack the structure needed to edit files (headings, paragraphs). So just so you all know, this would retain MSWord as the source format. Converting to ODF however would mean an open standard source format.

Obligatory Russia joke..

[not-admin]

In soviet Russia, open standards support you!

Politicians != Government

[Khammurabi]

Once they are involved, what's to stop them from forcing design decisions upon the standards which make it easier for them to control and watch us?

I think you're confusing government bureaucrats with politicians. Having worked for a government IT bureau, I can say that open documents would be welcomed and would have made our lives a hell of a lot easier. My team was charged with managing the 13 step process of bill creation and adoption for the legislature, which included no less than 6 legacy programming languages. The users and developers involved would have jumped at the chance of open document standards, since it removes the inherent half-life of proprietary formats.

The problem is that the head of the bureau is chosen by a politician. While I can say from experience that our head was actively guided by his appointed party as to what software we were allowed to use, I can not comment on other bureau's machinations. So while the bureau grunts would have loved open document standards, the politicians who have the proprietary donors would probably stifle it.

Show Me Da Money!

[rewinn]

If ODF can help a taxpayer-funded government save $$$ in the long run, it sounds like a good thing.

I totally agree with the security & privacy reasons for ODF, but cutting costs may be more important to some gov'ts (read: voters!) This is not an anti-vendor, just pro-taxpayer.

risks to government CIOS?

[StrawberryFrog]

What's a "CIOS"?

It is "Communication Institute for Online Scholarship" or the plural of "Chief Information Officer" according to Google.

The original article has "CIOs" (note the lower-case "s") suggesting the latter usage, but it still could be anything. Creepy Informal Office Sleepover?

A decent writer/editor would have corrected, explained or expanded that.

YAMLF?

[lwriemen]

(Yet Another Markup Language Format)

Wow an open source markup language for sharing documents! What innovation! >:->

I wonder if it'll become as highly used as TeX, Postscript or RTF? :-D

Marino Marcich ? European ?

[Coeurderoy]

Apparently M. Marchich is http://www.dutkoworldwide.com/media_center/latest_ news/1056/
In his resume they focus on his Latin American experience, maybe the ODF is confusing Europe and Latin America ?
(on the up side Mr Marchich employer is using apache on FreeBsd so they cannot be all bad :-))

Anyway it is a little bit worrying when the people that are supposed to support the "good side" are using the same processes as the "bad guy".

I would not mind if the ODF alliance would hire M. Marchick as a consultant, or "Chief PHB interactor", but asking somebody that does not seem to have any interest in Open Standards (or god forbid open source) before his nomination seems strange.

Well I guess it makes some interesting email exchange between members.

Just remember:

[Kristoffer Lunden]

When you use a closed format, you are shutting someone out. That's more or less the definition, why would it be closed if it wasn't to keep someone out of it?

Now, why would you - you, not some corporation, but you, personally - want to shut anyone out?

Sharepoint, but for ODF documents

[MarkWatson]

I started to write an open source Sharepoint clone a few years ago to support ODF documents.

Unfortunately (or fortunately for my income), one of my consulting customers liked an early prototype and bought out the rights (unfortunately making it proprietary) and funded me for several months to improve it. They had me discard the OpenOffice.org backend and only support Microsoft Office documents, which was also too bad.

There are now some good open source projects like Daisy that support ODF.

Yes you are paranoid -govts and standards

[Flying pig]

Standards are made by expert committees with input from all kinds of people from universities through to businesses. Governments rarely adopt them into legislation, but when they do there is usually good cause. They are a convenient way of, for instance, mandating that your electrician does not leave bare live wires around your house, or that your pipes will not burst the first time there is a little over pressure on your water main (safety standards or codes). They are also a convenient way of preventing vendor lock in. You don't get paranoid about the government because of NPT pipe threads or ANSI standards, do you? You don't worry about the creeping influence of UL preventing you from your God-given right to buy an unsafe Chinese electrical appliance?

It's amazing, though perhaps it shouldn't be, just how many people posting on Slashdot do not seem to understand that anti-trust cases are not limited to Microsoft, that before the present Administration there have been plenty of interventions in monopolies (and when they are history there will doubtless be more) and that the new pressure for Open Source and Open Formats is just a repeat of what has happened in every branch of engineering there has ever been. Once a technology starts to get mature, playing fields must be leveled, standards must be established. Hardware is now mature, with standards like SATA and PCI replacing earlier ones as hardware is commoditised, yet cheaper and more reliable. Governments are faced with huge wastage in software procurement and systems operations, but such is the proliferation of incompatible architectures and tools that they find it hard to get a grip on the problem. Standards help with that process; they help governments to waste less.

Years ago I was at a meeting where the possibility of European software standards was discussed, and a senior expert suggested that the software industry was too cowboy and immature to be able to do it (he said that on a scale of 0 to 10, heavy industry scored 8, light industry 6, and the software industry wouldn't even be able to make a mark on the paper, to be exact.) It's thirteen years on from there, and things are changing.

One other thing: don't confuse governments with politicians. Politicians are a mix of honest people who want to improve things along with shifty crooks and everything in between. Government departments are a mixture of shifty crooks with honest people who want to improve things. You can see they are exact opposites. The trick is to unite the honest people on both sides, whereupon things can happen with remarkable speed.

Re:FRIST STOP

[Philipp]

Test, please ignore... coming back to Slashdot after 5 years...