Does ODF Have a Future?

qedramania writes "Linuxworld seems to think ODF is a dead duck. Is the Windows monopoly too big and too entrenched? Other than diehard Linux fans, does anyone really care if they have to keep paying Microsoft to do basic word processing? It seems as though the momentum is towards a complete Microsoft monoculture in software for business and government. You can bet that big business and governments will want more than just reliability from Microsoft in return for their acquiescence. Does ODF have a future?"

Comments

You don't need MS Office to create .doc files

[benhocking]

Open Office will happily read/write/create MS Word files. That said, it seems that ODF is gaining popularity, not losing it.

Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files

[Divebus]

As CTO, I'm telling my staff that it's irresponsible to send MS Word .doc files. We're at least sending PDFs through email but haven't managed to break the MS Office habit yet. Still too many buzzword enamored people here but they're starting to understand.

Largely an attitude thing

[MeditationSensation]

I don't think it's a technical issue at all, it's just what people "know". Whenever I go on a job hunt people ask for my resume "in a Word .doc", as if that's the only possible format.

Doesn't Office 2007 already support ODF?

[mlts]

I'm pretty sure ODF isn't dying. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that Office 2007 natively (or with a plugin available from MS's website) supports ODF as a native format to save and open from, just like you can specify that Word uses .doc instead of .docx.

IMHO, ODF is far from being dead.

Re:I think I might detect sarcasm...

[dpilot]

About as many stories I hear of ODF being rebuffed in the US, I seem to hear of it being adopted overseas. Not 100% penetration, but still better than in the US.

In that light, perhaps the metric system is the correct analogy.

Maybe the limit has more to do with how many politicians Microsoft can buy. For many years they ignored politics, preferring to exert their force against "business partners." After the antitrust suits they began to learn about US politics, and with ODF they began to meddle in state politics. But there are subtle difference in politics in every political entity - do it wrong and you're even worse off. They've just put a lot of effort into China, obviously because it's a big emerging market. They'll likely put a lot of effort into India, too. But beyond that, it starts getting little - and local.