[Ecommerce] ODF: The Better, More Affordable Office Standard (eweek)

[Manon Ress]

ODF: The Better, More Affordable Office Standard
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
December 15, 2005

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1902178,00.asp

Opinion: If you take a close look, as many people have, it's clear
that ODF, and not Open XML, is the better document standard.

I know that Brian Charlson is sincere about his desire to make sure
that access is maintained to office documents for people with
disabilities. He has a long track record of supporting accessible
computer technology.

However, when he said, "The blindness community wants to make sure
it's not against ODF [OpenDocument format]. We're against
implementation without a guarantee that we won't lose the [few] jobs
we have" at the Open Forum on the Future of Electronic Data Formats
for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I think it's too easy to take
this the wrong way.

Yes, many products already exist that can make existing Microsoft
formats more usable. However, the key word is 'existing.'

Even if you buy that Microsoft's Open XML will be a true open-standard
=97which I, and many others, certainly don't=97it's not the format that's
being used and supported today.

One way or the other, people with disabilities are going to have to
buy or have their existing equipment upgraded to be able to use
tomorrow's office documents.

At least in the case of ODF, the standard already exists. Open XML
doesn't exist yet as a Microsoft proposal. There is no Office 12 yet.
There is no Ecma Open XML standard yet. There will be, but that's not
today.

Charlson is concerned that the higher the price for the new
technology, the greater the risk to jobs for the disabled population.

He's right to be concerned.

The cost of proprietary software and standards vs. open-source
software and open standards has been a constant concern of mine.

This isn't just a software issue though. If you look at history at
all, it's clear that anytime there's a closed system, anytime there's
a monopoly, prices go up.

Whether it's oil or office suites, if one entity, whether it's OPEC
or Microsoft, is calling the shots, then the prices are going to go up.

If you take a closer look at the situation, as Curtis Chong,
president of the National Federation of the Blind in Computer
Science, did recently, you're likely conclude that ODF actually makes
more sense for PWD (People With Disabilities) than Microsoft's promises.

Pols battle over the future of OpenDocument. Click here to read more.

This isn't just a concern for PWDs. Every one stands to benefit from
more affordable, more open software.

Dr. Manon Ress, a director at the CPTech (Consumer Project on
Technology), a Washington, DC-based non-profit created about 20 years
ago by Ralph Nader, sees ODF as a major consumer issue.

In her blog, Ress wrote, "What's at stake? If we compare what is
going on with the monopoly on word processing to the openness,
creativity and innovation in the field of authoring tools for the
web, it becomes clear that we could see important changes if ODF
becomes the mandated standard."

Why? Because, "ODF is important for insuring access, competition,
cost savings and data sharing now and in the future," said Ress.

And as for Open XML, "for many IT industries, let's say 'other than
Microsoft,' the possible merger of the 2 standards Ecma and ODF could
take years=85and time is only on one side here. They see OASIS as the
'natural governing body' for XML and open standards models. ODF is an
existing standard, so why the delay? Who benefits from the delay and
the lack of public awareness? Well, we know who."

I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don't count.

Librarians are also lining up behind ODF.

In a recent letter to the Massachusetts government, a coalition of
American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library
Association, the Association of Research Libraries, the Medical
Library Association and the Special Libraries Association, wrote,
"documents in relatively long-term storage such as the hard drives of
servers can be read only by programs that have backwards compatibility.

"Such backwards compatibility may be difficult to achieve in 100
years because the developer of the program used to create the
document may have gone out of business and the proprietary
specifications of the document format may have disappeared."

Yes, even Microsoft might disappear.

And, remember Microsoft, at best, will just be making its format
open. The boys from Redmond have never said anything about the
technology needed to render it correctly. It's like giving someone
the plans for a lock, but keeping the key to yourself.

On the other hand, the librarians continued, "documents created in
ODF will remain accessible in the future because any programmer will
be able to find its open, nonproprietary specifications."

Exactly.

Finally, Microsoft could always support ODF. They were invited to
join in when it was being created. Just yesterday, Patrick Gannon,
the president and CEO of OASIS, once more opened the door for
Microsoft to support ODF.

I doubt Microsoft will do the right thing. After all, it's in their
best financial interest to maintain a monopoly even if it isn't in
anyone else's interests.

Ziff Davis Internet Senior Editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been
working and writing about technology and business since the late '80s
and thinks he may just have learned something about them along the way.

************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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