Wednesday, July 2, 2008 by t.branaman.

The Open Document Format (ODF) was designed to give control of documents to the originator of the documents, not to a software company that controls the format and access to the documents. Open standards are important in any industry - just think of the problems that we would have if every manufacturer set their own, mutually exclusive, standards. What if your Ford vehicle would only work with gasoline from Ford?

With computers, the default “standard” for office documents (word processing, spreadsheets, etc.) is Microsoft Office. But this is not a true standard. It is simply the format used by the software that a majority of users use. The format is defined and controlled by one company (Microsoft), and that company can (and does) change the format at any time. Support for old versions can be dropped at any time, making it impossible to access documents written using the old versions. Information about the formats is tightly controlled, making it difficult or impossible for competitors to fully access documents created using these formats; the result is virtually no competition in office software. Microsoft also uses changes to the office formats to force users to upgrade to new versions of the office suite.

ODF gives control back to the originators of the documents - to you and me. Anybody is free to fully implement the standard, without restrictions. Implementations can be commercial or free. Microsoft claims to have an “open” format, but there are restrictions (including patents) that make their “standard” not truly open.

I have a handout from a talk I gave in June of 2008 that  contains information about ODF and Microsoft formats and products, including prices from various vendor’s web sites. Opinions in this document are my own, and are based on my own research. Feel free to pass it on to interested parties. If you have any questions about this information, you can email me at terry at tb-computing.com or post a comment about this entry.

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