Open Document
john posted in technologies on November 22nd, 2005
Ever had trouble opening someone else’s documents?
Ever tried to open an old word processed document?
Ever wondered why Word’s documents are so huge?
Have you actually paid for Microsoft Office so your kids could make reports in Word for school?
How many documents does a state government have?
How long do they have to keep them?
Are government documents supposed to be available to all citizens?
How many different governments have to create and maintain documents?
Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a stable, open document format that is free to all users, works in all languages, and is supported by all software vendors?
um, yeah.
Well why in hell haven’t we got one by now, 25 years after the first commercial word-processors were delivered?
We needed a document language that is self-describing. That is, we needed a way of controlling not just the text itself, we’ve had that, but the way it’s displayed on the page. Each word-processor company invented their own, but they were intentionally non-universal, and most important they weren’t self-describing. You couldn’t read the raw document and understand what the control characters meant. The advent of XML fixed that problem. Even Microsoft agrees with this.
Then, we needed to create a standard XML format that was open to everyone, and free to use to read or create documents. The standard had to be developed by a group willing to make it public- no patents, no secrets, no ownership.
Then we needed organizations with the clout to come forth and demand standards.
Lately, we have the state of Massachusetts and the European Union each trying to choose a document standard, plus lots of onlookers like the US Defense Department and Brazil. It seems a no-brainer that by its very nature this is a standard that will spread quickly once a significant organization adopts it.
So What?
Well, there is a player on the field, whose most profitable application is threatened by the choice of an open standard, Microsoft.
Microsoft wants governments and everyone else to buy Office in order to create Word documents. The best way to do this is to get an XML standard adopted that Microsoft controls. They’ll give away a free reader, but you’ll still have to buy Office to create documents. Microsoft watchers will recognize a familiar pattern.
What’s Happening?
An office suite called Star Office, created mostly at Sun, has morphed into an open source suite called OpenOffice. With this year’s release of version 2.0 of OpenOffice, the default document format is Open Document, developed with OASIS, an independent standards organization created with industry backing. Not only is OpenOffice free of charge, and set up to create Open Documents, it runs on all the major operating systems ( OOo runs in X11, not native on Macs as of this writing ).
So governments finally have a viable choice of software, OpenOffice, and a viable format, Open Document, to compare with commercial offerings. In practice this means Open Document vs Microsoft’s proprietary XML. Microsoft and any other software vendor can choose to support Open Document, but it’s easy to see that even when they do so, many organizations will choose no-fee software over any paid license.
What Can an Individual User Do?
The good news is you have a choice between free, standards-based open software, and familiar, purchased software from Microsoft. You may be also able to use the WordPerfect bundle that came with your Windows PC, as well. You don’t have to give up Word, in order to use OpenOffice. OOo ( OpenOffice) will read and write .doc files as well as .ppt and .xls. It also saves to .pdf and docbook formats. It’s a sure bet that Microsoft will eventually offer a non-MS OpenDocument format if it is widely accepted as I predict. I would also expect them to offer numerous proprietary extensions to it in their never-ending attempt to grab control of independent standards.
What Can an Organization Do?
You can implement a test program to use both OOo and Office. I would suggest you let a few power users try OpenOffice rel 2, without removing Microsoft Office. The potential raw savings are easy to calculate. You’ll have to make a judgement about how your employees adapt to change.
What’s the Problem with Doing Nothing?
It’s a valid argument to say, “Microsoft will support the government requirements, so there’s no need to change.” If you really love paying Microsoft for a site license, and you think their support is great, then you wouldn’t be reading this, would you? If you think you might be able to switch some users from Windows altogether, then you have to evaluate all the software you’ll be relying on. OpenOffice is the key office software on Linux.
What About Support?
Support works differently in the Open Source world. The documentation is often unfinished for the latest release. But there are forums ( mailing lists ) for questions, where users and developers and documentors answer questions, even on the weekend. Microsoft and other commercial vendors essentially supply zero support, though their documentation is usually quite good. Googling a question on popular open source software will result in hits on many different websites. Usually you can get an answer on the first page of hits. Tough questions may take a day or two on the forum. OpenOffice has pretty good documentation, and a very active set of mailing lists.
Resources:
The longest, most thorough analysis of the Massachusetts decision I can find.
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