{"id":139,"date":"2006-10-24T15:15:24","date_gmt":"2006-10-24T14:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ospublish.constantvzw.org\/?p=139"},"modified":"2008-09-08T17:48:49","modified_gmt":"2008-09-08T16:48:49","slug":"when-standards-are-political-odf-the-open-document-format","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ospublish.constantvzw.org\/blog\/news\/when-standards-are-political-odf-the-open-document-format","title":{"rendered":"When standards are political"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Love<\/a> just posted this interesting report on Nettime:
\n
\nWhen standards are political — ODF (the Open Document Format)<\/strong>
\nYesterday I attended a meeting hosted by TACD at Harvard’s Berkman Center about a very important issue — one that is both highly technical and political at the same time — the battle over the Open Document Format (ODF).<\/p>\n

(See links: http:\/\/www.cptech.org\/a2k\/odf\/odfwkshop20oct06\/<\/a>, http:\/\/
\nwww.tacd.org, http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/OpenDocument<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The technical part concerns what ODF is — an open specification for the formats of common documents such as those created by word processors, spreadsheets and presentation graphics programs. The political part concerns what ODF represents — an end to the Microsoft monopoly in desktop applications that are used to author and manage these documents.”<\/p>\n


\nEstimates vary, but Microsoft probably controls somewhere between 90 to 95 percent of the market for word processing, spreadsheet and presentation graphics programs. This means people use Microsoft software to create these documents, and also to store data. The source of Microsoft’s monopoly is control over file formats, in a world where data needs to be shared.<\/p>\n

Lots of companies or even free software communities can create
\nsoftware to do these common tasks. Corel’s WordPerfect office suite,
\nApple’s iWorks, the OpenOffice.Org, and doc.google.com are just a few
\nexamples of “competitors” to Microsoft office, each controlling a
\ntiny part of the small non-Microsoft market share. But as we all
\nknow, we need to exchange data. With everyone using email and the
\nweb, we need to consider if others can read our documents, and if we
\ncan read what we receive from others.<\/p>\n

By failing to document their own (periodically modified) file
\nformats, and not supporting the file formats of competitors,
\nMicrosoft has been able to create a very compelling reason to buy,
\nand buy again, Microsoft software. Documents created in (current
\nversions) of Microsoft’s software are the best way to read documents
\nother people create using Microsoft’s software. So long as everyone
\nuses a reasonably current version of Microsoft’s software, everything
\nmore or less works.<\/p>\n

You can try to avoid using Microsoft — but at price. Documents might
\nnot look right. Sometimes the differences are small — but sometimes
\nthey are almost unusable. For this reason, most of the entire
\ncomputer using world now relies upon software from Microsoft. Other
\ncompanies don’t even bother to invest in competing products. There is
\nvery little choice or innovation in this product space.<\/p>\n

Some people say this is inevitable, but of course, this is not true.
\nThe lack of interoperability is deliberate — the linchpin of
\nMicrosoft’s monopoly. But if the public could embrace an open format
\nfor documents, the outcome would be much different. There would be
\nmore competition, more innovation, better products, cheaper prices,
\netc. And there is a highly relevant example — the web.<\/p>\n

Web pages are build upon the foundation of open format – called HTML
\n– for hypertext mark-up language. The standards for HTML are
\ndetermined by the World Wide Web Consortium – which is not controlled
\nby any one company. The formats are open, well documented, and
\ndesigned to work with different software and hardware. It has
\nprobably been the most influential and important data standard in the
\nhistory of publishing.<\/p>\n

There are now thousands of high quality and innovative tools to
\nauthor web pages. Microsoft offers a few, but they were never able to
\nestablish a significant market share. Indeed, there is no “leading”
\ntool for creating web pages. Instead, there is an astonishing variety
\nof methods of doing so – ranging from bare bones text based html
\nediting tools to incredibility easy to use blogging software –
\noffered by a variety of companies, free software projects or even
\nindividuals.<\/p>\n

The “Open Document Format” (ODF) effort has been led by a large group
\nof non-Microsoft software companies that are seeking to level the
\nplaying field for software tools to author and manage text, data and
\ngraphics. It is pretty new, only having been approved by ISO\/IEC on
\nMay 8, 2006. So far, only a handful of products support ODF,
\nincluding the much improved free software office suite called
\nOpenOffice.Org, the online program docs.google.com, and some Linux
\nonly applications. Apple, Corel and Microsoft have yet to suport ODF.<\/p>\n

A handful of thoughtful government officials are trying to require
\nsoftware vendors, including Microsoft, to use this new open standard,
\nin order to achieve a number of important public policy objectives,
\nincluding:<\/p>\n

* More competition among suppliers of software,
\n* Improved ability to manage archives of data,
\n* Enhanced ability to use and re-purpose data contained in documents.<\/p>\n

The State of Massachusetts and the government of Belgium and Denmark
\nhave already put in place requirements that ODF be supported by
\nsoftware companies, and now other governments are beginning to
\nconsider similar initiatives. If they succeed, it could result in a
\nrevolution in the structure of the entire software market, and bring
\nmuch needed competition and innovation to these important areas.<\/p>\n

Next year Microsoft will try to sell the public on it’s latest file
\nformat — “Open XML”, which they are marketing as a “competitor” to
\nODF as an “open” data format. Open XML was described by one expert as
\na standard that only Microsoft could implement – similar to a job
\ndescription custom made for a single job applicant.<\/p>\n

Next month in Athens, Greece, at the new “Internet Governance Forum,”
\nthere will be proposals for global norms to support open standards
\nfor key aspects of information technologies, including but not
\nlimited to data formats. Many people are nervous about these issues,
\nbecause Microsoft is investing millions to defeat them, and to attack
\npersonally government officials who Microsoft sees as too friendly to
\nopen standards, and to reward politicians and government officials
\nwho back Microsoft.<\/p>\n

This battle, which is often very difficult to follow at the level of
\nthe technical details, is quite important. For years we have
\ntolerated the manipulation of data formats to maintain a monopoly
\nthat has imposed all sorts of costs of society, in terms of high
\nprices, lack of innovation and poor quality software. One only needs
\nto compare the innovation seen on web publishing to the dearth of
\ninnovation you see on the computer desktop. If ODF succeeds now,
\nMicrosoft will have to compete on the basis of prices and quality –
\nrather than by being the only product that will not mangle a
\ndocument. That should be a good thing for everyone in the long run.<\/p>\n

State and federal government agencies should be asked to require that
\nsoftware vendors support ODF.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Love just posted this interesting report on Nettime: When standards are political — ODF (the Open Document Format) Yesterday I attended a meeting hosted by TACD at Harvard’s Berkman Center about a very important issue — one that is both highly technical and political at the same time — the battle over the Open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,65],"tags":[74],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ospublish.constantvzw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ospublish.constantvzw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ospublish.constantvzw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ospublish.constantvzw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ospublish.constantvzw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ospublish.constantvzw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"http:\/\/ospublish.constantvzw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ospublish.constantvzw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ospublish.constantvzw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ospublish.constantvzw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}