__|__
-------O-------
    o´   `o

Why OpenDocument and the Document Foundation are Important

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

Ever tried opening a Word document and received a ‘not compatible with this version’ or similarly annoying message?

Some news:

Bad News

Microsoft Office’s ‘OOXML’ docX1 format does not follow open, documented standards, so there is no guarantee that files saved in this format can be opened with other software, now or in the future.

Good News

OpenDocument is an openly documented ISO standard which ensures documents can be opened, now and in the future, by people using any office software including free software such as LibreOffice.

OpenOffice.org = LibreOffice

One week ago open source volunteers who work with OpenOffice.org claimed complete independence from Oracle and created the Document Foundation, essentially a fork of OpenOffice.org, an open source office suite which Oracle became stewards of when they purchased Sun Microsystems.

From www.DocumentFoundation.org:

It was created in the belief that the culture born of an independent Foundation brings out the best in contributors and will deliver the best software for users.

Sounds good, not only to me! Here’s Charles-H. Schulz:

The Internet, October 6, 2010 – One full week has gone by since the announcement of The Document Foundation, and we would like to share some numbers with the people who have decided to follow us since the first day.

The beta of LibreOffice has been downloaded over 80.000 times. The infrastructure has expanded dramatically from 25 to 45 working mirrors in 25 countries (in every continent), including islands in the Pacific Ocean. This number is close to half the mirrors achieved by OpenOffice.org during ten years of history of the project.

Isn’t it great how he starts with ‘The Internet…’? No borders here—a true community.

UPDATE: Another point of view by Matt Asay:

But the future belongs to the web, and The Document Foundation’s very name suggests a backward-looking focus, not the future focus that will keep it relevant. The web is built upon open source, and many of its most interesting innovations have arisen from the open-source community. I’d love to see The Document Foundation help move the conversation around “documents” to the web that is supplanting the need for relics of the way we once worked.

More information

The future of document editing

Things like:

1 .doc is also a closed, proprietary format.

     __|__
-------O-------
    o´   `o

|