Microsoft surprised a few people last week by announcing that it would add full support for the rival Open Document Format to Office 2007. Support for ODF, Adobe PDF and Microsoft's XPS will feature in Office's Service Pack 2, expected next year. Users will be able to set ODF as the native format for reading and writing documents.
Focusing on what customers need, Microsoft is supporting ODF 1.1, which isn't an ISO standard, and says it will support version 1.2, which is expected to become the next standard. In addition, Microsoft will join the Oasis ODF technical committee, and the AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) committee, which is preparing PDF 1.7 for ISO standardisation. It is also working with Ecma to make XPS an open standard. (XPS is built into Windows Vista.)
Of course, Microsoft already supports ODF - which was originally developed as part of Open Office, aka Sun's Star Office - in Microsoft Office, via its sponsorship of open source translators. This effort will continue, for three reasons. First, the translators will still be used by earlier versions of Microsoft Office. Second, they can be used by other software developers to enhance their own applications. Third, Microsoft wants Office users to have a choice of ways to save ODF files. If they don't like Microsoft's native implementation, they can use the open source translator, or Sun's ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office.
We're therefore heading for a situation where both Microsoft Office and Open Office can save files in both ODF and Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML), both ISO-approved standards. As Jerry Fishenden, Microsoft UK's national technology officer, said: "People can now use the office supplier of their choice with the file format of their choice without some of the emotional debate." Obviously, Microsoft thinks it can win if power, productivity, accessibility and backwards-compatibility are considered: ie, value for money, not just price. As Microsoft's Office interoperability expert, Gray Knowlton, wrote on his blog: "From a pragmatic standpoint, adding ODF to Office allows us to refocus Office on product capabilities rather than a debate about file formats."
But there's more to it than that. By opening up and standardising its Office file formats, Microsoft is responding to pressure from the European Commission's anti-trust regulators and, for example, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which are in favour of standardisation on principle. (So am I, and have been for decades. I don't use, and never have used, Microsoft's doc format.)
Whether this will deflect the EC's anti-Microsoft "not a vendetta" is another matter. As Clare Boothe Luce observed: "No good deed goes unpunished." Whether it will also deflect what independent XML expert Rick Jelliffe has called "the rabid anti-OOXML misinformation campaign" is also another matter. It has been, frankly, disgusting. Since IBM was busy adding OOXML support to products, some of it also looks hypocritical.
But I shall miss sarcastically agreeing with the gullibles who trot out the "One Document Standard" slogan, ignoring PDF, HTML, RTF and more? Yes, there should only be one ISO standard, and that one was adopted in 1989 (ISO 8613 Open Document Architecture). "So," I reply, "why do we need ODF? We already have an ISO document standard that hardly anyone uses."
Trying to beat people up with an ISO stick is pathetic. It's no substitute for giving customers a viable choice.
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