Document Formats

What is “open”?

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Office Open XML

• Developed by Microsoft• XML based• Published specifications• Vendor specific

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Open Document Format

• Developed by OASIS• XML based• Published specifications• Open source

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What is the real issue?

(It isn’t really a technical issue)

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It is a policy issue

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It is about open access

Photo titled “Open Access” by Shooting the breeze licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial ShareAlike license on Flickr.

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Open access to human knowledge and information is facilitated by truly open document formats.

Information must be made available to the broadest possible cross-

section of the population.

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It is about software too

• Document formats require applications to read and create them

• Applications require an operating system to run them

• What does the whole package cost?

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Office Open XML

• Works with Microsoft Office (Standard edition costs roughly R4 400 off the shelf)

• Requires Microsoft Windows (Vista costs roughly R2 250 off the shelf)

• Bulk licensing still has a price

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Open Document Format

• Works with a number of office suites including OpenOffice and NeoOffice (free)

• Versions for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and Linux (Ubuntu Linux, for one, is free and comes with OpenOffice)

• As many copies as you want (free)

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“Free” as in everyone has access

Photo titled “Villager in a hut window” by Hot Foot licensed under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial No Derivatives license on Flickr.

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Two standards?

• Two standards means no standards• Users still forced to choose between

competing and incompatible formats• A successful standard should have

multiple implementations• No open access means the people are

prejudiced

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“The goal of the Technical Committee is to produce a formal standard for office productivity

applications within the Ecma International standards process which is fully compatible with the

Office Open XML Formats.”

- Scope of the Open XML format of the ECMA programme of work (emphasis added)

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Should a document format be certified as a standard based on the

applications intended to support it?

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Or should a standard be platform agnostic?

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“Proprietary file formats are worse than proprietary software because they

leave you with no ability to switch at a later time”

- Jimmy Wales speaking at Wikimania 2005

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Who controls the document format?

Photo titled “Engine Controls” by Nick Blaire licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives license on Flickr.

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Office Open XML

• Development controlled by Microsoft and a vendor specific community

• Linked to Microsoft Office• Version dependent? Probably

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Open Document Format

• Development by an open source community

• Application neutral• Version dependent? Arguably not

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What does this have to do with anything?

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For one thing it means users have a real choice ...

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... and let’s not forget the cost

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Thank you!

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Paul Jacobson

The African Commons ProjectThe Open Law ProjectJacobson Attorneys

pejrm1@gmail.com083 444 8260

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