Microsoft says it will embrace an internationally recognised file format developed by the open-source software community. Is the company finally embracing openness and interoperability? Not so fast. <\/p>\n
Microsoft dropped a bombshell on the software industry last week when it announced it would include support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF), an industry standard format for saving office documents, in the next service pack of Office 2007, the latest version of its market-dominant suite of desktop productivity applications.<\/p>\n
Historically, Microsoft has eschewed interoperability — developers of rival office suites, such as OpenOffice.org, have had to decipher Microsoft’s proprietary file formats to support them in their own products.<\/p>\n
In recent years, though, Microsoft has come under growing pressure, from regulators and customers (especially governments), to be less hostile to open standards. The jury is still out about whether it is prepared to embrace open standards fully, or whether it will merely pay lip service to the idea, while working behind the scenes to poison and subvert those standards.<\/p>\n
Many open-source advocates don’t trust the company. While they have cautiously welcomed Microsoft’s decision to support ODF in Office, they say the company is notorious for embracing standards and then extending them with proprietary software code, effectively breaking them in the process.<\/p>\n
Take Microsoft’s much-maligned Web browser, Internet Explorer (IE), as an example. It does an awful job conforming to Web standards. Some sites, designed using IE, simply can’t be displayed in other browsers.<\/p>\n
Andrew Rens, intellectual property fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation, says that though Microsoft’s decision to support ODF is a “small but positive step in the right direction”, he still wants to see precisely how the company implements the format into Office. It could still use technical chicanery to break compatibility with other office suites.<\/p>\n
What is most extraordinary about Microsoft’s decision to support ODF is that it will not include its own rival format, Office Open XML (OOXML), which it has been trying to have ratified by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).<\/p>\n
Office 2007 uses an earlier version of the Microsoft-developed format, ratified as a standard by Ecma International. But open-source advocates have rubbished OOXML as being poorly written and too complex. Rens says this complexity is manifest in Microsoft not including OOXML in Service Pack 2 of Office 2007, but only in the next full version of the suite, which is at least two years from release. “Even the people who originated it can’t comply with it.”<\/p>\n
Rens says Microsoft should walk away from OOXML and withdraw it from the ISO. “It would say truly, really, that they are interested in openness and interoperability.”<\/p>\n
But Microsoft SA platform strategy manager Paulo Ferreira says the delay in implementing the ISO-sanctioned OOXML in Office has nothing to do with its complexity, but rather the fact that it is still in the process of being ratified by the organisation.<\/p>\n
Ferreira says Microsoft’s decision to include ODF support in Office shows that it is prepared to embrace industry standards. What seems more likely is that Microsoft is terrified of losing business, especially in the public sector, which is demanding suppliers use internationally recognised, standardised file formats such as ODF.<\/p>\n
If ODF were to replace Microsoft’s own format as the corporate standard for documents, Office would be forced to compete entirely on its merits. It is still, by far, the best productivity suite available, so what exactly is Microsoft afraid of? <\/p>\n