Does ODF Have a Future? 402
qedramania writes "Linuxworld seems to think ODF is a dead duck. Is the Windows monopoly too big and too entrenched? Other than diehard Linux fans, does anyone really care if they have to keep paying Microsoft to do basic word processing? It seems as though the momentum is towards a complete Microsoft monoculture in software for business and government. You can bet that big business and governments will want more than just reliability from Microsoft in return for their acquiescence. Does ODF have a future?"
Think "world" instead of "USofA". (Score:5, Insightful)
ODF is not going to take off in the US until AFTER the rest of the world has adopted it. So let's look at what other governments and such are adopting Linux / ODF.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Dead for the Enterprise != Dead for the user (Score:3, Insightful)
The needs of the enterprise and the needs of the individual are different- might they not be better served by different formats?
I think I might detect sarcasm... (Score:3, Insightful)
They said the same thing b4 FireFox came along. (Score:5, Insightful)
The MS-Office monopoly has so far been nearly impossible to beat. But things can change quite rapidly. Terms like vendor-lock and interoperability will eventually penetrate the skulls of the thickest CIOs and CTOs.
It would help if the supporters of Free Software and Open Software would stop fighting the internecine battles and start uniformly supporting Open Standards. Even before you mention the word Open Standards, immediately others pushing Free Software agenda and Open Source agenda push their pet projects, creating an impression it is all one and the same and one can not have Open Standards without also Open Source and Free Software. They are different.
You might not agree that replacing MSFT monopoly with some kind of duopoly (like it is with Intuit-Quicken and MS-Money). But it is definitely better than the monopoly. Once the customers are educated about the vendor lock and compatibility the duopoly will naturally break down. Eventually there will be enough space for Free Software, Open Software, and Close source software to coexist.
LinuxWorld = Pro Microsoft FUDster (Score:5, Insightful)
LinuxWorld is just trolling and spreading FUD with their "just too big, why bother, you can't win, give up, don't try, it'll never work, it can't happen, you're just wasting your time, resistance is futile" rhetoric
Their words are as dog farts. They are not to be considered!
Once Upon a Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there were text editors tied to document preparation systems. Anyone remember RunOff/Runnem?
Then there were integrated full word processing software that you could load onto your general purpose computers. WordStar anyone? Surely you remember Word Perfect!
All of these existed and flourished well in their time, and all existed before MSWord, whose first incarnation on the PC/XT was wretched!
To say that MSWord can never be dethroned is bunk! MS loves to hear this talk, since you're defeated and they win before the battle has even begun. Previous solutions lost out when something better and cheaper came alone.
The more MS hikes the cost of MSOffice, the more they make it more difficult to use (WGA on Office anyone?), the more they remove MSWord from the virtually free Works package, the more Open Office improves while maintaining its low, low cost of Free, the more OEM's cut costs by preloading OO so that you have it right out of the box, the more MS has to worry about.
Talk defeat, and that's what you'll get. Then only MS will be cheering.
Re:Largely an attitude thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you really *want* your resume in their database? Personally, I'd much rather send my resume to a person who can ignore it because they're busy rather than to a database where it will be ignored because I forgot to mention the keyword "AJAX".
You're missing the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
ODF isn't there to dethrone MS as the word processor of choice, to think so is a bit foolish. It's there to provide a format that *everyone* can use. I will continue to use MS Office because I think it's a superior product, but ODF allows me to *save* my MS Office documents to format that *anyone* else can use, but more importantly convert from when I want to read my own documents in 20 years.
Remember, ODF is not a platform, word processor, gizmo, Office killer, etc. It's only a standard in which to format documents.
Re:LinuxWorld = Pro Microsoft FUDster (Score:3, Insightful)
ODF works great for me, and I've never personally had anything rendered badly in OpenOffice, save for some ancient RTF documents written in a fifteen year old versions of MS-Works and IBM Works. However, when I do communicate with other people and send documents, I either go with Word or with PDF. I try to stick to PDF, because rendering is guaranteed, but obviously where people are going to be making changes, I have to go with Word. It is, unfortunately, a defacto standard. I'm hoping the push for an open document format will eventually force Microsoft to at least work nicely with ODF, seeing as their own "open" format is so ponderous, horrible and fundementally un-open that they can't even stack the committees sufficiently to get it through.
The real question is "Does it matter?" and I think Linux World is asking a fair question. In the short term, no it doesn't. However, and this is a big IF, enough governmental agencies around the world start demanding the use of a truly open document standard, then, indeed, ODF has a big chance.
Re:Whatever happened... (Score:3, Insightful)
Article proposes XHTML + CSS 3 instead (Score:5, Insightful)
Right at the end, the article suggests an alternative:
Earlier on, the article talks about how it's too expensive to "rip out and replace" MS Office with ODF. Well yeah. Often in technology, a new technology doesn't have to be better - it has to offer something compelling that the old one doesn't, such as a lower price, convenience, mobility, or networking. The new technology gains a foothold in its niche, then starts to expand beyond it - without necessarily ever completely replacing the older technology. Thus we have cell phones displacing land lines, YouTube pressuring television (despite its crappy quality), MP3s replacing CDs, laptops gaining on desktops, digital cameras edging out film, etc.
So it seems to me that the strategy of perfect emulation is a strategy for failure: if ODF does exactly th same thing, is the freedom it offers enough to compel organizations to switch? (We might say yes, but then we know the consequences of lock-in and we don't have to make the up-front investment.) On the other hand, for all its weaknesses, HTML offers all sorts of things that Word lacks (e.g. accessibility and reformatting for differetn devices, universal browser support, Net-friendly, strong semantics), and is probably good enough for most uses. Thoughts?
Prime Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks, this is the heart of the matter. This is what needs to be understood by both sides of the argument:
What the poster misses is that people don't ... D O N O T accept or reject a file format. They, with the small subset of geeks on /., don't give a flip about file format. They accept or reject a program.
For ODF to be accepted, it has to be part of a program that most users have installed.
Program acceptance is usually established by:
Re:Tail wagging the dog (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the debate here!
We're talking about the format being used to create and store publicly owned information. The government is funded by the citizens. The citizen should not have to pay an additional Microsoft tax in order to access government documents. The government SHOULD BE worried, even though they probably are not. Even if ODF is adopted as the standard, MS has the option of supporting it in their applications along with everyone else. The reverse isn't true if the government decides to institutionalize vendor lock-in.
Re:Largely an attitude thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Just a Question Never Answered Well (Score:5, Insightful)
A properly prepared word-processing document these days, whether written with Open Office Writer, Word, or any other decent wp-program, is prepared using styles. You can't do that with RTF. It was inevitable that someone would come up with an XML-based format at some time, because RTF is just too inflexible and incapable of structuring a document.
Open Office needs a tangible advantage (Score:4, Insightful)
A rule of thumb when trying to replace one product in the marketplace with another is that the new product needs two tangible advantages. ODF needs to have one "gotta-have" feature that non-technical people can understand and appreciate in order for it to successfully beat out Office.
Yes, ODF is theoretically cheaper then Office. However, the productivity boost of spending $500 / employee is a bargain when the employee's time is worth $50 / hour! (Remember, a guy making $20 an hour really does cost the company $40-$50 an hour.)
The "Open" aspect of ODF is too abstract for many people to understand. To the non-technical person, Office "just works".
Thus, in order for there to be a demand for ODF, there needs to be tangible features that work better with ODF then Office. What tangible features could people appreciate from ODF? Here are some suggestions that come to mind.
Thus, to repeat, in order for ODF to really succeed it needs to have easy-to-understand features that non-technical people will desire. Competing on price alone won't beat Office.
Re:In short. (Score:2, Insightful)
Except for complaining on how no one is using the technology you need to realize why noone is using your technology. There is rairly the Man trying to put you down, because people are good enough at putting themselfs down without the help of The Man
"Liberate your documents"? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think the slogan "Liberate your documents" is going to go over well with businesses. The image it evokes is security leaks and industrial espionage.
Everyone should be evaluating ODF (Score:3, Insightful)
There's some big News To Me in this article and I wish the open source community would do a better job of informing the rest of the world of this crap. This article mentions that Microsoft's OOXML format can't be implemented by other vendors. What?!?!? That's News To Me. I'm sure the article is right, but frankly, I don't keep my nose to grindstone enough to follow this kind of religious news any more and it's the first time I've heard MS restricts who can implement this file format. It also says it's an import-only format that's basically junk. Really? I didn't know that and I just assumed that the format was reasonable and worked. Can the rest of the world's new organizations please make a big deal out of those facts?
OOXML is crap and ODF works. That's important and I didn't know it.
Now, let's look at Microsoft's dominance in the marketplace. I guarantee you that every IT Director in the world is figuring out how to get OpenOffice in the door and figuring out what role it can play. When I look at my budget for the year I want eradicate any line item having to do with licensing. Realistic? No. Can we cut back on things? Hell yeah. We don't need every PC in this company having a copy of MS Office. For us, Outlook is a bitch, but the Exchange web client is pretty good. Visio and Project are tough ones, but not everyone uses it. Some people have custom integration with Excel, but those people are also a minority. Oh, and there's the religious thing with using free software, that's nice to me and gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
So when you look at the landscape, the single biggest obstacle appears to be document formats.
And really, I know that's not even much of a concern. We already rely on the MS document formats as being the default. Maybe if ODF is so good we should consider switching our default formats now. Maybe that should be the first step in our migration. I could care less who came up with the document standard as long as the documents open and do what I expect them to do.
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:3, Insightful)
Our whole culture in America is based on free enterprise and a competitive market. Owning so much market share that that's virtually no competition is unhealthy for our economy and for the world.
MS owns RTF and changes it at will (Score:4, Insightful)
This is completely unacceptable for a long-term document archive solution. It's not an open format, so you have to rely on Microsoft making "converters" for older iterations available, or reverse engineering. In addition, you have to realize that since the formation is closed, your reverse-engineered implementation may not correctly handle some "features." And that when MS decides to change things, your solution may not correctly handle the new "improved" format.
Not that Microsoft would intentionally break compatibility, of coure... What is it that the Office team says? "RTF isn't done until OpenOffice won't run"
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'd look at governments first. (Score:3, Insightful)
Citizens are the **last** ones to benefit when we aren't involved in our government. Always.
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard to sell a file format. What people buy into is the product that uses the file format. The best way to spread ODF is to continue to improve the products that use it, so people will choose them over the alternative.
The free world has already won. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not use a document exchange format that is natively supported on many platforms and which has a free viewer for Windows?
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you see the disconnect? The post you're responding to says that in at least some environments (I suspect it is the majority), things are done in an ad hoc way.
Yes, if they have competent sysadmins with management support their systems will be locked down and they won't be able to stick the corporate foot in the corporate mouth. How often do you suppose that happens?
Re:Just a Question Never Answered Well (Score:5, Insightful)
The basic RTF spec is about two pages long, and about as complex as HTML 1.0. Like HTML, it defines a simple way of extending it. Word can export documents as RTF that include all of the formatting of the original. The catch? That nothing else can read them. Remember early on in the last browser war where IE and Netscape both defined large numbers of extensions to HTML? Imagine a situation like that, but with half a dozen browsers. Now imagine the browsers also edit the document, and strip out any markup they don't understand. That's pretty much the situation with RTF.
Schools, discounts & piracy are the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
It's weird to say that pirating is the problem, but I really think that every kid who knows something out there will just get a copy of Word from someone, somewhere, whether it be online or through a friend. Nobody out there is saying "Use AbiWord or Ooo to read it."
And it's very weird to say something like "MS might be gone someday and we may not be able to read the file format" to someone. How can any average person think MS would ever go out of business? You can certainly bring up big companies like Digital and all, but MS will probably not be making their mistakes.
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:5, Insightful)
See, no matter how much those of us who like and use Open Source bitch about this, if 90% or more of all of the computers in the world are running Windows, then to almost that proportion of users, there only is Windows and Office.
In their mind, it's unfathomable that you don't run it. IT installed their software, and that was Office. That's what it's always been. Everyone send them files, and those are office. They're not interested in, aware of, or looking for a document exchange format which is natively supported on many platforms.
I mean, really, you may as well ask Joe User to send you e-mails written in Esperanto because the e-mail would be readable by that theoretical 'anyone' who speaks Esperanto (which is practically nobody in the grand scheme of things). They're going to look at you and say "Esper-what-o?" -- because they have no idea it exists, what it's for, or what the hell you're talking about. To them, you're speaking in Martian and make no sense whatsoever.
We can advocate, and try to gently nudge people into the direction we would like to see. But, in the end, users simply overwhelmingly don't have a clue about the issue, and they don't care. This is true about almost all forms of open file formats -- I mean, go up to some random Windows user and start railing on about how ogg vorbis is the teh b0mb and WMA is teh sux0rs. They're not going to care any more than they will about ODF vs Office files.
I hate it as much as you, but the sheer size and inertia of the installed base of Office users is going to make it awfully difficult to supplant it as a file format of interchange. Don't expect it happen overnight -- Linux has been almost ready to start displacing Windows for about 15-16 years now.
Cheers
Re:The free world has already won. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice dreamming, but you can't really implement OOXML by the documentation and Microsoft has patents on it (that they promisse not to use against people that fit some impossible criteria).
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:4, Insightful)
It's what happens when your data files are a nearly-straight dump of your bizarre in-memory data structures-- maintaining compatibility while changing the code at all is extremely difficult.
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:3, Insightful)
I far prefer to read a document in KPDF than in a word processor: it looks neater and it is easier to navigate around.
If YOUR PDF viewer sucks, then use a different one.
Re:Think "world" instead of "USofA". (Score:3, Insightful)
Although, you know, that's actually one of the saner complaints I've heard about going metric - it's not
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