| Document format dispute spills into the open |
Nov. 04, 2007
 The recent decision by the Open Document Foundation to substitute the World Wide Web Consortium's Compound Document Format in place of the format it was set up to promote, the Open Document Format, has sparked a contentious debate over what shape the format should take.
Open document advocates are debating fundamental questions about whether there should be a single document format or multiple formats that interoperate, and the relative importance of format and applications.
"At the core of our dissatisfaction with the ODF is its supporters' fundamental view that interoperability is an application thing and not a format thing. Our view is that if there is to be a Universal Document Format, the format must be the nexus of interoperability," said Sam Hiser, vice president of OpenDocument Foundation, explaining the move away from ODF.
As such, he said, the Foundation felt that the ODF was writing itself into history as a "me-too proprietary, application-tied specification with no intention to provide the market requirement of universal interoperability. ODF is therefore a sideline drama, only useful insofar as it has provided a foil for [Microsoft's] OOXML [Office Open XML]."
But Jason Matusow, director of corporate standards for Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., completely disagreed with that assessment, telling eWEEK that document formats provide the most choice for consumers and producers of software, and that the value of office automation technologies is not in the format, but in the applications.
Read the full story by Peter Galli on eWEEK.com, here.
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