ODF Alliance Continues to Grow and Build Out 74
Andy Updegrove writes "As you may recall, a new organization called the ODF Alliance was formed on March 3 of this year to support the uptake of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) by governments. Yesterday, the ODF Alliance issued a press release announcing that it has more than tripled its membership to 138, has appointed a Managing Director with strong European experience (Marino Marcich), and is lobbying countries globally to vote for ODF in ISO. Overall, the picture is one of a growing organization that plans to be around for awhile, and particularly hopes to make its impact in Europe, from which a large number of its members have arrived, where governmental interest in ODF is highest, and risks to government CIOS therefore lowest."
The hard part (Score:3, Insightful)
The hard part will be keeping infighting to a minimum. Many times, organizations like this set out with great intentions and admirable goals, only to become very ineffective when infighting and internal empire-building take place.
Re:Oh great, the government again (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not a government action...these are members of governmental organizations participating to come up with a standard. Governments become a problem when they mandate (they got da guns, doncha know) a standard without really working through an open process. In this case, there are enough other players, and there is no good way to mandate via force, so that this remains an open participatory exercise, at least in theory. (We can assume normal human hubris will reign supreme like in any committee and it will not go smoothly....but the fact that governmental groups are involved is irrelevant. It happens with most ANY committee.)
The organization with the gun, in this case, has been Microsoft, with their dominance of the desktop and the office suite. By making it difficult to impossible to pass documents easily to other programs, Microsoft has forced a monopoly of convenience. An ODF standard, with enough large organization participants, can make interactivity simpler, make translation seamless, and open the door for other players in the Office Suite game. And it will be because of concensus, not fiat. Now if only the United Nations could play so well.
Re:Any real interoperabilty? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Any real interoperabilty? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lastly, what about when Office2007 comes out, and the formats change? It'll take months or years for people to reverse-engineer the new formats.
The other thing that bugs me is that it's mostly basic text that people are sending in Word form. I mean, it's like a list of twenty names and times, and they make a Word file that could just as easily be a
Re:Any real interoperabilty? (Score:5, Insightful)
It never ceases to amaze me the lemming mentality of Business when it come to using propriety formats and how they seem to think that it allows for portability and interoperability (Biz talk) when that format is under the control (ie. Intellectual Property) of one company. What is even stranger is that format sometimes cannot even be read properly by the same companies software after a few years. So if you are part of a council, hall of records
Please look at the history of standards, get yourself in the right frame of mind before you do and it is quite fascinating, particularly when you relate it to today's society.
Yes I have worked in a Standards Laboratory hence my signature.