Norway endorses ODF
Open format war continues
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Norway is considering whether to make the use of the Open Document Format (ODF) compulsory in its government agencies.
The Ministry of Government Administration and Reform will make a final decision later in the year after recommendations from the Norwegian Standards Association committee.
Several European countries are also evaluating open file formats as an alternative to Microsoft Office.
The French Prime Minister recommended earlier this year that all government documents should be made available in ODF and have asked other European nations to do the same.
The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation already makes its online publications and other written communication available in ODF. According to the Rambøll-report, Danish state government could save 550 million kroner ($90m) by migrating to OpenOffice.org and ODF.
Similar moves are afoot in the US: the state of Massachusetts has begun using OpenDocument as the default document format, but it will be sticking with MS Office in the near term; Oregon is mooting the use of open source format documents for state agencies; and California is contemplating making ODF its required standard.
Microsoft, of course, is promoting the Open XML format, which may be approved by standards bodies such as the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).
However, if ODF is accepted as the default file format in Norway and orther countries, it could mean fewer government agencies will continue to use MS Office. ®
COMMENTS
It's a good time to switch
This is a good thing for all. There's no lock-out for those citizens who'd rather not use Microsoft products, and no lock-in for the document creators who have a wider choice of tools. (Which could *easily* include MS Office, if Microsoft weren't so scared of supporting a truly open format.)
As far as cost of switching goes, I'm led to believe that Office 2007's interface is significantly different to earlier versions. Which means retraining people how to use it. MS Technet even has an article which states "User education is required."
Granted, you'd have some retraining to move to OpenOffice or some other ODF-supporting alternative, but the interface is a lot closer to what your office suite users are already comfortable with, and at the end of it all you'd have escaped the MS Office trap and saved on licensing fees now and in the future.
Document exchange with less-enlightened organizations might be an initial problem, but different versions of MS Office tend to cause the same issues anyway.
As for the suggestion of standardizing around a Microsoft Office implementation of ODF, no way! Sorry but that's a Really Bad Idea. MS have plenty of form on this, where they try to subvert an open standard and twist it to their own benefit. Better to make sure the format is fully standardized and documented by a party that doesn't stand to gain or lose from it.
"the slightest incompatibility or additional feature beyond that which the ODF spec requires"
Given the current state of conformance and interoperabilty around ODF is not particularly stunning (http://develop.opendocumentfellowship.org/testsuite/summary.html) and that huge chunks of what's in the average ODF document is not specified in ODF it can be concluded that the only way forward is to return to pen and paper.
Not that this is necessarily a *bad* thing, mind...
2 Things
#1 - I think I might move to Norway.
#2 - So far as I've seen, no 2 implimentations of ODF are the same. If it makes its way into Office, even if it doesn't match the spec, hopefully they'll get enough market share that people will just make their software compatable with Office for now. I know that'd create problems in the long term (Think IE, but hopefully not as dreadful,) but I do think that any implimentation with large marketshare will be more likely to unite the format than any written standard. And Office is obviously in the best place to do that.
- Nexox
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