OpenDocument and Microsoft

I've been following the developments of Massachusetts choosing to support Adobe Acrobat (PDF) and OpenDocument formats and NOT Microsoft's XML format for public documents (NOTE: OpenDocument and Microsoft's new format are *BOTH* XML schemas, but have different licensing stipulations). It's a rather interesting case, and seems to highlight the fact that people are fed up with proprietary file formats that limit what you can do with your own creation. In particular, Massachusetts is arguing that the closed and/or limited formats provided by Microsoft are threatening Massachusetts' sovereignty, which is a bit strange at first. However, if you think about it, what would happen if Microsoft went out of business? What would happen to all those documents produced by the government? How would the people access them? What if, rather than going out of business, Microsoft simply decides one day to stop supporting their formats? Or perhaps they change the licensing requirements even further, preventing products from accessing documents in the future? With an open format even if a specific product goes out of business or stops support, another product can be used or created to support it.

Microsoft Word .doc files have frustrated third-party developers for a long time, given that the format is closed and thus has to be reverse-engineered in order to create an interface. Lack of compatibility with MS Word is probably the most often-cited reason for not using OpenOffice.org, and yet this is really Microsoft's fault, not OpenOffice.org's. Microsoft claims to have solved this issue with their XML schema, which is probably what they intend to replace the .doc format with. However, there are several licensing problems with the XML schema Microsoft has created that exclude sub-licensing, which is important to open-source products. Many people seem to think Microsoft did this on purpose to create good PR about an open format, while excluding their current primary competition, open-source products like OpenOffice.org.

It will be interesting to see if other government bodies choose to follow Massachusetts toward open standards.

Here's a link to the FAQ from Massachusetts' Information Technology Division, a Groklaw story about Microsoft's complaining, and a couple of articles [1 and 2] that describes the decision fairly well.