Oh no! Here we go again. Some time ago I was sort of happy when Microsoft announced to support open file formats for office documents. There is already an excellent format ODF used by OpenOffice. At that time I didn’t know that they actually meant that they would come up with their own file format (OOXML).

In the race for the leading open document format the ODF has won over Microsoft’s OOXML. Stuart McKee, national technology officer at Microsoft, admitted that ODF has won the race and Microsoft will put add-on support for ODF in Microsoft Office. So far so good… only Microsoft will stick to its own OOXML format. Sounds familiar?

Yes, it does. Remember the HTML-tag race? Microsoft including its own tags in HTML, implementing other tags in another way. All this was done in order to try to hijack the HTML format. Now I’m afraid we will see the same stuff with the ODF vs. OOXML formats. The implementation of the ODF format in Office will be subtly crippled. Users who are fooled easily will switch to OOXML (”because it just works in Office. ODF just doesn’t work”). Microsoft will try to add features to OOXML that will make it hard to convert to ODF so users will use OOXML because “in ODF it just doesn’t look right”.

What makes this even more remarkable is that Microsoft joined the standards committee for ODF. So they influence ODF and have their own competing file format. Sounds suspicious. So I’m afraid we will be faced with another document format war. I seriously would want the industry to embrace a single standard. You can compete on product features and ease of document creation. Don’t compete on file-format. It makes me sick how vendors (specifically MS) always try to find ways to get a stranglehold on their clients. It surprises me how people and companies are still willing to pay large amounts of money (to Microsoft) just to end up in their stranglehold. Don’t forget to smile while they choke the living breath out of your poor soul.

That’s why I try to keep away from proprietary file formats as far as I can. It is my data. I have the right to full access to my own data. I want to be able to write my own tools to process the data. Every vendor that tries to deny me that right by using an ‘undisclosed’ file format can go to hell. The same goes for vendors that try to attack and hijack open formats. I prepare myself for another strike of the evil empire from Redmond.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 16:24 and is filed under computer, freedom, open standards, software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.