Students, new technologists, vendors, computer users, politicians or normal folks are always coming fresh to the open standards conversation. This is true of open source and free software, too. These are still new fields and it is difficult for lay-people to gain a reference on many things that are important to us...lay people, those who don't spend all day up to their elbows in the GPL, user-interfaces, CVS, CUPS, journaling file systems or project mailing lists.
There is a latent tendency among geeks to non-simplify, jargon the shield used to keep mortals away from our precious special knowledge [this site, I'll admit, is one of the worst offenders]. I believe this is one factor holding back Linux, but what is not mere belief and far more relevant is the necessity of speaking the Queen's English to our non-technical fellow citizens, or we will be extinct.
As Marketing Lead of the OpenOffice.org project early in the decade I was naively surprised that we would always be asked to address the most fundamental questions, over and over again. This I should have expected. The audience for information about the project was always renewing itself as normal people were hearing what the geeks were up to -- in every corner of the globe -- and coming to lend a hand or ask for help or apologize for a really...no, really...stupid question. (Just as there is no such thing as a Dummy or a Power User...only a PERSON...there are no stupid questions.)
OpenDocument is, above all, a durable notion. It will not go away, even if for extended spells adoptions are muted. If Everett M. Rogers theory, The Diffusion of Innovations, is valid or reliable we will be having new blood asking what is OpenDocument for the next 10 years at least, from Innovators, to Early Adopters, to Late Adopters, to Laggards.
So, here it is again, for the Freshmen...
What is OpenDocument?
OpenDocument (sometimes called “ODF”) is a file format for office documents which is available to users of a growing list of software applications. OpenOffice.org 2.0 and its sibling commercial office suite, StarOffice 8, are the most mature tools available to users today seeking to start creating documents in the OpenDocument format.
The OpenDocument format offers an open alternative to the formats used by all the existing Microsoft Office application versions for text, spreadsheets, presentation (and other kinds of) documents. The file extensions with which people are most familiar are Microsoft's .doc, .xls and .ppt extensions; these reflect the formats most in use today. OpenDocument's main file extensions are .odt (for a text document), .ods (for spreadsheets) and .odp (for presentations). These are analogous to the Microsoft extensions and will be more commonly recognized as people and organizations adopt OpenDocument-ready software.
OpenDocument is a Specification
OpenDocument is a technical specification. This is to say it is, in its essence, a document, a piece of paper. The specification is the complete set of instructions, the recipe, that any software developer or entity can freely and openly use to incorporate OpenDocument formats into their software, including but not limited to office suite applications such as those mentioned above.
The OpenDocument specification document resides at the Web site of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (“OASIS”). It is the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee (the “OASIS ODF TC”) that is responsible for making changes to the format, to continue to keep it technically up to date and permit it to evolve with innovations in document technology which are certain to occur in the future.
OpenDocument is an Open Standard
As an example of an open software standard, OpenDocument adheres to the following criteria in its modes of development and use:
open, collaborative development of the specification
public access to meetings about the specification
easily implemented by software developers in their own software
unencumbered by patent or licensing restrictions
interoperable with any software system designed to work with ODF
no proprietary dependencies or single-vendor functionality
Any format which does not adhere to all of these criteria cannot be considered an open standard.
OpenDocument is Not Open Source, nor is it Free, Software
...but it is open and free. OpenDocument is a specification; an OpenDocument file does not become software, per se, or take form in a file until some software application creates or changes it. OpenDocument, being an open standard, can be implemented in Open Source & Free Software applications as well as commercial applications.
Therefore, the license under which the OpenDocument-ready application is distributed does not impact the license of or access to or redistribution of OpenDocument, the specification. (Although it does impact the access people may have to specific OpenDocument-ready applications.)
It suffices to say that there is a mature Open Source office suite that is available by free download that offers the OpenDocument format as its native default (OpenOffice.org 2.0); and there also exists a mature commercial application that offers OpenDocument, too (StarOffice 8). Accordingly, software licenses or software development models do not impact or limit access to organizations seeking to use the OpenDocument format.
Sun Microsystems engineers, Daniel Vogelheim and Michael Breuer, gave us the reference implementations of OpenDocument in the early versions of OpenOffice and StarOffice beginning in 1999, so the specification may contain some technologies to which Sun Microsystems might retain rights (none have been specifically declared). Yet Sun offers a perpetual and reciprocal Royalty-Free license for the OpenDocument specification (just in case there is a question).
Standardizing Document Formats is a Natural Progression
As technologies mature, shared facilities always become standardized. This has been true of common units of measure, constructon materials (screws, pipes, fasteners, wood and metal subcomponents like the two-by-four among others) as well as Internet procotols (TCP/IP). There is every reason to expect that document format standardization around an open specification (exemplified by OpenDocument) should drive competition into document tools markets and drive innovation toward all the things we can do with documents and the data within. If opening and sharing the Internet protocol, TCP/IP, gave us email, instant messaging, web services, as well as commercial phenomena such as Amazon.com, Google, eBay, Craigslist and other imaginative new ways of communcating and finding others with common interests, then standardizing and ensuring the wide dissemination of an open file format should yield analogous exciting tools, processes and ways of accessing information in and across the sphere of documents.
OpenDocument was created to overcome many of the problems of proprietary document formats. Yet it is not solely a competitive missile directed at the established format owner, Microsoft. This is because the implications of an open file format for documents generates more value for the global ICT infrastructure at all levels than could ever be represented in a single company. And the origins and impact of OpenDcocument are beyond the commercial sphere.
Information or data created by users and organizations and stored in office documents belongs to the creators of that data. Yet, when the most common document formats are proprietary (or not open), users lose control of their data through dependency upon the software company or entity which controls the data format. When the controlling entity makes changes to its format this forces software re-acquisition upon users, which can be expensive as well as unnecessary. OpenDocument, by being openly developed and having no impediments to its usage or access, provides an excellent solution to this problem of control by offering an open standard data format for use in all kinds of software -- free as well as commercial.
OpenDocument cannot avoid being defined today by the established scenarios it controverts. However, it is critical to be mindful that OpenDocument's implications extend to doing things with documents and information which have not been invented (nor imagined) yet. Nor could OpenDocument's potential ever be successfully defined in the popular imagination within the gross limits of the model of personal computing and connectivity we know today.
This is not a techno-Utopian vision, but simply to say that we don't know what OpenDocument may bring. This uncertainty, in itself, is exciting because what we do know is that the implications are positive. The other thing we know is that a company doesn't have the resources to do what OpenDocument will do, for everyone on Earth with a PC or connected device and beyond, into the connected realm of light-weight services touching the data in documents.
OpenDocument Links
Wikipedia:
OASIS:
Sam,
Excellent primer on ODF. It's all there.
Now a next step (among many) is to boil down your paragraph that begins with "Information or data created by users and organizations and stored in office documents belongs to the creators of that data . . ." into a simple, direct headline sentence that anyone -- and I mean ANYONE -- can get on why they should give a damn about ODF. We need a rallying cry.
Everyone knows their docs end with .doc, which means that everything they create belongs to one single company. That's what .doc means.
"ODF guarantees that your data is YOUR data today and tomorrow. If it says .doc or .xls or .ppt, you don't own it."
I don't know. I just know that it has to be sold without using any tech terms.
Something simple and forceful.
Posted by: Jeff Kaplan | January 26, 2006 at 05:33 PM