Michael Dolan Dot Com

Monday, September 12th, 2005

Open File Formats – A New Hope

Think of the last sci-fi movie you saw – let’s say Star Wars. Did you ever hear the actors/actresses say “sorry Luke, but I don’t have Office 2003 and so I can’t open your file.”? … Of course they don’t say that – we assume that in the future technology becomes pervasive and accessible by anyone. I find it impossible to take one company’s response that “in 100 yrs you won’t want to open your file anyway” – how far from the truth could that be?? Does R2D2 ever stop at the local Microsoft planet to upgrade his Office suite so that he can open new files?

Let me propose a situation with 2 possible approaches:

The Library of Congress digitizes every book in its collection over the next 5 years.

Situation 1) The LoC chooses to standardize on the OASIS, open, non-proprietary standard for documents in XML format.

Situation 2) The LoC chooses to standardize on Microsoft’s Word 2003 file format.

Just as the LoC finishes scanning it’s collection in 2010, Office 13 hits the stores.

Hypothetical Question: Does the LoC need to upgrade all its files to Office 13? What happens in 2015, 2020? Is the LoC on a neverending MSFT upgrade cycle? The empire strikes back every 5 years… You may say “yeah but those files are old – I don’t have files from 1995 anymore!”

Ah, but now think of software and IT today: we are amassing HUGE volumes of data, information, text, documents. SOX alone has probably doubled the data we’re storing in this country. The legal system has millions of pages of documents stored in its systems. When was the last time you saw a lawyer with the latest Microsoft Office installed…. I’ll give a free plug to the first lawyer who emails me an Office 2003 document.

Should all court documents just “disappear” in the next 3 years? 5 years? What about the transcript of Joe Con who killed a family of 4 and did X number of other offensive things… Should he be given parole in 2013 b/c we can’t open the Office 2002 file containing the testimony of a witness? You can see where I’m going.

Let’s say the LoC chooses option 2; what happens in 2050 when someone wants to open the Office 2003 file which has long since been unsupported by Microsoft… would an open source application be able to open it? No – not legally at least…

What’s the reality here? It’s that file formats are not the value a word processor provides – that’s not what anyone pays for as there are hundreds of file formats that no one uses. People value the ability to access content in digital form. Why should 1 company with a profit interest in mind be in charge of defining that standard?

I’m a MSFT shareholder (odd reasons) and honestly am extremely disappointed in its moves to lock the next Office XML file formats up in patent limbo. It was an obvious move to stave off Linux without any merit – why not release the format as open source? Heck with OpenOffice missing release dates it would be years before they caught up anyway…

And so I applaud the State of Massachusetts in its efforts to stave off a major problem before it starts. It has chosen to implement the OASIS document standard. MSFT could easily choose to support this standard in Office just as well – we all know MSFT will not, but it easily could. I have to ask why not?