IBM and Sun executives will host a meeting devoted to promoting the use of OpenDocument as an inducement for adoption of software that would compete with Microsoft Office. ComputerWorld's Elizabeth Montalbano reports that the ideas behind the gathering include the notion that vendors supporting OpenDocument could create a reference implementation that companies will be able to use in testing their software for compatibility. In addition, the possibility of creating a foundation around OpenDocument technology is also expected to come up for discussion.

"The meeting is for those industry partners who are interested in implementing and advancing the OpenDocument specification," Todd Martin, an IBM spokesman told Montalbano.

Representatives of such companies as Novell and Red Hat are expected to join Bob Sutor, IBM vice president of standards and open source, and Simon Phipps, chief open source office at Sun - co-chairs of the meeting - for the discussions.

Sun is furthering the cause of making OpenDocument a specification by introducing a Sun Grid utility service that users can employ to automatically convert proprietary documents to OpenDocument using a web browser, Montalbano reports.

Interest in the meeting is also high within IT circles in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where OpenDocument has been proposed as a standard for all government documents by January 2007. The proposal includes a mandate for Massachusetts government agencies to adopt phased migration plans that will enable a move away from productivity suites that do not support OpenDocument, according to Montalbano.These would include Microsoft Office, as well as proprietary document formats.

There is opposition to the adoption of OpenDocument as a standard within Massachusetts. Some oppose the adoption because they claim the solution is not compatible with a computer program used by disabled citizens to access public documents. Others, specifically a group calling itself Software Choice, of which Microsoft is a member, oppose the adoption because, as Mike Wendy, the organization's media relations manager, says, "We are concerned about the proliferation of proposals that seek to mandate only open-source software in state laws."

For its part, Microsoft is submitting the Open Office XML document format technology to the International Standards Organization (ISO), hoping for its adoption as an international standard by the time the next version of its productivity suite, code-named Office 12, is launched.

Montalbano and Simon Taylor write that some consider Microsoft's move as an "end run" around the support from other quarters for OpenDocument. This is the opinion of Louis Suarez-Potts, community manager of OpenOffice.org and chairman of the group's governing council, who added, "With an open standard, any application can use it," he said. "With an ISO standard, it's not quite the same thing. It just means you have a reference for it." The big difference, according to Suarez-Potts, is that companies cannot use an ISO standard for building their own applications.

Others suggest that it would have been more logical for Microsoft to add OpenDocument support to Office rather than submit its own file formats to a standards body. Montalbano and Taylor quote Stephen O'Grady, a senior analyst at Denver-based RedMonk, who speculates that Microsoft is retaining Open XML as a control point in the contest for document standards.

"To me, what they should’ve done from a competitive standpoint is support OpenDocument format. They can do that without jeopardizing their own position," O'Grady added. "I have never been one who says Microsoft should drop what they’re doing. I just don't know why they can't add OpenDocument (support) alongside other formats, when they support WordPerfect and PDF."

Alan Yates, general manager for Microsoft Office, objects that comparing OpenDocument to Open XML is comparing oranges to apples. "Open XML allows companies to integrate data directly into the documents so the document carries data for the corporation, and (OpenDocument) does things very differently," Yates said. "Our customers require us to support the full feature set of Office and Office 12. They would not accept us supporting anything that didn't support some features or hid other features." [...read more...]

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