The Document Foundation enthusiastically supports the UK Government proposal supporting the
adoption of ODF 1.1 and ODF 1.2, alongside with HTML 4.01 and HTML5, CSV and TXT, for sharing or
collaborating with government documents.
According to Vint Cerf, Google's VP and Chief Internet Evangelist: "Google supports the use of
ODF as an open document format. ODF is an international open standard free to implement by all
software developers without restrictions. Choosing ODF will allow the UK Government to select
from a wide range of implementations to get the best value for UK taxpayers."
As an open standard free to implement, ODF has developed an ecosystem that values technical
excellence, progress and interoperability above all other factors. The Document Foundation is
proud to compete in a market that prioritizes these attributes and at the same time helps
governments, organizations and companies to cooperate in order to push forward the
interoperability envelope.
ODF has enabled different implementations to interact in real world scenarios like no other
productivity related technology has done in the past, and as such has been quickly adopted by a
diverse set of entities. In fact, choosing ODF as the single standard for editable office
documents will offer many advantages from several points of view:
1. ODF is maintained by a truly independent organization as OASIS, which has no hidden ties to
one single software vendor (like OOXML with Microsoft, through the European Computer
Manufacturers Association). In addition, most software vendors - including Microsoft - are
members of OASIS, and as such are involved in the development of the ODF standard (and in many
cases support the ODF format). As such, ODF is the best choice between document standards because
of its transparent independence.
2. According to Jim Thatcher, Principal Program Manager, Office Standards, Microsoft Corporation:
"Microsoft has successfully implemented the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF) Version 1.2 Standard
in the Microsoft Office 2013 and Microsoft Office 365 products. Our testing has shown that these
implementations of ODF 1.2 provide a high level of interoperability between Microsoft Office and
other independent implementations of the standard. Microsoft technical experts participated in
the ODF Technical Committee, with specific focus on the OpenFormula and digital signature
specifications. In Microsoft's opinion the ODF 1.2 specification represents a significant
improvement to the ODF standard." So, ODF is a good choice even according to Microsoft experts.
3. Native ODF support is wider than native OOXML support. In fact, because of its "non standard"
nature, native OOXML support is offered only by MS Office. On the contrary, native ODF support is
provided not only by LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice - both derived from the original
OpenOffice.org project - but also from other productivity software such as Calligra, AbiWord and
Gnumeric, and by Microsoft Office. Therefore, the addition of a second document standard like
OOXML would only represent an additional burden for the user, without any substantial advantage
for the community. Also, maintaining two standards would be significantly more expensive for the
government than maintaining one. In fact, standards are evolving with time, although slowly, and
keeping them aligned - in order to guarantee a transparent interoperability - would indeed be a
problem.
3. OOXML, as a standard, has had at least four different impersonation since its inception: 2007
transitional, 2010 transitional, 2013 transitional and 2013 strict. In addition, Microsoft Office
2011 for Macintosh adds another transitional version of OOXML. None of these "transitional"
impersonations are falling into the standard document format definition, as they are including a
number of proprietary blobs. In addition, the standard compliance of OOXML 2013 strict has still
to be fully evaluated. In fact, it looks like Microsoft Excel 2013 behaves in a rather strange
way when it opens one of its own spreadsheets including the dates between February 1, 1900, and
March 1, 1900, and saved in OOXML strict (more here: http://wp.me/p4wCe-fa). On the contrary,
none of the ODF implementations can be considered as "transitional" versus the standard, and this
makes ODF support more predictable.
4. OOXML four different impersonations are part of Microsoft new end user lock-in strategy, which
is more sophisticated than the original one based on proprietary formats. Today, lock-in is based
on more elements: the multiple OOXML versions (which are a real problem for interoperability, as
they create a matrix of different ways of representing the same contents); and the introduction
of the proprietary (and patented) C-Fonts, which are the default choice since Office 2007, as
they cannot be emulated by free fonts and therefore mess up the look of documents (if opened by
any other office suite, as the use of C-Fonts is limited by the EULA to Microsoft Office licensed
users). On the contrary, all native implementations of ODF guarantee against any form of lock-in,
as it would be extremely easy to switch to another software without any impact on document
interoperability.
5. The ODF adoption would create an even ground for competition for the office suites and the
other applications supporting the single standard document format, which would in turn foster
innovation. Users could choose the best office suite or the best software for their needs, from a
large number of options. In addition, the single standard would encourage other software vendors
to improve ODF support, and this would bring additional benefits to the users.
Again, the UK Government proposal supporting the adoption of ODF - along with HTML, CSV and TXT -
as the single standard for editable documents is a step in the right direction, which will bring
substantial advantages to UK citizens.
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