Open Document Format Alliance Announced

March 3rd, 2006: IBM, Corel and Novell feature among the organisations forming the Open Document Alliance (ODA), an organisation that is mounting a challenge to Microsoft's Office XML format.

Launched in the US on the 3rd of March, the ODF's aim is to make the Open Office Formats the world standard for the creation of mainstay electronic documents. According to the organisation: "The OpenDocument format is an open XML-based document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents (including memos, reports, and books), spreadsheets, charts, and presentations… OpenDocument is owned by OASIS (IDM note: the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), and is a genuine vendor-neutral, open standard specification free from royalty and restricting encumbrances. All developers are free to work with it."

This puts the ODA's current 35-member group with OASIS ratification up against Microsoft which is brokering its standards agreement via the European Computer Manufacturers' Association (ECMA). Effectively this is Microsoft Office versus Corel's WordPerfect product as far as the majority of the desktop-computer using world is concerned.

From a document and records management perspective, however, file formats - especially those that make heavy use of XML (or XML-like) structuring schemas - are central to professional life.

Microsoft is already preparing the launch of Office 2007 which will not only integrate into many extant ECM systems but will also, for the first time, make its Office format (.docx) the default for all office applications.

Microsoft is already preparing the launch of Office 2007 which will not only integrate into many extant ECM systems but will also, for the first time, make its Office format (.docx) the default for all office applications. And it is not being backward in the line it is taking regarding the opposing format.

In December of 2005, Alan Yates - general manager, business strategy, for the Information Worker Group at Microsoft - said the following in an interview with Boston Globe journalist, Dan Bricklin: "I would say, in the future, some time, you know, at some point, there will be convergence. Convergence does happen over a period of time. Or there will be incorporation…"

Whether the use of the word 'incorporation' was a slip of the tongue or a deliberate policy statement is as open to question as the standards themselves.

The battle for the world-dominating office file format - although anchored in the notion of 'open source' or 'open standard' is really a battle - once again - of reigning Microsoft's dominance back in. The format that wins will undoubtedly and inevitably become the default that underpins organisational document management online and off in the future.

File formats: geek nonsense or central organisational structure? Comment on this story.

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OpenDocument Still Lives