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Microsoft To Adopt ODF, Take Role in Format Development
5/21/2008
Microsoft Wednesday posted plans for expanding file format support in the next major revision of Office 2007. The move follows charges from the ODF Alliance and the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) that Microsoft has been stifling options for users by favoring its own OOXML format.
ODF Support and Skepticism
According to information released today by Microsoft, Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) will include "support for XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1." The implementation will eliminate the need for installing additional code or using translators to access ODF documents, Microsoft said.
"When using SP2, customers will be able to open, edit and save documents using ODF and save documents into the XPS and PDF fixed formats from directly within the application without having to install any other code," the company reported. "It will also allow customers to set ODF as the default file format for Office 2007. To also provide ODF support for users of earlier versions of Microsoft Office (Office XP and Office 2003), Microsoft will continue to collaborate with the open source community in the ongoing development of the Open XML-ODF translator project on SourceForge.net."
In addition, Microsoft will take a guiding hand in the future of ODF. (See below.)
As we reported earlier this week, the OpenDocument Format Alliance rallied behind Becta's move to refer complaints about Microsoft interoperability to the European Commission, which has been running an investigation into Microsoft interoperability in relation to anti-competitiveness issues since January of this year. The ODF Alliance's managing director, Marino Marcich, said Monday, "That a major government agency, in this case the UK Government's lead agency for information and communications technology (ICT) in education, felt compelled to take such an action demonstrates that the wider marketplace, which includes educational and training organizations, libraries and archival institutions, will be adversely impacted by OOXML's impediments to interoperability. We have repeatedly urged Microsoft to provide native, built-in support for the truly open ODF document standard, as [Becta] has suggested."
Microsoft had countered by saying that it was committed to interoperability, emphasizing interoperability within the education space.
The ODF Alliance remains skeptical about Microsoft's promise to integrate ODF support in a forthcoming software release. Marcich today issued a statement, saying, "The proof will be whether and when Microsoft's promised support for ODF is on par with its support for its own format. Governments will be looking for actual results, not promises in press releases."
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