The Integrative Stream

Massachusetts requires open formats

John Patrick comments on a new Massachusetts requirement for open document formats.

The document formats for Microsoft Office have always been trouble. Not only are they poorly documented themselves, they’re the product of a long and not particularly well coordinated development process. As a result, it’s extremely difficult to write software that works with them, and that’s certainly set the world back. Other than the relative difficulty of dealing with Office files, there’s no reason why the information management tools, like Google Desktop, that are coming on the market now couldn’t have been available years ago.

Patrick has some other points, including a discussion of why Microsoft’s choice to not support the Open Document format is an anti-consumer decision. Microsoft will have their own XML based document format, which will probably be better suited to the needs of Microsoft Office, but it will be subject to legal restrictions that will hamper its integration into innovate new software offerings.

Hopefully the Massachusetts decision, which was made for sound technical and economic reasons, will get other states, along with the private sector, thinking about this issue. Discussion of open source in desktop applications has traditionally focused on the use of OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. The file format issue is different: an open format gives you flexibility before and after individual users start to work.