You wouldn't think that an obscure debate over application
file formats would generate so much heat. But the rhetoric certainly
heated up recently as the Massachusetts government debated the
future--or more precisely, the future of government documents.
The
questions start simply: In the future, what will citizens need to view
government documents? Will citizens be able to view government documents
at all? Will future software support documents created
today?
These questions are very relevant since the dominant word
processor, Microsoft Word, does not even support documents created by
all older versions of Word. And, Word certainly doesn't support
documents created by all older versions of all other word processors.
Older documents may already be difficult or impossible to open in modern
word processors.
Furthermore, if Massachusetts adopted, for
example, the Microsoft Word file format for all documents, what would
citizens have to purchase in order to simply view government-created
documents? This issue brings in a lot of other issues such as taxation
and accessibility. Massachusetts citizens have already paid, via their
taxes, for the creation of government documents. Should they have to pay
again just to see the documents? Also, democracy advocates will have a
big complaint if no one can see the documents created by the
government.
In addition, most government contracts require bids by
multiple vendors. If no other company could support Microsoft's file
format, or if Microsoft charged a lot of money for use of its file
formats, then governments might fend up with projects that have only
one bidder.
The problems are twofold: support for documents create
by older versions of software, and the legal rights to view the
documents. Will future versions of the word processing software support
all documents created by older software? If not, then the older
documents would become unreadable. In addition, if the documents are all
stored in a format controlled by a single vendor, then access to these
documents could become wholly dependent on that vendor's software. The
vendor could conceivably charge any amount for the software, or
capriciously prevent certain groups from accessing the
documents.
The Massachusetts government recently debated these
issues and decided that all documents must support a new XML format
called ODF, or the Open Document Format, by Jan. 1, 2007.
ODF is a product of the work done on the
OpenOffice.org office suite, and it's a standard file format developed
by OASIS, an XML standards
body.
Microsoft argued strongly against the Massachusetts
requirements. Microsoft claims its future XML format makes a better
alternative to ODF. Massachusetts, though, wasn't convinced, since the
Microsoft format is protected by patents, which allows Microsoft to
control who can and cannot use the format. The current Microsoft
license, for example, has restrictions on redistributing applications
using Microsoft's patented technology.
What makes this situation
odd is that Microsoft Word supports a boatload of file formats,
including the formats of its onetime main competitor, WordPerfect.
Microsoft could, if it desired, support ODF in its Word product.
Microsoft, though, has stated that Word will not support ODF. Corel,
makers of Word Perfect, announced support of ODF, as did Adobe and
IBM.
The real issue underlying this dispute is that once
Massachusetts adopts ODF, then it could adopt a competitor to Microsoft
Word, including the free OpenOffice.org Writer application. If
Massachusetts stays with Word's format instead, it will become more and
more difficult to ever change to a competing word processor. That's
called vendor lock-in, and Microsoft, obviously, wants some of that.
--Eric Foster-Johnson
