Re: [odf-adoption] Which ODF are we talking about?

[Erwin Tenhumberg <Erwin.Tenhumberg@Sun.COM>]

Harm Jan,

Thanks a lot for your answers and clarifications!
My comments are inline.

> It seems I have stepped on some toes here.

Don't worry! I'm a ballroom dancer. Thus, I'm used to some "toe
stepping". That's part of life and part of the "getting to know
each other" process. Ask my wife. I stepped on her toes quite
often, but she still married me.

> Fact is that in current situation most government organisations
> including tax admin use Microsoft office products whether we like it or
> not. Government organisations have to work as efficient as possible.

I completely understand this issue! A world with just one vendor could
solve the problem, but for obvious reasons that is not my goal. One
open and common standard is another option, but that is much more
difficult to achieve.

> Space there was in the past for departments to choose their own products
> is vanishing fast. Governments have to be internally interoperable. They
> also have to retain documents for long periods. 

This was a design goal for OpenDocument from my point of view.

> A open document format that enables documents to be stored for a long
> time is a big issue. In my country we now convert to XML but lose
> mark-up in this way.

This is a big issue for many government organizations.

> I am a strong believer in a document format that enables us to store,
> exchange and retrieve documents independent from vendors applications
> and useful over time.

I have the same strong believe! The problem is, Microsoft has the
larger installed base and market power. OpenDocument has the better
design (from my point of view). How do you bring the two together?

"But that's just as it should be, says Microsoft's Brian Jones, lead 
program manager for the Office suite. "It's true that the feature set 
Open XML enables is a reflection of the Office feature set," he says. 
"We had to go with a format that was, from the ground up, designed to 
support all of our legacy systems.""
(http://www.law.com/jsp/ltn/pubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1144067962734)

According to this statement by Microsoft, their goal was not to create
a file format that can easily supported by other applications or other
vendors. They mainly focussed on their own advantages. Thus, the
vendor independence that you ask for will not be encouraged by
Microsoft's file format.

Sure, other vendors can support Microsoft's file format anyway, but
at a much higher cost and with a lot more technical difficulties.

> The current ODF specification is not supported by Microsoft. This puts a
> lot of companies including governments is a "have to wait" position or
> "have to develop ourselves" position.

I fully understand the dilemma! Microsoft created their own XML file
format instead of joining the OpenDocument TC. It would be nice if
there was just one open document standard. OpenDocument could give
in and join Microsoft's efforts, but this would be wrong from my
point of view. Wrong, because the OpenDocument-approach is the
better approach. The fairer approach, because OpenDocument always
tried to be vendor independent from a design perspective.

> What we need is consensus in the market and to unite users to convince
> developers in the direction of openness. I am totally on the user end of
> the spectrum. I have seen the presentation of a SUN employee on behalf

Obviously, I have like employees from Microsoft, IBM or any company
Sun's interests in mind. However, I really want the best solution for
the users as well! I personally strongly believe that a trully open
standard is the best long-term solution, even if it comes at a price,
i.e. some difficulties for a (hopefully short) period of time.

I'm a tax payer myself, and therefore I want my government to spend
money wisely on the solutions with the best price performance. At the
same time I want my government to ensure that there continues to be
a fair and open competition so that there continue to be choices to
chose from.

> of the ODF TC on the OASIS adoption forum in London a couple of months
> back.
> The message was clear: "users have to choose" Open office or Microsoft
> office. My comment that by this positioning you do not help corporate
> users but simply push them into implementation problems, did not ring
> any bell. "I simply was not a believer yet"

That Sun employee was me and people can find the slides on the
following page:

    http://www.law.com/jsp/ltn/pubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1144067962734

I'm very sorry if the presentation sounded too much like a product/
implementation pitch! I unfortunately still know too little about
IBM Workplace and some other ODF products, both from a technical
and an adoption point of view.

On the contrary I know the history of OpenOffice.org, StarOffice
and the OpenDocument format very well. Thus, the easiest way for
me to demonstrate the ODF momentum was by using OpenOffice.org
and StarOffice as an example.

OpenOffice.org has been leading the ODF adoption so far. With the
growing number of ODF implementations we will also see a growing
number of non-OpenOffice.org ODF success stories. I hope that
we will share these success stories within this TC!!!

With my presentation I tried to cover other ODF implementations,
but it is tough for me to talk about things that I don't know
much about. The StarOffice information was included in the
presentation to address the concerns around migration issues.
Novell is now offering VBA migration solutions as well, but
those were not really public at the time of the Adoption
Forum presentation.

> This TC has the potential to lift itself above the battles and work on
> the consensus or get sucked into one of the competing fractions. 

The charter of this TC is to promote ODF, not any specific
implementation. In addition, this TC wants to convince more
vendors to support ODF. Microsoft could be one of them even
though that does not seem very likely at this point.

This is not a format-independent TC (please correct my if
I misunderstood the charter of the TC!). This TC focusses
on ODF and collaborates closely with the TC defining the
ODF specification.

> It might be clear where I stand. I am not willing to choose for a vendor
> at this point I want to help, helping users where a document format sits
> in the life line of their organisation.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if this TC will exactly deliver the
outcomes that you would like to see, but I'm convinced that your
input is and will be very helpful! You can provide us with insights
into the real day-to-day issues of government organizations.

> As government employee I am willing to use buying power to help
> achieving common goals. Standards should not be in the competitive
> arena. They are there for enabling end users. Some governments feel so

 From my point of view standards are very much in the competitive arena
in the sense that they can enable real competition. A truly open
standard lowers the barrier of entry for innovative new companies.
Just look how many different office applications / document editors
have started to support the OpenDocument format:

* OpenOffice.org
* StarOffice
* IBM Workplace
* Textmaker
* KOffice
* Abiword
* Gnumeric
* Writely
* Ichitaro

The ODF Alliance has now more than 100 members including major
players like:

* Corel
* EDS
* EMC
* IBM
* Mandriva
* Novell
* Oracle
* Red Hat
* Software AG
* Sun

I know, a key player (Microsoft) is missing on that list, but I think
everybody know why they are not on that list.

> strong about that that they join OASIS to help. That means that our work
> in this TC could be very political. We have a opportunity here.

Yes, our work will be very political in two ways. On the one hand,
we will have to balance between promoting OpenDocument and not
stepping too much on the toes of Microsoft. On the other hand, the
work of this TC will influence (in one way or another) political
decisions by governments across the world.

> Ps sorry for my English (not my native tongue)

Geen probleem! Ik ben uit Duitsland. Mijn Engels en mijn Nederlands
is ook niet fouten vrij!


Best regards,
Erwin