Why OpenDocument Format matters to Texans

Yoon Kit wrote on Why OpenDocument Format matters to Malaysians in The Edge on 19 March 2007. In Texas, USA on Monday, 26 March 2007 Bob Sutor delivered a testimony to the Texas House and Senate regarding the open document format legislation being discussed in the state.

Bob gave simple, clear and strong messages in the testimony. Although they are addressed to Texans, I feel that they are universal enough. Click here to read it. I also transcribed it below.

Good afternoon/evening, Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee. IBM supports this bill. This bill is about the future, increased competition and innovation, and about more choice for Texas. It is completely consistent with the technological and intellectual property directions of the software industry.

The current file formats for how you save office document used by most of you and your citizens are based on technology and practices from the 70s, 80s, and 90s when some companies locked customers into their products and upgrades. This is not acceptable today.

When you and your citizens are effectively restricted to a single software supplier to access government information, you and they pay what I would consider taxes. Open standards avoid this.

The first tax is the difference between what you must pay to that supplier vs. the lower cost if multiple suppliers existed and prices had to be competitive. You would also pay an innovation tax. The sole vendor has limited reasons to improve the product. Fresh ideas from new players such as Texan entrepreneurs are kept out of the product category. This is bad.

Those who are against this bill are, in essence:

• comfortable with having a single supplier,
• satisfied with procurement policies that allow you to only have a single supplier for government document software, and
• just fine with paying the financial and innovation taxes above.

IBM is not fine with the status quo. Neither were the drafters of this bill. Nor are most industries; those in life sciences, education, healthcare, and so on, that are trending toward “openness.” With the creation of the Internet and the Web, based on open standards such as HTML, the value of real open standards has been seen.

Think how much easier, more affordable, more transparent it is for you to collaborate within government and connect with your citizens because of the Internet and email, blogging, and all that has come from open standards. Now it is the time to take this collaborative power to documents and open them up giving control to governments and choice to citizens.

IBM joined our industry colleagues to work on an open standard for file formats, namely, the OASIS/ISO OpenDocument Format (ODF). File formats are merely blueprints for how a document is structured – headers, footer, paragraphs – and how it should be saved and exchanged. OpenDocument Format is being openly and actively developed by a community of global experts from many organizations and is seeing broad implementation in independent ways from both open and proprietary sources.

Its adoption rate is growing. Teenagers are using it. Politicians are using it. Some CIOs in organizations that officially use only proprietary formats are using ODF at home when it comes time to spend their own money and technical expertise to pick products for their personal use. The huge and growing base of Open Office users are saving and distributing files in ODF format. The next generation of IBM’s Lotus Notes will support it later this year.

So why do you need legislation on this?

First, Texas as a sovereign state and a major force in the IT market and must, in my opinion, be able to do anything whatsoever with the office documents you create. This means today, but it also means the documents you create tomorrow and will be the historical records fifty years from now. You have the opportunity to clearly make a statement that Texas will not be beholden to any vendor for access to your state’s information.

Second, change is happening now and users will, over time, get new applications that use new document based file formats. I have never met a CIO or financial person who has told me that they will never get new software. So, there’s a fork in the road approaching rapidly and you must choose: go with a single supplier and pay those taxes I mentioned, or go with truly open document formats that are not dictated by a single vendor and get increased competition, innovation from many parties, and real choice of software and its providers.

I can assure you that the software we have in fifty years will work in radically different ways and will be supplied by completely different providers than we know today. We must leave our options open and, luckily, with ODF, we have an excellent choice compared with any alternative. Further, personally, I would rather bet on the “intelligence of the crowd,” the collective smarts of the IT industry who truly manage open standards to set us up for success in the next few years. Relying on one vendor to optimize things for his or her success is yesterday’s solution.

Third, to be clear, EVERYONE can implement a true open standard. This bill is about choice. ODF and open standards for file formats will drive choice of applications, innovative use of information, increased competition, and lower prices. Personally, I think these are good things.

In closing, the world is shifting to non-proprietary open standards based on the amazing success of the World Wide Web, a success that was far more important than any single vendor’s market position or ideas for what was right for the world.

We can do this again but we need to do it with care. Texas is in a position to demonstrate to its citizens and the world that this success is repeatable and that it intends to be a leader. Texas can show that the phrase “open standard” means more than what a corporate marketing department says it is.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, open document standards are insurance policies for your documents, versus a history-losing accident waiting to happen. I thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of the bill, and would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

Comments

[John Abraham]

Hasan,
I'm amazed that IBM has been behind the backing of ODF based on the article by TechnU-NST.

IBM is a business parter of mine and this is relatively embarrasing that IBM is putting their business instead of what is right for the country. I agree with Dinesh and Yusseri that the industry needs to play a role e.g Microsoft, Corel etc but having IBM in this picture with only their services in Mind is a shameful.

[Dinesh Nair]

John,

Most of the opinions in the Tech&U article were from Microsoft, or Microsoft linked organizations. They seem to think that it's a Microsoft vs IBM fight, and this was underscored during my recent visit to Redmond.

I'm not defending IBM, but to suggest that IBM is the only backer of ODF aka ISO26300 does an injustice to the other 350 or so members of the ODF Alliance.

What's right for the country is to have open standards based document formats, and ODF has already been ratified by the ISO as an open standard. Talk to folk involved in the local standardization process for ODF and you'll get anecdotes on how Microsoft representatives have blocked ODF adoption as well.

The OOXML standard championed by Microsoft at over 6,000 pages is being fastracked through the standards process.

I'm sure you will agree that reading, let alone digesting, a 6,000 page specification should not be rushed with ample time given for the standards bodies to understand the specification and to discuss its merits.

Since you're also an IBM business partner, perhaps you may want to explore raising this issue with through that channel.

[yoonkit]

John,

Im amazed that Tech&U bought the IBM vs Microsoft angle which, in the trade everybody knew was a "red-herring". The past month and a half (yes, its been that long since the letter came out) there are many commentaries on how Microsoft is wrong in playing this vendor card.

The argument that IBM is doing this for commercial gain is laughable considering that the biggest gain would be for OpenOffice.org and not IBM Workplace/Lotus Notes. What is even more ironic is that Microsoft is promoting MSOOXML to safeguard their cash-cow in Microsoft Office (50% of their income is derived from MSOffice).

So who is actually playing the "standards game" for dubious commercialism?

So its embarrassing that Microsoft has to make IBM the scapegoat for the failure of their poor standard in MSOOXML. If you cant defend your product technically, then make someone an enemy and attack them, thus diverting everybody's attention from your weaknesses!

Its a simple case of Red Herringitis.

yk.