Happy 20th Birthday to OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Two decades ago, way back when I was a freedom-passionate postgraduate student, a solution was put forth to tackle bad habits which had long rewarded Microsoft's criminal activities (and not limited to competition crimes). That goes back to the 90s, possibly even the 80s (for office suites alone).
Back then phones were really phones (some had basic games on them), PDAs had some basic functionality (or useful functionalities like calendar/s, sometimes outward connectivity), and Web-based "applications" (now typically shortened as "webapps" and increasingly made worse, bloated, spying-centric) were still somewhat experimental. People were rightly reluctant to adopt these. Many people used Windows and Office. To use "the phone" (prior to Android and iOS) meant all sorts of things, but few people relied only on a phone to get things "done online" (or even offline for that matter).
Remember that the iPhone wasn't released until 2007, back when early incarnations of so-called "social" (control) media such as Digg.com created/spread a lot of hype about it. "To get things done online with a phone," an associate recalls, back "then meant a special adapter to connect your notebook or laptop to the phone and use the phone basically as a modem."
Many years have passed and nowadays many companies use "online" "webapps" to collaborate on various things, not necessarily in webforms, documents, and spreadsheets. Many who choose office suites for their workflows don't rely on Microsoft and since the formats are "whatever is online" they aren't quite aware of standards - that is actually a recipe for vendor lock-in. It's a related problem or a branch of the same thing.
I myself use ODF if I ever use LibreOffice for stuff. Many others do the same. But we now live in a world where Windows is "less than a quarter" (20 years ago it was over 90%) and most people get hooked on "apps", which may or may not include some rich text editors.
OOXML was all about crimes (like Microsoft bribing, cheating and defaming people). We wrote many hundreds of articles about it and have links to the OOXML scandals, including in Scandinavia and the US for example. No stone was left unturned in this international campaign of Microsoft corruption. This was very visible in Europe. The standards bodies there and elsewhere were attacked and subverted, each in a very different manner. Remember that ISO/IEC 29500 was fast-tracked despite not being eligible for fast-tracking. That was an early sign of trouble. The various national standards bodies were simply not allowed to reject OOXML, through various unethical and semi-legal underhanded tricks as happened in Norway (to name one example among several dozens of nations).
This is also relevant to Microsoft's attacks against Techrights and Tux Machines, an associate argues, because Microsoft attacked Tim Bray's wife's company and crushed it in revenge for his negative technical review of their specification.
Bray repeatedly criticised OOXML; as an XML pioneer he should know. He also blasted Microsoft for its brutal assault on standards.
OOXML is not implemented by anyone or by any company, not even Microsoft (it's very important to point out that no one uses ISO/IEC 29500, not even Microsoft itself). Files like ".docx" are a mystery - an enigma to anyone but Microsoft, whose software intentionally vandalises ODF files (castrating parts of them irrecoverably).
People must also remember the very large elephants in the room; don't forget software patents [1, 2, 3] and how incomplete OOXML is. The entire thing is a farce; it was a farce right from the get-go.
Over 20 years ago ODF was very much fit for purpose and it still works the same way it worked back then, even if OASIS approved newer and better (more complex is not always better) versions of it.
Anyway though, about ODF and its merits there's still online information; there's this essay by David A. Wheeler, dated almost 20 years ago. It used to be in Groklaw as well, but the site is partly broken (at least it's back online after about 6 months offline [1, 2]).
More important than formats and standards is the adoption and usage of Free software. Using ODF in Microsoft Office is a fool's errand and since Office is proprietary, the key problem isn't being addressed.
To take charge of your data (i.e. your work/livelihood) use something like Calligra Suite or LibreOffice.
Days ago The Document Foundation wrote:
Celebrating 20 Years of the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF) Standard
A Milestone for Open Document Formats and Digital Sovereignty
Today, The Document Foundation joins the open source software and open standards community in celebrating the 20th anniversary of the ratification of the Open Document Format (ODF) as an OASIS standard. Two decades after its approval in 2005, ODF is the only open standard for office documents, promoting digital independence, interoperability and content transparency worldwide.
Originally created as an XML-based format to enable universal access to documents across platforms and software from multiple vendors, ODF has become a technology policy pillar for governments, educational institutions and organisations that choose open, vendor-independent formats to assert their digital sovereignty.
“ODF is much more than a technical specification: it is a symbol of freedom of choice, support for interoperability and protection of users from the commercial strategies of Big Tech,” said Eliane Domingos, Chairwoman of the Document Foundation. “In a world increasingly dominated by proprietary ecosystems, ODF guarantees users complete control over their content, free from restrictions.”
ODF is the native file format of LibreOffice, the most widely used and well-known open source office suite, and is supported by a wide range of other applications. Its relevance – twenty years after its creation – is a testament to the foresight of its creators and the open source community’s commitment to openness and collaboration.
ODF has been adopted as an official standard by ISO (as ISO/IEC 26300) and by many governments on all continents to support digital sovereignty strategies and public procurement policies to ensure persistent and transparent access to content.
To celebrate this milestone, from today The Document Foundation will be publishing a series of presentations and documents on its blog that illustrate the unique features of ODF, tracing its history from the development and standardisation process through the activities of the Technical Committee for the submission of version 1.3 to ISO and the standardisation of version 1.4.
In addition, representatives from the Document Foundation will participate in open source community events to talk about the Open Document Format and highlight its importance to the FOSS ecosystem. The LibreOffice conference will have an entire track dedicated to ODF, coordinated by the OASIS Technical Committee.
Many thanks to all those who made it possible. No more ".doc*" anything being passed around in our home, and usually ".pdf" (or ".ps") files are not needed either.
But let us also remember: the key thing is to move people (eventually) to Free software, not just open standards anyone can feasibly implement and/or handle. Standards can be a strong prerequisite when there's a high exit barrier. Data is often kept as "hostage".
Even with open formats, if the program used is proprietary it can exercise a lot of control over users and thus (over time more and more so) abuse them. There are many examples of this predating the coining (by Cory) of "enshittification".
An associate insists that Adobe and Microsoft are making file formats less powerful because their aim for control of the data through 'cloud' services where people's data no longer resides under their own control but far away on servers operated by hosting companies (Microsoft and Adobe).
Adobe is charging a lot of money for really rudimentary and lousily-done stuff. We covered this topic last summer. It has become even more urgent a matter since then.
The bottom line is, use and celebrate ODF. Spread the word. Ask other people to adopt ODF. There's more material related to this in the past week's posts by Mike Saunders, including "Germany committing to ODF and open document standards". █