Bonum Certa Men Certa

Document Liberation: The Time is Now



Preservation a priority

Old chair



Summary: The Document Liberation Project makes the press and software such as LibreOffice plays a role while other players, such as Open-Xchange, are also hopping on the ODF bandwagon

IN THE MONTHS of February and March we revisited ODF because of a policy that had been promoted in the UK -- one which favours disseminating government documents not just to customers of Microsoft (who purchased proprietary software like Microsoft Office).



The problems caused by OOXML are explained again by one whom we interviewed in episode 74 of TechBytes. His name is Charles-H. Schulz and he is from LibreOffice. He says that "Microsoft Office had been released and with it an undocument format called OOXML which, as far as experts were concerned, had little to do with the ISO 29500 (aka OOXML) standard. While Europe and Brazil were struggling to migrate their public sector’s documents to ODF, any company or government, let alone any individual acquiring Microsoft Office 2010 migrated to the new and shiny OOXML, officially without remorse or complaint. The ODF advocacy groups here and there were launching all sorts of events and meetings to guide and assist migrations to ODF. Results were mixed. We had victories. We had defeats. At the end of the day what was at stake was fear of failure and change from CIOs and IT services. That’s still the case today. But while these are mostly human factors, there is one thing we hadn’t tried yet, or at least hadn’t been tried enough: turning the hundreds of thousands of files that are out there and locked up in various proprietary file formats to ODF documents."

Another advocate of ODF, Andrew Updegrove, tells the story of Microsoft's attacks on officials who 'dared' to promote ODF. Updegrove recalls: "By the end of December 2005, I had been blogging on ODF developments in Massachusetts for about four months, providing interviews, legal analysis and news as it happened. In those early days, not many bloggers were covering the ODF story, and email began to come my way from people that I had never met before, from as far away as Australia, and as near as the State House in Boston. Some began with, “This seems really important – what can I do to help?” Others contained important information that someone wanted to share, and that I was happy to receive."

We are not going to go about a decade into the past again, but the point worth making is that OOXML remains a huge issue. Microsoft's worldwide bribery was not in vain. My wife reports that OOXML crashes LibreOffice (on GNU/Linux) for her, sometimes even freezing the entire operating system.

Making the news these days is the Document Liberation Project [1-3], which even Updegrove wrote about [4]. For those who think that ODF is old news, be aware that Open-Xchange is entering the online office suites business [5,6] and "support for the Open Document Format (ODF) is forthcoming, probably within the next three months, a company spokesman said." (source: IDG)

Later this year we are going to see if the British government, owing to Cabinet Office, goes ahead with plans of making ODF the default format for editable document exchanges. This could set an important precedence for other nations to follow, ensuring that their documents down fall down the digital ashtray with Microsoft's proprietary formats.

Related/contextual items from the news:


  1. Document Liberation… And justice for all
    Ever been in a situation when no maintained software reads your old files? During Libre Graphics Meeting 2014, Document Foundation announced a new project called Document Liberation.

    This project unites developers who help users to access data in file formats that are locked to proprietary and even abandoned software.

    Essentially it’s a new face of the existing joined team from LibreOffice and re-lab that is already “responsible” for libraries to read and convert Corel DRAW, Microsoft Visio and Publisher, Apple Keynote and Pages files. Implementations in end-user software include (but are not limited to) LibreOffice, Inkscape, Scribus, and Calligra Suite.



  2. Document Liberation Project aims to break vendor lock-in
    New open source developer consortium promises to end upgrade arms race, enabling users to reclaim orphaned documents


  3. Wanted: developers to make outdated documents readable again


  4. It’s Document Freedom Day 2014: What Does that Mean for You?
    You’ll recall that I noted above Document Freedom Day awareness is limited in the U.S. So is participation in DFD activities, as you can see from the image at left, which shows where they are being held this year. That’s a shame, because document freedom is a universal, and not a regional or national concern.


  5. Open-Xchange adds spreadsheet to open source online app suite
    Open source collaboration software vendor Open-Xchange has added a spreadsheet function to its open-source, web-based productivity suite, allowing the online editing and sharing of Microsoft Excel documents.


  6. Open Source Collaboration Provider Open-Xchange Launches OX Spreadsheet Tool: WHD.global 2014


Recent Techrights' Posts

Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
The Myth of an Aging (or Dying) GNU/Linux Leadership
Self-fulfilling prophecies as a tactic?
 
Links 07/12/2023: More EPO Patents Squashed, More Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine "Glitches" Found
Links for the day
Still Not 'Canceled'
Ted Ts'o, Jan Kara, Linus Torvalds last month
Google is Googlebombing the Term "Gemini"
Could Google not pick a name that's already "taken"?
Links 06/12/2023: Bitcoin Rebound, China Downgraded by American Firm, Yahoo! Layoffs Again
Links for the day
Shooting the Messenger Using Bribes and Secrecy Bonds
We seem to live in a world where accountability for the rich and well-connected barely exists anymore
Links 06/12/2023: Many More December Layoffs
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 05, 2023
IRC logs for Tuesday, December 05, 2023
PipeWire 1.0: Linux audio comes of age
Once upon a time, serious audio users like musicians and audio engineers had real trouble with Linux
This is How 'Linux' Foundation Presents Linux to the World
Right now it even picks Windows over Linux in some cases
Links 05/12/2023: Microsoft's Chatbot as Health Hazard
Links for the day
There's Nothing "Funny" About Attacking Free Speech and Software Freedom
persistent focus on the principal issues is very important
Professor Eben Moglen Explained How Software Patent Threats Had Changed Around 2014 (Alice Case) and What Would Happen Till 2025
clip aged reasonably well
GNU/Linux Adoption in Africa, a Passageway Towards Freedom From Neo-Colonialism
Digi(tal)-Colonialism and/or Techolonialism are a thing. Can Africa flee the trap?
CNN Contributes to Demolition of the Open Web
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Eben Moglen on Encryption and Anonymity
The alternate net we need, and how we can build it ourselves
Yet More Microsofters Inside the Board of Mozilla (Which Has Just Outsourced Firefox Development to Microsoft's Proprietary Prison)
Do you want a browser controlled (and spied on) by such a company?
IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 04, 2023
IRC logs for Monday, December 04, 2023
GNU/Linux Now Exceeds 3.6% Market Share on Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
things have changed for Windows in China
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Links 05/12/2023: Debt Brake in Germany and Layoffs at Condé Nast (Reddit, Wired, Ars Technica and More)
Links for the day