Open standards for office documents

November 21st, 2005 - Microsoft Corporation has admitted for the first time that the public demand for open standards in office documents file format is huge. They also announced that they are going to submit their Office 12 XML file format for adoption as a standard. The news is great in the sense that they finally admit the public's need for continuous future access to the documents they create. But:

Why create a new standard when there is already an existing one ?
The existing file format is named OpenDocument and it has already been addopted as an Open Standard for Office Documents by OASIS, it has been continuously developed in the last 5 years, it is mature, stable, free to use and implement, it is vendor independent and it has been already submitted to the International Standards Organization for ratification as an ISO standard since September 30th. Click here for a technical comparison between the two formats.

At its origins, the OpenDocument format has been developed from the file format that the OpenOffice.org office suite is using and it is now being supported by other office suites. Rather than creating a new standard, many think that Microsoft should include OpenDocument support in its office suite (today's results: 8414 individuals representing 227471). You too can sign a petition to Microsoft here. They declared that they will support OpenDocument if there is public demand for it.