I’ve been reading comments here on Groklaw about the great ODF vs. OOXML ‘war’ between IBM and Microsoft.  But what really has me scratching my head is how hatred for all things MS has moved people to blindly support another big company.  I’m stunned by the weird inverse logic that embodies the old statement "my enemies enemy is my friend".  The problem is, the Groklaw audience is trying to get governments involved, and that may lead to permanent changes.  To paraphrase Lord Palmerston "there are no friends, only temporary alliances".  So making permanent solutions based on temporary alliances seems destined to leave all parties unhappy.

Taking a look at some of the specific assertions leave my head reeling:

First –   “We need only one standard”.  That has been the Microsoft message for ages (a defacto standard on MS products), and yet everyone here has thoroughly rejected that as a concept.  Not only that, it takes only a cursory glance at the history of standards to realize that multiple competing standards are…well ‘standard’ and yet somehow we have all gotten through with constantly improving technology.

Second –  “But ODF is unfettered by corporate interests, OOXML is a Microsoft front”.  Huh?  This, in the same comment section mentioning IBM support?  Sounds like IBM (a big corporation) is interested in ODF and lobbying publicly for its adoption.  Not only that, but if you look at the original 11 permanent voting members at OASIS, 6 of the seats were held by Sun and IBM.  OOXML has Apple and Microsoft and a slew of other corporate interests involved.  But the history of standards has always been about corporate interests.  Just like Microsoft is trying to generate letters for the California bill, I don’t doubt that the paycheck for Marino Martich at the ODFAlliance is paid for by IBM and Sun.

But Corporate interests do not mean an end to value to the rest of us; or else we would have to reject everything from IBM and Sun.

Third – “But ODF is Open, and OOXML isn’t” Huh? OOXML is now a standard managed by ECMA and has a decent chance of also becoming an ISO standard.  It’s open from the standpoint of usability and availability of implementing documentation.  Arguing the relative openness of participation in a standards body is absurd. As I noted above, ODF was pushed by corporate types, and will always be so – and that may not be a bad thing.  This isn’t like GPL’d software where you sit down, write some code, and send it out to the community with a requirement to give back. Your average FSF supporter or GPL code writer is NOT involved in standards creation! 

How many readers here (not you Andy Updegrove) have taken the time or have even been INVITED to participate in a major standards effort.  It’s cor-por-ate.  Get over it.

Finally – Who cares why Microsoft did it?  The fact that Microsoft has agreed to move its document format into the open is huge.  The standards based system makes vendor lock-in negligible from the big company/government perspective.  You will always be able to write a widget that allows OO.o, or any other program, to read a doc from Microsoft.  This means that if a state agency wanted to use OO.o because of cost savings they can do so without fear of not being able to work with another agency that uses MSWord.

Even better, Microsoft is offering tools to allow you to wholesale move old documents to the new format.  This means one of the biggest lock-in points (old docs) is gone!   It also means that mixing standards formats may make sense.  OOXML is probably a better format for the archiving the 20+ years of documents already created in Word with full fidelity.  It might not be the best format for the future (although it could be), but it seems stupid to lock governments out of using it to archive the millions of documents they already have.  Using the tools created and the fact that there is a standard published means you can get the best of both worlds.

But ask yourself this: “If IBM and Sun get a legislative preference for ODF, where’s the motivation to improve the product”?  Just like 100% MSFT is bad for spurring innovation, 100% IBM would be no better.  Don’t forget that back in the 80’s IBM was the big bad innovation stomping monopolist.  It’s the nature of the beast.

The current tug of war is a useful thing – but getting governments involved is never the answer.  Do we really want technology at the speed of government?