ACT Responds to MS Support of ODF in Office 2007

ACT Statement on Microsoft Decision to Support ODF and PDF in Upcoming Versions of Microsoft Office

Today, Microsoft announced that it will natively support the Open Document Format (ODF) and Adobe System’s PDF format in Service Pack 2 for Office 2007, which will be delivered in the first half of 2009.  The announcement follows years of heated debate over document formats and standards in the technology sector.

“Microsoft addressed government and consumer concerns when it opened up its document format and turned it over to ECMA to manage in 2006.   Today, Microsoft finally addressed the concerns of competitors by agreeing to support their ODF format,” said ACT president Jonathan Zuck.

In 2006, governments and consumers were concerned about interoperability, long term access to documents, and document fidelity.  With large customers asking Microsoft to make changes and competitors trying to exploit these issues, Microsoft made a move that few expected.  Microsoft completely opened its document formats to the world and handed them over to a standards body. Microsoft even gave customers the tools they needed to move all their previous Microsoft Office documents to these new open formats.

“The demand for ODF compliance around the world has been driven by IBM’s massive lobbying campaign rather than concerns about openness, interoperability, or long-term document access.  Hopefully, Microsoft’s decision to support ODF will at least end IBM’s lobbying for silly technology mandates around the world.” said Zuck.

“Microsoft is also seemingly taking some risk by adopting ODF and PDF as native formats in its newest version of Office.  When Microsoft previously announced it intended to support the ISO standard version of PDF in Office 2007, Adobe threatened to bring suit against Microsoft for anticompetitive behavior. Given IBM’s interest in using ODF as a competitive weapon against Microsoft, it is not difficult to imagine them following the same strategy now that Microsoft is adopting ODF.”

The Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) is an international education and advocacy group for the technology industry. Focusing on the interests of small and mid-size entrepreneurial technology companies, ACT advocates for a “Healthy Tech Environment” that promotes innovation, competition and investment. ACT has been active on issues such as intellectual property, international trade, e-commerce, privacy, internet policy and antitrust. ACT represents more than 3000 software developers, systems integrators, IT consulting and training firms, and e-businesses from around the world.