Reality Check: ODF vs. OpenXML [InfoWorld]

[Grant Hogarth]

Snagged out of the XML Daily Newslink for Tuesday, 15 May 2007
http://xml.coverpages.org/ <http://xml.coverpages.org/> 

Reality Check: ODF vs. OpenXML
Ephraim Schwartz, InfoWorld

At the highest level, ODF (Open Document Format) vs. OpenXML is a battle
between two business competitors, IBM and Microsoft, each of which views
itself as threatened by the other. IBM and Microsoft have been in a
battle for supremacy ever since they parted ways in 1991 over OS/2 and
Windows. As unlikely as it sounds, the current battle is over an open
file format for saving files, ODF or OpenXML, especially for word
processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents but not limited to
those. To see whether I could sort out the differences between these
formats, I gave both companies a call. Supported by Big Blue and many
other high-tech companies, ODF is a standard both of the ISO and OASIS,
which has about 300 members. OpenXML is supported by a smaller European
standards group, ECMA International, which has 21 members, 20 of which
voted to make it a standard, with only IBM voting no. OpenXML has also
been proposed to the ISO and will be voted on in September. If OpenXML
adoption is preferred, it closes the door on the opportunity for IBM to
create a path to a myriad of IBM/Lotus on-premises and Web 2.0 products
for such things as collaboration, unified communications, productivity
software ,and even its WebSphere middleware platform. If on the other
hand, ODF adoption, especially with government entities, grows over time
it could have a viral effect and threaten Microsoft's largest revenue
producing product, Office, and help IBM regain market share it lost to
Outlook and Exchange Server as well... IBM's Sutor says that, although
Microsoft has published all the specs for OpenXML, those specs total
6,000 page (12 reams of paper), which makes it almost impossible for
anyone but Microsoft to incorporate the specs in a new productivity
suite, thereby crowning Microsoft Office effectually the de facto
standard, according to Sutor...

Microsoft's Robertson and Jean Paoli, general manager for
interoperability and XML architecture at Microsoft, see it quite
differently. Robertson says that despite 6,000 pages of documentation
there is already an implementation from DataViz for Palm OS, one by a
company called Numeric for spreadsheets, that Novell has an
implementation of OpenXML for OpenOffice on Suse Linux, and that Corel
has announced an implementation for WordPerfect.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/realitycheck/archives/2007/05/odf_vs_openxml
.html
<http://weblog.infoworld.com/realitycheck/archives/2007/05/odf_vs_openxm
l.html> 

 
 
 
Grant Hogarth
Senior Technical Writer
Equis International - A Reuters Company

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