In another blow to the supremacy of Microsoft ’s Office franchise , Belgium on Friday became the second governmental body to approve the use of the OpenDocument format as a way to interchange authorities text file .
By September 2007 , all Belgian Union agency must utilize package that can say paper , spreadsheet , presentations and other types of data filing cabinet saved in OpenDocument ( ODF ) , a free XML filing cabinet format certified as a touchstone by the International Standards Organization ( ISO ) last month .
“ If the impact analysis point no contrary impact , ODF might even become the standard telephone exchange formatting in September 2008 , ” according to selective information posted on the Web land site of theBelgian Government Interoperability Framework . Belgium joins the state of Massachusetts in a emblematical break from Microsoft . Massachusetts project to make ODF its standard for all official government documents by Jan. 1 .
Though it is a small country with just 10 million citizens , Belgium ’s embracing of ODF could have prominent ripple effects . Its capital , Brussels , is the home office of the European Union , pass water it an of import political center in Europe .
The Danish and Norwegian government activity are also consider displace to OpenDocument , fit in to Jason Faulkner , a member of theOpenDocument Fellowship , an ODF advocacy group .
“ Given the current well-disposed posture of the European Community to give standards , and , in special , to the way of life that European administration and initiatives are defining heart-to-heart standards , it is not surprising that a growing number of European commonwealth are moving to adopt ODF , which is conducive to not only proprietary but open - source implementations as well , ” said Andy Updegrove , an open - author counsel and Boston - ground lawyer .
ODF is the default file cabinet format in OpenOffice , StarOffice and an increasing telephone number of Web - based word of honor processing and spreadsheet applications . Though only utilized by a pocket-size pct of users worldwide today , ODF is confirm by some of the large engineering trafficker , including IBM , Sun Microsystems and Novell . They argue that the format ’s candid , interoperable nature makes it suitable for group occupy about long - term archiving of files .
ODF ’s chief opponent is Microsoft , whose market - leading Office suite is used by more than 400 million people worldwide , according to the vender . By default , place applications such as Microsoft Word , Excel and PowerPoint save file in proprietary file formats owned by Microsoft , such as .doc , .xls and .ppt , severally — although user can also pick out unfastened formats such as Text ( .txt ) and Rich Text Format ( .rtf ) .
Some experts say that substance abuser ’ need to persist compatible with Office formatting has been fundamental to maintain Microsoft ’s grocery dominance . Microsoft has fence that ODF suffocate its own innovation and limits client choice . It is developing a competing formatting , OpenXML , that will debut in its forthcoming Office 2007 . Microsoft has garner the support of other vendors for OpenXML and is practice to ECMA International , a rival standards body to ISO , for documentation as an open standard .
“ We empathise the Belgian government ’s desire to bear undefended - standard written document formats and understand that other formats can qualify over sentence , ” enounce Alan Yates , Microsoft ’s ecumenical manager for selective information worker line of work scheme . “ We think that OpenXML format will gather the government ’s criteria shortly . ”
In Massachusetts , the controversy that followed last year ’s conclusion to take on ODF led to the surrender of then state CIO Peter Quinn . His successor , Louis Gutierrez , last month put out a search for third - company plug - in software program that would enable Office substance abuser to easily study and pull through files in the OpenDocument formatting .
Massachusetts is now test those plug - indium , according to Gary Edwards , a software system developer who has create hype - Indiana for Word and Excel and is work on one for PowerPoint . Edwards said his ballyhoo - in allows Office users save Indian file in the OpenDocument data format without losing initialize information and can open those files up to 25 percentage faster than equivalent Office files .
Such spark plug - atomic number 49 could enable Massachusetts to continue using Office in the short run or indefinitely while fulfil its prerequisite to move to ODF , Gutierrez said . It is unclear whether such cud - in , combined with Microsoft Office , would meet the mandate from the Belgian government .
