OpenDocument could 'turn everything inside out'

Found on CNet News on Sunday, 02 October 2005
Browse Software

Tim Bray, the director of Web technologies at Sun, said at the OpenOffice.org conference in Slovenia late last week that the file format developed by standards body OASIS has the potential to transform the world as much as the World Wide Web did.

The OpenDocument format has already been embraced by the commonwealth of Massachusetts and is being considered by some European governments, including Denmark and Norway; by Japan; and by other U.S. state governments. Microsoft has said it will not support the OpenDocument format.

"For many years before the Web there were many different ways of publishing information. There were many different ways of doing hypertext. There were many different ways of doing online information retrieval and search, and navigation," said Bray.

"But then in the early '90s everyone agreed on one data format--HTML. HTML is not the world's greatest data format, but the power that came when everybody agreed to standardize on one data format--it changed the world. The whole world of online information exploded. It turned the world inside out," he said.

Of course MS won't support it. It's the fact that they tie all their products together by using proprietary formats which gave them the market dominance they have now. If MS would support OpenDocument, they would make it too easy for users to switch to alternatives, like the free Open Office.