Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Importance of Open Document Format: in short

Open Document Format (ODF) is about freedom from Vendor-lock document format. Its not just Linux. Its not just Open Source. Its about the documents/media we create, we archive. We want our documents to exist and work for years similar to manuscripts, stone/metal caved scripts, manifestos and epics... So we need some format in which we can save those documents to work for centuries and our successors for centuries can access it.

With MS DOC/XLS/PPT or any other formats.. its not possible. If u see now Word Perfect files of few years ago cannot be opened in MS Office 2007. and u cannot install WordPerfect in latest operating systems. To convert your files you have to pay for its support. So either way won't work.

But Open Document Format(ODF) is such a standard that its always accessible and will always be compatible.

Thats the reason why NATO and many western countries has already made ODF mandatory and of national standard. source(wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_adoption

Open Document Format primarily include OpenDocument Text(.odt) OpenDocument Spreadsheet(.ods), OpenDocument Presentation(.odp). But extends to media files, images, and everything which forms a pool and we refer as Open Standards.

These Open Standards, Open Source Softwares, Open Source Hardwares, Open Content and all are grouped to refer as Open Technology. With Open Technology, we have Open and Vendor-locking-free society.

This is just one importance of ODF.
You can dig more on it at:
http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_standardization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
http://www.documentfreedom.org/







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