Is There a Way to Promote Open Document Formats Instead of 'MS Office' Format? (theregister.com)
- Reference: 0184821386
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/08/02/217215/is-there-a-way-to-promote-open-document-formats-instead-of-ms-office-format
- Source link: https://www.theregister.com/columnists/2026/07/27/foss-smashed-one-microsoft-monopoly-after-20-years-of-failure-its-time-to-smash-another/5278040
> OOXML, developed by Microsoft and first standardized by Ecma in 2006, became the ISO/IEC 29500 standard in 2008 after a grueling and adversarial process. Microsoft pursued standardization because it has always been a standards-led organization dedicated to maximizing the options for its customers. Or because it had to at gunpoint, while vowing silently to follow the letter of the law but stymie its intent. You decide... The Document Foundation (TDF) which spends its days worrying about such things, reports that Microsoft has effectively [2]broken the standard by sticking with a transitional version as its default rather than the cleaner Strict variant. The result is that what Microsoft software renders is what Microsoft wants to render, despite nominal compliance...
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> What we need is a test suite that can take any OOXML engine and test its compliance against what Microsoft is actually doing. That means the tooling wrapped around the spec has to account for proprietary dependencies that get smuggled in, such as fonts. It also means actively and continuously tracking the ground truth of Microsoft's evolving products and services. It doesn't need to be perfect, but it absolutely needs to be good enough. Compliant engines have to become good enough for a critical mass of users to coalesce around them.
In [3]an earlier article The Document Foundation reminded all software users that they have a choice. "When an institution sends a letter formatted with a proprietary font, embedded in a proprietary format, produced by proprietary software, it is not communicating information but perpetuating a dependency."
"Digital sovereignty begins with the recognition that this is a choice: the file format is a choice, the font on the page is a choice, and the software is a choice."
[1] https://www.theregister.com/columnists/2026/07/27/foss-smashed-one-microsoft-monopoly-after-20-years-of-failure-its-time-to-smash-another/5278040
[2] https://www.theregister.com/applications/2026/07/20/the-document-foundation-says-microsofts-file-formats-keep-users-on-a-short-leash/5274960
[3] https://www.theregister.com/applications/2026/07/20/the-document-foundation-says-microsofts-file-formats-keep-users-on-a-short-leash/5274960
PDF (Score:3)
"When an institution sends a letter formatted with a proprietary font, embedded in a proprietary format, produced by proprietary software, it is not communicating information but perpetuating a dependency."
This problem has been solved. PDF. I've never received a letter, or any correspondence from a company, institution, or school formatted as a Word or Excel document, and I don't know why anyone would send one in any other format.
Re: (Score:2)
Umm ... PDF is proprietary. The standard is ancient . At least as of 2013, if you saved a PDF with some changes in Adobe products, it would just append those changes (including redacting/blacking out documents) unless you used "Save As.." (not sure if that's been fixed). It'd a descendant of Postscript and literally still has support for Shockwave and Flash in their standard.
Re: (Score:2)
> This problem has been solved. PDF
Although PDF is not well suited for collaboration, when you are sending the document with the expectation that they will modify it and send it back...
It would need to happen through the government (Score:2)
If you ever want to see open source software and open formats take off then the way you do it is you get the government to do it. People then have to get software to interoperate with the government and by doing that the software spreads. You also need to break up the monopolies and that means you need politicians who will enforce antitrust law. Because those monopolies are powerful and they will sabotage any attempt to get your open formats used by the government.
It's a political problem and one that r
Collaboration? (Score:2)
How about collaborate on text and not desktop publishing? Markdown will work better for many many word documents. And if you are more picky about layout, you either let the computer do it or hire someone else.
Use The Open Standard (Score:2)
You should not use PDF. You should use the open standard, XPS. LOL!
Pragmatism (Score:2)
I think you have to be a bit pragmatic about this sort of thing, and choose your battles.
Proprietary formats involve all sorts of risks, but when they are commonly used, it can be difficult to push a large group of people to change.
I'd suggest focussing on the document category. For documents which need to last a long time, you could propose a format that people are likely to be able to use in 10 or 20 years. I think that sort of reasoning will make sense to others.
But if you just send back a MS Word docume
How about (Score:2)
The TDF should sue microsoft for slander. Specifically, when you try to open an ODF in an M$ product, you get a screenfull of FUD claiming it's malware, designed to scare away any non-technical user. It's an open format; they could just display it and try to save it in their own format later. This suit won't cure the problem, but it's a good start.
Use ODT and ODS (Score:2)
We dumped Office a few years ago, and have been using LibreOffice since. When we send documents out to our clients, we send them as ODTs and ODSes. All our internals are ODTs and ODSes too.
In over 5 years, it has never been a problem. Office reads these files, and will happily save back to them.
Better yet, removing Office from our ecosystem has dramatically reduced costs both in Infrastructure and in ongoing maintenance.
If only we could remove Microsoft's aborted HTML variant monstrosity from em
Ways to promote that? Just send it back (Score:2)
If someone sends me something that's too big to paste I will have AI summarize it anyway. Because who has the time?