Okay, lets get one thing straight…

Repeat after me :

“The Open Document Foundation has nothing to do with the Open Document Format”

“The Open Document Foundation has nothing to do with the Open Document Format”

“The Open Document Foundation has nothing to do with the Open Document Format”

Really, they should change their name. For one thing, it’s confusing and diluting the acronym for the Open Document Format. Another thing is, they, (The Open Document Foundation - see what I mean?) appear to be very, very confused about what they are doing; or if they’re not confused about what they’re doing, then they’re being very successful at confusing everyone else.

Not only that, but they’re also succeeding in helping others create FUD about the Open Document Format .

The latest example of which is an article by Peter Galli, of eweek, entitled “Document Format Dispute Spills into the Open“.

Peter Galli appears to me to like crafting up his little storms in teacups. I recently wrote a riposte to one of his earlier articles. Now here’s his latest masterpiece.

Lets begin with the tag-line;

The ODF, Microsoft and others are grappling with the question of what is most important when it comes to format choice.

No, “others” are not. “Others” are very, very happy with their format choice, thank you very much, and they’re very happy with the purpose of the ODF (That’s the format, not these other folks - just keep chanting the lines above).

And BING! Let’s bring Microsoft into the mix here too while we’re at it.

First paragraph…

The recent decision by the Open Document Foundation to substitute the World Wide Web Consortium’s Compound Document Format in place of the format it was set up to promote, the Open Document Format, has sparked a contentious debate over what shape the format should take.

Sorry, no it hasn’t. The “Open Document Foundation” suddenly dumped the Open Document Format after they basically got all huffy because their proposed extensions to the already-approved Open Document Format specification weren’t being accepted. Yes, let me repeat this fact for the benefit of Peter Galli - the Open Document Format specification has Already. Been. Approved. And let me ask Peter a question : how can there be a debate over “what shape the format should take”, when the shape of the format has already been decided?

Open document advocates are debating fundamental questions about whether there should be a single document format or multiple formats that inter-operate, and the relative importance of format and applications.

Again, no they are not. As far as the Open Document Format is concerned, the debate is over. It’s a globally recognised standard. Full stop. The only people who are debating about it are the people involved in the Open Document Foundation , and as far as I can tell, this comprises of a grand total of two or three people. This is all I could really glean from the official blog of the Open Document Foundation. The rest of the world is quite happy with the ODF (the format that is. I really wish the ODF [the foundation that is *sigh*] would change their name - it really makes writing about the format rather tiresome). Apart from Microsoft of course. They would like their OOXML format to also be made a standard, which they’re attempting to accomplish in their, er, own inimitable style shall we say. OOXML has failed so far, despite Microsoft’s best attempts.

The middle part of Peter Galli’s article has two paragraphs of quotes from Sam Hiser of the foundation.

Rob Weir’s blog, “an antic disposition“, has an utterly fantastic entry in it entitled “Cracks in the Foundation“, which basically takes apart the things the foundation has been saying recently, and I highly recommend you read this.

After the foundation’s quotes, then occurs a bit of good reporting, with choice quotes from Microsoft, IBM, and then;

Some members of the ODF Alliance—a coalition of global organizations that includes many of Microsoft’s Linux and open-source foes like Corel, IBM, OpenOffice.org, Oracle and Red Hat, and whose stated goal is to enable governments to have direct management and control over their documents—are currently struggling to understand exactly what the Foundation’s concerns are.

Which really just about sums up the whole storm in a teacup. What precisely is the complaint these two or three guys are bemoaning?

The eweek article finishes with some quotes from Mark Blafkin, vice president for public affairs at ACT (Association for Competitive Technology) - and let’s remind ourselves that ACT have been accused of being a front for Microsoft while we’re digesting all of this.

So to sum up - really, Mr Galli, stop trying to make out there’s a major controversy and massive fighting amongst the Open Document Format advocates, because in reality there is none. The only thing which has happened is that a from what I can tell extremely minor participant in the Open Document Format committees has basically gone away in a hissy fit because they didn’t get their own way - that’s how I personally see it anyway. In no way could you say it’s all a huge controversy. Feel free to disagree with me.

Just one more thing. I’m noticing that in Peter Galli’s articles for eweek there are lots of links sprinkled through his text which point to other articles. This particular article has links entitled “Massachusetts throws its weight behind Office Open XML and the Open Document Format.” , “Why did Microsoft accuse the ODF Alliance of not “enabling choice”? Read more here.” , and “To read about why Microsoft accused IBM of limiting choice for interoperability and standards, click here.”

Now, I’m probably just being paranoid and it’s probably an enthusiastic utility that eweek has which trawls through articles and sprinkles what it thinks are relevant links throughout these articles, but I can’t help notice a pattern in this in which each eweek article which tries to kick up some kind of controversy also has these links to other scary stories in them. It’s like a high-tech version of the fnords, and if you, dear reader, don’t know what I mean by the fnords then I suggest you do some research to find out what they are. You might come to the same conclusion as I have - that might just mean you could be paranoid like me, but I always say a good dose of paranoia is what’s needed in this Information Age. fnord.