Getting the (Share)Point About Document Formats

The OpenDocument Foundation was formed in 2005, with the mission "to provide a conduit for funding and support for individual contributors to participate in ODF development" at the standards body OASIS. So, at a time when backing for the ODF format seems to be gaining in strength around the world, eyebrows were naturally raised when Sam Hiser, the Foundation's Vice President and Director of Business Affairs, wrote on October 16 that it was no longer supporting ODF:

Microsoft's Jason Matusow naturally allowed himself a little Schadenfreude, Mary Jo Foley waxed apocalyptic, speculating that "the ODF camp might unravel before Microsoft's rival Office Open XML (OOXML) comes up for final international vote early next year," and IBM's Rob Weir provided a characteristically witty point-by-point criticism of the group's reasoning behind its move, dubbing the OpenDocument Foundation "two guys without a garage", in a nod to the "mythology of Silicon Valley" and its history of "two guys in a garage founding great enterprises."

Meanwhile, in an attempt to understand what was going on, standards expert Andy Updegrove tried applying Occam's Razor:

That seems a little hard to believe, though, given the years of hard work put in by Foundation members in support of ODF. For example, Hiser notes that he worked on the OpenOffice.org project "from 2001 through its 20-millionth download. I was OpenOffice.org's Marketing Project Lead...back when people said 'Open What?'" Moreover, if the Foundation had really wanted to wield a sharp stick, it could have done so far more effectively by announcing its break earlier. As Hiser points out: "I was supportive of ODF into the summer in order to avoid negative attention for ODF leading up to the September ISO vote on OOXML."

The roots of the Foundation's decision to abandon the ODF format in favour of the little-known Compound Document Formats (CDF) from the W3C go back to one of the most fraught and painful episodes in the history of open source and open standards: the attempt by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to adopt the ODF format. Hiser was in the thick of it:

Sun's Chief Open Source Officer, Simon Phipps, begs to differ:

The main bone of contention between the OpenDocument Foundation and the rest of the community supporting ODF comes down to the issue of whether "100%", full-fidelity interoperability with Microsoft Office is achievable or even desirable. For example, Weir wrote:

The Foundation's position was explained by its President, Gary Edwards:

This line of thinking probably explains the widespread incomprehension that greeted the Foundation's decision to abandon ODF. Supporters of the latter believe that it is by far the best document format, one that provides numerous benefits to users, notably freedom from lock-in. Hiser couldn't agree more: "We don't want OOXML to ever see the light of day, and certainly we feel deeply that it needs to be rejected by ISO finally and conclusively." But he adds:

In companies running the Microsoft enterprise stack, those "sticky business processes" are defined and stored in a program that has a surprisingly low profile, but which may well turn out to be the biggest emerging threat to open source: Sharepoint. One perceptive observer, Alfresco's Matt Asay, had already spotted that threat 18 months ago, and is just as worried today:

Even worse, this same lock-in applies to any ODF documents the user might have. As Asay explains:

In other words, the lock-in occurs not at the document level - the one the ODF community is most focused on - but at the level of the workflow. If companies can't export their documents with ease and with perfect fidelity, the Foundation believes, they will simply opt for the default Microsoft solution - Sharepoint - and become trapped by workflow lock-in. This is why the Hiser and his colleagues have shifted their support away from ODF to CDF, which they think could allow companies to export Microsoft Office documents with perfect fidelity into other, truly open workflow systems. Asay's explains the difference with reference to his own company's product:

The Foundation believes that the ODF format could have addressed this issue had it added certain extensions to the standard to provide perfect interoperability with Microsoft's Office documents. Some, like Weir, doubt this:

Given the reluctance of the ODF community to take that route, the Foundation hopes to blunt the Sharepoint threat by combining the CDF format with some code it had already written for use with ODF files, called the "da Vinci" plugin. Hiser explains where the name came from:

It is the da Vinci plugin, the Foundation claims, that will allow perfect interoperability with Microsoft's Office files, which in turn will allow such documents to be taken out of the Microsoft ecosystem into open workflow software without users seeing any loss of fidelity. Partly because of the grand claims made for it, the plugin has been the cause of much of the skepticism surrounding the Foundation's ideas and future plans. As Weir wrote:

Hiser explains that in fact they had intended to release it as open source: "we actually agreed to open source it, and Massachusetts said, 'oh, great, OK'. And then the vendors that Louis [Gutierrez] asked to fund it walked away. When Louis resigned, we stopped doing work."

With the start of the CDF project, Hiser and Edwards have new priorities: "The reason for not opening sourcing it [now] is not because we're going to make a million dollars, although that's one of our goals too. We are business people: we need to fund the business that sells products, and we have to do that in about that magnitude to sustain our developing capabilities, and to feed our families." They will also be coming up with a new name for the now-defunct OpenDocument Foundation: "It takes time to do a total brand and corporate make-over," Hiser says, "but that's underway. I'm leaning toward 'Two Guys Without a Garage LLC'."

Whether or not CDF is the right format, whether the da Vinci plugin can provide 100% interoperability, and whether the new company of Hiser and Edwards will flourish, remains to be seen. In any case, the dramatic decision to break with the ODF community, and the attendant publicity it has garnered, may have already achieved something beneficial, for it has helped to direct attention towards the hitherto largely under-appreciated threat that Microsoft's Sharepoint represents for open source, open documents and open standards in the enterprise.

Asay has some thoughts on what must be done to meet that threat:

Weir agrees, and even sees an downside to Microsoft's huge installed base of Office users:

Clearly, then, now is a good time for two guys with - or even without - a garage to get coding, and found that great open source enterprise.

Glyn Moody writes about open source at opendotdotdot.