OpenOffice.org Down Under!

This is a short response to an article that was published in an Australian online news site about a talk from OpenCebit in Sydney this week. The link to the article is http://www.itnews.com.au/News/76442,red-hat-australia-missed-ooxml-oppor... and provides an interesting read.

The general overview of the article is good and talks about a presentation made by Frank Feldmann, Red Hat's Asia Pacific Senior Product Manager. The article mentions Frank talking about the approval of OOXML and how that could be detrimental to the innovation of new collaborative standards.

It was all looking good until I read the following paragraph:
"Australia was one of 41 countries that participated in a decision to replace the previous standard, OpenDocument Format (ODF), with OOXML (Open Office XML) which is developed and promoted by Microsoft."

This was a bit shocking and in utter surprise I thought to myself, "I don't remember ODF being replaced by OOXML?". After the initial shock, I considered there must be a misunderstanding here, but is it with Frank or with the editorial team that put the article together. I contacted the author of the article and explained that I think there was a mistake in the statement and would like to address where this idea originated. I received a reply shortly after that it would be checked and if there was a misunderstanding, it would be addressed.

This is one of the problems that often go unnoticed, but can have a dramatic impact on people, particularly management, that may be looking at making important decisions. When an IT manager or CTO looks at using ODF and then reads in some prominent technology news that it is "superceded" by OOXML, then it immediately puts doubt and concern into their mind. The obvious decision based on initial reaction is that you drop ODF and go with OOXML, and why not, as you are already using MS Office! However, this decision is obviously being made on misguided information and therefore does not justify the decision to support ODF either way.

Lets hope that we see less and less of these type of press misunderstandings and allow decision makers to get the best information they possibly can. It is only through informed decision making that people can improve and continue to develop new standards and new technologies that will help in the future.

Update (2008-05-21 18:36): Looks like the article has been updated to reflect more effective informative details about ODF and OOXML. Here is the new paragraph:
"Australia was one of 41 countries that participated in a decision to make OOXML (Open Office XML) an international standard alongside the existing standard, OpenDocument Format (ODF)."