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Today is Document Freedom Day! (March 31)

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zridling:
via rob weir:



Today is Document Freedom Day.  In the five years since Open Document Format (ODF) first was approved in OASIS we have certainly made progress, but there is still work remaining to be done.  How will we know when we have arrived?  At what point can we declare victory and say “Free at last”?  I think that when we  can agree that all of the following statements are true, then at that point we have achieved the substantial benefits of document freedom.


* I can create documents on the platform of my choice, using the software of my choice.
* I can migrate to another editing environment (application or operating system) without losing high-fidelity access to my existing documents.
* I can send my documents to anyone and know that they can read them without requiring the purchase of new software.
* I can receive documents from anyone and know that I can read them without requiring the purchase of new software.
* I have confidence that the documents I create today can be read and understood, 10, 25 or 50 years from now.
* Programmers can write and distribute software that reads and writes documents without paying royalties to anyone.
* I have confidence that the document format standard is being evolved in a way that guarantees the above rights equally for all users and vendors.

JavaJones:
Sounds good. But sadly I think we're a ways off from achieving most of those. Even different versions of OpenOffice handle its own ODT format differently!

- Oshyan

40hz:
Oooo Look up!

I can see the anti-OpenOffice flock of crows approaching!!! Rational talk about ODF draws them.

(Kidding...just kidding.  ;D )


Death Before ODF !!!!

JavaJones:
Haha. I actually really like (or at least *want* to like) OOo. I even migrated my whole office, 20+ clients, to it for several years. In the end though we went back to MS Office. As a non-profit we got enough of a discount to make it worthwhile. Without that I'd have stuck with OOo and slogged through the problems. Many of the issues were honestly due to user perception or mistakes, but these are practical parts of any software deployment and they're often even more challenging to address than technical issues. Amusingly enough now that we're back on MS Office there are still complaints about features and functionality, even though everyone believed beforehand that all their document formatting problems were "Just because we're using a non-standard program". Some people are even missing features that OOo had (e.g. Calc) that MS Office is apparently lacking.

Anyway I digress. I am very happy about the existence of OOo and ODF, I just wish they developed faster. It's also just a tad depressing to see a new and theoretically superior, unencumbered format like ODF still having formatting issues between relatively minor versions of the flagship app that supports it (we seriously saw differences between OOo 3.0 and 3.1 - wtf?).

- Oshyan

IainB:

@zridling: About that slogan in the banner image, "Liberate your documents!"

What if your documents don't want to be liberated, eh? Have you ever considered that?    :tellme:

Enquiring minds need to know.    ;)

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