Open Letter to Information Technology Division, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
The Information Technology Division in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has chosen to push through the use of ECMA-376 OOXML as an 'approved standard'. This is a bad decision and is subject to a very short public comment period that will expire on 20th July. Here, I present an open letter from me, a Citizen of New Zealand, to the ITD on how this decision will adversely affect themselves, others, me and my country.
This letter was sent to 'standards at state.ma.us' and copied to Pamela Jones at Groklaw.
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Information Technology Division
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Attention: Beth Ann Pepoli
Re: Public Comment on ETRM Draft 4.0
Dear Ms. Pepoli,
I write to you in regard to considering adding Microsoft's OOXML to your list of approved standards in the Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM) 4.0.
Firstly I urge you to look further into the ECMA-376 Office Open XML standard to discover for yourself a number worrying inconsistencies [1], incorrect fundamentals [2] and dubious instructions [3] contained within the so-called standard. The standard itself reads more like a 'what Word does' rather than 'what an open document should describe' which is unlike any other open standard I know of. All of this is even before looking into the almost impossible technicalities of implementing such a long specification in itself, something that even Microsoft will find hard to do, let alone an independent software supplier. Considering that an alternative format, ODF, is already specified completely, already has a number of independent implementations and already provides a future proof format I consider the proposal of OOXML not only wrong but also redundant.
As shown in the above links, there are many arguments against OOXML but I shall not concentrate on those since I'm sure that others who write to you in regard to the same subject will already point these out. Alternatively, I'd like you to consider the following situation.
It has been recently reported [4] that the UK National Archives has chosen to access their old proprietary data using a proprietary operating system running a proprietary emulator to run old proprietary programs [5]. This, in my opinion is the wrong way of doing it. While this might be one solution to reading the data, there is no mention of actually converting it to a new format. If they did, in their case the UK National Archives may choose to convert to OOXML but this still leaves them in exactly the same position as they are now - their data will still be stored in what is essentially a proprietary format which can only be read by programs from one company, Microsoft.
No matter how you look at it, this still equates to a monopoly for one company and leaves the UK National Archives in the same position Microsoft admitted to putting them in in the first place. This is the same company who, by stating that OOXML is an 'open' format (they're wrong [6]) is trying to push ODF (a truly open format) off the rails and into oblivion. Who is to say that in 3 or 5 years time, if ODF has been pushed aside, Microsoft won't just go back on their word and create incompatibilities with OOXML just like they have deliberately done with previous versions of Word itself.
This then means that you are in exactly the same position, or worse, as you were previously and the good judgment of specifying ODF as an approved standard in ETRM 4.0 will have been all for nothing. It will also leave us in the 'digital dark age' Mr. Frazer, Microsoft UK, predicts, at his company's doing.
Finally, I'd like to mention why I, a Citizen of New Zealand, would want to write to you regarding your choice of approved standards within your state and how that affects me and my country.
You are probably aware in the importance of your decision for the future of data standards and accessibility. We live in an information age, a data sharing world, the Internet Revolution and make no mistake about it, this revolution is just as important as the Industrial Revolution before it, if not much more so. It is important that our decisions now are good not only for us but for our future and for those that come after us. Were it not for completely 100% open standards in the computer world this information age could never have happened. Computers wouldn't even be able to talk to each other let alone speak the same language, if truly open standards had never existed.
Countries like New Zealand are influenced heavily by decisions made in other countries. As a small country, we are ripe for the Government to take a stand against phony standards and choose to save and store all our data in open formats. It's an ideal situation to be able to choose open standards such that the Government won't waste public money on converting from one proprietary format to another and still get it wrong. We can't afford to spend millions of New Zealand dollars on incorrect storage and conversions to broken and incomplete standards unlike the UK tax payer is being forced to.
Massachusetts, as a state of 6.4 million people and we, New Zealand, as a country of 4 million people have many similarities and therefore any decision you come to may affect decisions that we, or other governments or central organisations throughout the world, make. This is a fantastic opportunity for you to take the lead, take a stand and show the rest of us the way.
So finally, I urge you again, please do not accept the ECMA-376 OOXML proposal as an approved standard in the ETRM 4.0 and choose only those which attain a 'true' standard, such as ODF. This will enable countries like New Zealand to point to previous examples, such as Massachusetts, where open standards have worked, are being used, have saved money and also have the freedom to choose supplier of such solutions. None of this would be true if ECMA-376 OOXML is chosen as an approved standard.
Yours sincerely,
Andrew Chilton
[1] http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/EOOXML_objections#Ecma_376_is_immature_and_inconsistent
[2] http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/formula-for-failure.html
[3] http://fussnotes.typepad.com/Achieving_Openness_1point0.html#sdendnote8anc
[4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6265976.stm
[5] http://chilts.org/blog/updating-proprietary-file-formats-the-wrong-way.html
[6] http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2007/06/14/achieving-openness-a-closer-look-at-odf-and-ooxml.html
This post originated on http://chilts.org/.
Email me on andychilton -at- gmail -dot- com.