Updating Proprietary File Formats the Wrong Way
The UK National Archives have chosen Microsoft to access their old proprietary data by using proprietary operating systems running proprietary emulators to run old proprietary programs.
Put your hand up if you see a problem with that approach (and put one up for me too).
Ah, the joys of silly decisions. Let's look at it from the top.
Natalie Ceeney (chief executive of the UK National Archives) says that they shall only be 'accessing' the data and not actually converting it. That basically means they will become locked into an eternal license-hell-money-eater with MS. Until they convert to something more sane (ie. open), they'll never get out of it. The archives obviously plan on rehashing this whole problem again in 5 years time, at which point they'll find they are in a worse position than they are now, it'll cost 100 times more and they'll end up choosing what should be the right decision now! Shame.
For the benift of the doubt, let's assume that they do convert their old documents to the newer MS Office Open XML right now. Unfortunately, that road still locks them into MS products. No other software vendor in their right mind will ever implement (the supposedly open) Office Open XML format since the standardisation process has been a complete failure at every turn. An unimplemented standard of 6,000 pages just isn't the best way to go.
Why do people never learn? The archives got into this mess in the first place because of MS (along with other companies) and now they'll just get deeper and deeper into this mess. It's just one bad decision after another.
I just hope that when the UK National Archives have to make this decision for a second time in 5 years or so, someone at the top will have a little more sense than to go proprietary again and finally convert to ODF, plain text or a simple markup language. Basically, something they should be doing right now.
If I was a UK tax payer I'd be pretty annoyed annoyed at the moment. It's going to cost a small fortune now and once again in the future. I just hope that the NZ government doesn't make stupid decisions like that on the data we all own.
This post originated on http://chilts.org/.
Email me on andychilton -at- gmail -dot- com.