Think of it this way –

It would be ridiculous to think that because I drive a Toyota, then I am forced to only buy Texaco gasoline. If you drive a Ford, you can only use Shell, my neighbor with a Chevy can only use Chevron, and so on.

That’s currently exactly the case with file formats — If you use Word, I can only open your file and be sure that I’m seeing what you intended to type if I’m using the same version of Word.

Moving to the OpenDocument format would make the document file formats environment essentially the same as what we enjoy now with our cars — it doesn’t matter who makes the gas, you can run it in any brand or model of car.

Not a great analogy, but good enough for this situation.

The point, and as I mentioned it’s also where the debate breaks down, is when the focus is changed from file formats and open standards to “kicking out Word” or “breaking Microsoft’s monopoly.”

Although yes, it’s true that switching to open document formats WOULD make it POSSIBLE to move off of Microsoft’s products in the future, it’s not assumed that this will be what happens.

The government puts restrictions and requirements on vendors ALL THE TIME. Creating a standard to which all government documents must be created is nothing more than that, and Microsoft can incorporate the standard into their software if they want to be able to compete for government IT software contracts.

This is also where the anti-competitiveness argument is shown to be bullshit. The REAL anti-competitive situation is what we’re experiencing now, since so much of our government’s data is locked up in proprietary document formats. We’re beholden to Microsoft for the ability to be able to open old documents. Other products may be able to open some Word docs, but none of them have a license from Microsoft to incorporate Microsoft’s intellectual property, so ALL of those third-party and open source applications that can do that are relying on having reverse-engineered Microsoft’s proprietary formats. This ability is compromised every time Microsoft patches Word or releases a new version. Switching to OpenDocuments would give government the assurance that they won’t be in that situation in the future, and also give other vendors the opportunity to compete with Microsoft for government software contracts.

If that’s the case, I say “bravo” Mike Veasey. And if not, let me know where I misunderstand (hopefully not everywhere).