Microsoft Concedes: It Will Support Open Document Format in Office

by Sam Dean - May. 21, 2008Comments (3)

The rumors were true: Microsoft is opening up its Office 2007 suite of productivity applications to other formats, including Open Document Format (ODF). Earlier this year, Microsoft was under fire for its effort to push its own Open Office XML set of formats as an international standard, when many people in the open source community wanted support for the more strictly open ODF standard. Microsoft officials have now also said that Office will fully support PDF format and XML Paper Specification (XPS). The new formats will arrive in Service Pack 2 for Office 2007, early next year, and some translators will arrive before then.

When using SP2, customers will be able to open, edit and save documents using ODF and save documents into the XPS and PDF fixed formats from directly within the application without having to install any other code. It will also allow customers to set ODF as the default file format for Office 2007.

How Microsoft Office handles document formats, especially in terms of support for open standards, has a long and messy history. There have been many pushes to get organizations and governments to adopt ODF as a more open alternative to Microsoft's Open Office XML set of formats. But Microsoft appears to be making a big move toward more openness with its latest news.

CNet News has a statement from Microsoft's Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft: "We have heard from customers and governments that they would like to see us do this. Now is the time to announce this support. It's also important to announce this now because we want to get involved in the maintenance of ODF."

More from Microsoft's announcement: "We are committed to providing Office users with greater choice among document formats and enhanced interoperability between those formats and the applications that implement them," said Chris Capossela, senior vice president for the Microsoft Business Division. "By increasing the openness of our products and participating actively in the development and maintenance of document format standards, we believe we can help create opportunities for developers and competitors, including members of the open source communities, to innovate and deliver new value for customers."

Here at OStatic, we see this latest news from Microsoft as a nod to increasing international pressure on the company to support rival file formats and become more open. The EU has levied more than $1 billion in fines on Microsoft over this issue, and part of the goal of Microsoft's February announcement of new interoperability standards was to address these concerns.

The issues are ongoing, as evidenced by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency filing a complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission this week. The complaint called out lack of support for ODF as impeding educational initiatives.

Overall, Microsoft's latest move appears to be good news for document interoperability. However, there are some skeptics. The Open Document Format Alliance issued a statement today saying: The ODF Alliance today greeted with skepticism Microsoft's announcement of its intention to include support for the Open Document Format in the first half of 2009. "The proof will be whether and when Microsoft's promised support for ODF is on par with its support for its own format. Governments will be looking for actual results, not promises in press releases," said Marino Marcich, managing director of the ODF Alliance.

What do you think of Microsoft's decision to support the new file formats?