Microsoft's Office 2013 ODF 1.2 support could be true catalyst for OpenOffice adoption
Summary: Microsoft insists that it has built robust support for ODF 1.2 and PDF in Office 2013. It has offered support for ODF 1.1 in the last rev of Office but 1.2 support is said to offer better support for spreadsheet formulas. The next version of Office is due to launch later this year. How will OpenOffice backers respond with Microsoft Open XML support?
Microsoft on Monday indicated in a blog that its next version of Office 2013 will offer robust interoperability with ODF 1.2 and PDF and this could be a nice deal for OpenOffice backers.
In a blog, executives said Office 2013 will offer interoperability support for all ODF 1.2 specifications including spreadsheet formulas and digital signatures, two of the most significant advancements in the OASIS Open Document Format 1.2 standard formally published in January.
The Redmond, Wash software company claims it made the code available last spring for open source advocates in Belgium to test and it reportedly passed. (I don't recall. Anyone out there care to offer a report on this?)
In April, Microsoft hosted the 8th ODF Plugfest in Brussels, Belgium, where representatives from most ODF implementers gathered to test interoperability of our implementations of ODF 1.2," Microsoft wrote on Monday, noting that the new Office version allows users to open, edit and save Although we had not yet released the public preview of the new Office, we provided a web server for other Plugfest participants to submit ODF documents that were then loaded into the new Office, which saved the files as PDF, Open XML, and ODF files and returned the results to the submitting participant. This allowed participants to see how the new unreleased version of Office would render ODF files from their applications.
This could be a huge win for Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice and any other iteration of the open source Office suite that supports ODF 1.2 -- but more work is needed.
Naverage Reader HD, a startup founded by former OpenOffice developer Florian Reuter, reported to me in June that top OpenOffice suites from Apache and LibreOffice support Microsoft's old formats very well but they are still playing catch up with Microsoft's newer Strict Open XML formats.
For those of you who lived through the Microsoft Open XML vs ODF war, it's natural to feel a little skeptical. I recall how vigorously Microsoft fought to kill ODF acceptance, as I suppose any proprietary vendor would do whose cash cow was so threatened.
Microsoft fought Massachusetts' planned adoption of ODF (over its Open XML) so vigorously that it got the state's very cool CIO fired for allegedly unrelated reasons -- on paper, for traveling globally to open source conferences. Really?
It's not a first: Microsoft has offered support for ODF 1.1 in its Office 2007 SP2. But this round of support -- offering the ability to read, edit and save ODF documents in Office 2013 -- is expected to be more robust. .
Still, enterprise skepticism along with Office's deep entrenchment among users (not to mention conflicts within the OpenOffice community) have kept OpenOffice's market share in the low single digits for some time.
But that could really change this time around, if the Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice marketing machines make the most of it, and the interoperability works as advertised.
Microsoft is changing, albeit slowly. The proof is in the pudding: Linux workloads are supported on Azure and Microsoft has worked with many top open source projects and released lots of interesting code into the open source hemisphere in recent years. Skype is offered on Linux.
The launch of a wholly -owned subsidiary Microsoft Open Technologies is not just designed to advance Microsoft's role in opne source projects but also in standard bodies such as OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). Microsoft did participate in the creation of ODF 1.2 and promises seamless and transparent interoperability between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.
"With these enhancements, Microsoft Office now provides full read and write support for the most commonly used document format standards, including ISO/IEC 29500 (Strict Open XML and Transitional Open XML), ISO 32000 (PDF), and OASIS ODF 1.2," Microsoft's Jim Thatcher wrote this week.
"So no matter which of these formats your documents are in today, you will be able to work with them in the next release of Office. And you will be able to save your Office documents in any of these formats, providing the broadest options for document format interoperability."
Of course, one wonders if this translates into full bidirectional interoperability support. Microsoft has created two variants of its Open XML -- Transitional, which supports previously defined Microsoft specific data types such as .doc and exe, and another variant known as Open XML Strict.
Microsoft, for its part, said previous versions of Office have supported reading and writing of Transitional Open XML and Office 10 offers the ability for OpenOffice users to read Strict Open XML documents. With Office 2013, they've added "Write" support. The chart indicates users can read, edit and save for both Transitional Open XML and also for Strict Open XML.
"Prior versions of Office have supported reading and writing Transitional Open XML, and Office 2010 can read Strict Open XML documents. With the addition of write support for Strict Open XML, Office 2013 provides full support for both variants of Open XML," the blog said.
OpenOffice users: please test the preview version of Office 2013 or wait until Office 2013 is released later this year to see how seamless the interoperability is -- spreadsheet formulas, digital signtaures, and macros as well. Again, the proof will be in the pudding.
Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily email newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.
Talkback
Is that all?
The year of OpenOffice on Desktop
Just like the year of Desktop Linux.
Yes
Problem with MS OO to this date is that it ignore any/all formulas in ODF (and they where standarized only in ODF 1.2), even though MS could add support for LO formulas. Now that that is gone, migration to and from LO should be easier.
RE: The year of OpenOffice on Desktop
For those of us that use desktop GNU/Linux, *EVERY YEAR* is the year of Desktop Linux.
And OpenOffice is just one of four FOSS office suites. The others are LibreOffice, Calligra Suite and GNOME Office. FOSS office suites don't have to bury Microsoft Office. Instead, they merely have to remain viable.
Cheers!
Microsoft's Office 2013 ODF 1.2 support could be true catalyst for OpenOffi
No Man Is An Island
I don't think this will be The catalyst because people have to buy Office 13 to get the compatibility. Will the compatibility sell Office 13? Doubtful. If the compatibility is backported to earlier versions of Word, that'd be cool. But a net neutral as to whether people adopt OpenOffice.org (or LibreOffice).
With regards to Mr. Davidson-, I converted a couple of architectural practices to OpenOffice.org, but, being small businesses, they don't have the IT bureaucracy and have the agility and cash motives to try the arguably less powerful but far less expensive OOo. So, I'm an evangelist and an ABMer, big whoop, right?
Well, I provide administrative services to a residential construction management firm and this year I started seeing invoices emailed as .odt files. Having learned something from the scientists in my family, contamination had to be ruled out before accepting result data. So I asked the managing Architect if, in the course of our efforts to have subs make their paperwork more professional, had he suggested OOo to the subs. Nope.
It may not be something but it's not nothing.
100% correct as of now...
Also it will remove some pressure of "network" effect, if institutions will be able to send ODF documents regardless of adoptions of LO (or other editors capable of ODF) in the receiving institution.
My world
It's only one world, but if a contractor sent our procurement group a bid in ODF, they lose because we won't accept it. it's Office format or nothing.
Since the contractors and vendors tend to make money from us, they use Office formats.
The ability of MS Office to open ODF won't help much either. The contractors take the chance we won't be able to read it properly (different applications do interpret the same file differently), so they'll continue to use MS Office formats.
Just simple rules of making money.
You reject business because of ODF?
Why would you...
Most people understand that Office format is vendor lock-in, but what you describe is Stockholm Syndrome - you're helping to increase the lock-in and spread it to others.
Re: Do you know how many ODF files I've come across?
How about the OpenOffice Logo?
And having used both suites, the applications [b]do[/b] look different when they're opened.
Logic disagrees with you, again.
Therefore, logic dictates Open/LibreOffice support all the same functions as MS Office, so unless you are impling MS Office is only good for text files, you should retract your statement.
@ anothercanuck
There is no logic in associating inclusion of file format in one application as interoperability between that application and another application supporting the same file format. A zillion things can go wrong in how exactly that standard is really implemented. OpenOffice supporting ODF 1.1 or ODF 1.2 has jack nothing to do with MSOffice supporting ODF 1.2. For that matter OpenOffice even supports docx format and has been since a long time. But are they compliant enough to interpret MSOffice docs in all scenarios possible? I think the factual answer is no.
OpenOffice was my goto free office application on desktop - both Linux and Windows - but I was sick of its lack of support of a lot of advanced or even basic functionality in a seamless way. MSOffice may be relatively overpriced (talk about iPhones) but it does what it says. And I have been using a grudgingly bought MSOffice 2010 pretty well for the last two years.
Without factual evidence, its nothing but another opinion.....
You are not the center of the universe
Oh, and while you're at it, you might want to look up one of several papers published over the last ten years by statisticians revealing that Excel is riddled with statistical bugs to the point where some functions return results with zero digits of accuracy! In some instances, the bugs have gone resolved for 10 years, and others were "fixed" by making them worse. One paper even asked, "Does Microsoft Fix Bugs In Excel?" Papers have also shown that the open source spreadsheet Gnumeric fared tremendously better in testing, and when small problems were found the handful of unpaid volunteers who develop it were able to fix them in six weeks! OpenOffice/LibreOffice of even a few versions back bested Excel in accuracy as well and also proved very responsive to bug reports. Statistical papers have gone from advising statisticians to not run Excel at all to now having a list of types of statistics that should and should not be attempted in Excel. You might need to write to the statisticians too and inform them that they can't possibly do their work with Gnumneric or LibreOffice or OpenOffice Calc and that they should resume obtaining zero digits of accuracy with Excel immediately.
I'm sure MS think you're wrong
Or maybe he's trying to anticipate what Mitt Romney will do should be be elected President (Mr. Romney was, after all, governor of Massachussetts when that state adopted ODF as it's official file format).
Not to bring politics into this
Could this be the catalyst for OpenOffice adoption?
Hasn't happened.
Really?
Sure - it's home users, but MS Office used to dominate that segment too. Now - no reason to shell out even discounted OEM price for it.