Document Freedom Day

Today is Document Freedom Day but you probably went to work anyway.

Document Freedom Day may be one of the most misunderstood days on the open source calendar.

Many who see the term probably think it relates to issues of copyright, and support for Creative Commons content. Or they may think it's an answer to The New York Times' paywall.

Neither is true.

Document Freedom Day isn't about documents, but how documents are created.

When they are created with closed standards, like Microsoft's OOXML, the format of Microsoft Office, they become subject to monopoly rents. You must use Microsoft's format to read it. The file format under which the document is stored is hidden from you. Your children or grandchildren may be unable to read it, if Microsoft decides to retire the format.

This has happened. Billions of documents written in the 20^th century, using programs like WordStar, WordPerfect, or Perfect Office, are now unreadable, because those proprietary formats disappeared.

Yet many Western companies, and governments, are locked into supporting closed document formats, because for many years there seemed no alternative.

But there is.

The Open Document Format (ODF), supported by Oracle's OpenOffice, by LibreOffice, and by IBM's Lotus Symphony, among other programs, is stable, universal and rent free. The tools needed to edit ODF documents can be downloaded free. Your children and grandchildren will always have access to them.

The fight over document standards has gone on for many years, and many believe led to a corruption of the entire standards process. 

As IBM executive Bob Sutor noted in a series of blog posts during 2007 and 2008, when Microsoft strong-armed OOXML's acceptance before the International Standards Organization, the format “was developed in a non-open manner, is ridiculously large, is technically inferior, and emerged from the Ballot Resolution Meeting with most things not explicitly resolved.”

In the end Microsoft's format was approved, which is a tragedy for people and organizations, many of whom find they can't work on common documents unless they pay to use that format. It's a default on Windows hardware. Trying to view a Web document in a developing country can become impossible.

The whole fight holds important lessons for technologists. Standards processes must be open. Approved standards must be rent-free, and their details available for inspection at all times.

Otherwise, there may still come a time when you can't read this.