There's something amazing going on in the world of Open Standards.  The thought of government organizations moving away from Microsoft products because they don't support Open Standards for data storage has caused Microsoft to respond by declaring they will open their office format.

If you haven't been following what has sparked this debate, I would highly suggest listening to the audio from the Meeting With Commonwealth of Massachusetts Officials 16-Sep-2005 About Open Formats.  If you listen to the first 30 minutes of the session, you will hear the Massachusetts Secretary of Administration and Finance Eric Kriss speak eloquently about the importance of government documents and the role of freedom in a republic.  Listening to Mr. Kriss speak may renew your confidence that there are still statesmen in our country.  When you consider that conventional documents, such as the constitution itself, are by nature essential to law and liberty, then it follows that government has the responsibility to make sure that electronic documents remain accessible and available forever.  ...

The rate of change of technology can sometimes cause us to forget about the risk of loosing knowledge with flux caused by constant computer and software upgrades.  Open Standards are the only assurance that future software could incorporate previous formats, beyond the life and licenses of the companies that invented them.

I remember coming across some old documents that I needed which were written in the first word processor I ever used, IBM or PFS Write for my PC Jr.  I searched and searched and could not find any software which would read the format.  Fortunately I was able to grep through the binary format and partially pull out the information, but it serves as a good lesson.  It was just 20 years ago when some of us were using that format... governments require a much longer perspective.

A second example of the importance of Open Standards, was recently experienced by citizens attempting to recover from the Katrina tragedy.  The FEMA website would not work from any other web browser except Internet Explorer for Windows, because the site was not written to W3C open standards.  This excluded Mac users from receiving critical information immediately following the hurricane.  Imagine an emergency phone number that wouldn't work certain brands of phones?

Before the Internet, networks were like that.  You could have a certain brand of network device (Artisoft Lantastic) network and not be able to communicate with your friends computer because he had a different one.  The Internet Protocol changed all that, because it was an Open Standard, allowing any computer adopting the standard to communicate.  The Internet Protocol was not an "industry standard", agreed to by a few companies, but was approved by a public standards body, the IETF.  You would not be reading this blog right now, if people hadn't decided to adopt a set of Open Standards.

In a similar fashion, a standards body called the OASIS Group, developed the Open Document Format.  The goal being that people, no matter which productivity software or type of computer they are using, could share electronic documents and be able to read and write to them.  When the State of Massachusetts decided to build into their strategic plan, a move to such open formats, it would have by nature excluded Microsoft Products from being purchased for use within the government.

Microsoft has been using proprietary non-open formats to lock users into sticking with their software.  Far fetched?  The number one reason given to me by persons considering switching office suites is, "If I switch, I can't deal with the format conversion headaches", or, "People send me Microsoft Word docs, will they open?".  Both of these problems are due to the closed Microsoft format.  It is never a question of features or functionality, or merits of the software.  Competition based on quality of the good is thrown out the window, because Microsoft hasn't published the map or given license to make general use of the format outside their software.

For years Microsoft has levied the tax on continued use of your own information, and most people have had no choice but to take it.  But in 2005, it was Boston again who bravely stood up, casually dumped the "tea" into the ocean and said, "We would rather have our freedom, than your products!"  No taxation without representation.

Has Microsoft learned that they are going to have to listen to their customers in order to keep them?  Perhaps... the license for the new "open" format comes out Wednesday.