ODF 20th Anniversary Video

On May 1st, 2005, the Open Document Format (ODF) become an OASIS standard. One year after, it became an ISO/IEC standard. After two decades, it is the only true open standard for document formats available on the market, and the only one protecting users from proprietary lock in and ensuring a full control over contents. The presentation provides an overview over ODF features and explains why ODF should be used versus Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX).

PeerTube: https://peertube.opencloud.lu/w/2b9JeZw1M884V5BK21RioW

YouTube: https://youtu.be/Z-Xo9v9-1YU (please note that once you leave this blog to access the video, a different set of privacy rules will apply)

Open Document Format (ODF) has been designed as a document standard for the next 20-50 years, to liberate users from the lock-in strategy built into yesterday’s and today’s proprietary formats and foster interoperability. On the contrary, OOXML – approved by ISO/IEC in 2008 in a version never implemented by MS Office – has been designed as a document pseudo-standard format to propagate yesterday’s document issues and lock-in strategy for the next 20-50 years, to the detriment of users and interoperability.

The philosophy behind the ODF standard document format was to design a mechanism in a vendor neutral manner from the ground up, using existing standards wherever possible. Although this means that software vendors had to tweak their individual packages more than if they continued down their original routes, the benefits for interoperability were important enough to justify this objective. The OOXML pseudo-standard document format was designed by Microsoft for Microsoft products, and to interoperate with the Microsoft environment. Little thought appears to have been exercised for interoperability with non-Microsoft environments, or compliance with established vendor-neutral standards.