Today, 4 October, was the last day of Copenhagen's Open Source Days
event.[0] It was pretty impressive, and I saw only a fraction of the
two-day event--my real loss. The venue was Copenhagen's newest
university, the IT-University [1], and the hall where the booths were
was spectacular, at once airy and friendly. I was unfortunately unable
to attend other presentations--this is usually my curse--and so missed
the lead of Sweden's Open Source group, Björn Lundell's on Foss in
government, along with a lot of other ones. Again, my loss.
My thanks to Peter Toft and the organizers for enabling my stay in
Copenhagen and presentation. They did a fantastic job and I am not the
only one who thinks so. I was told that just today there were 1200 or
so attendees. Wow.
My own presentation, to a packed room, departed from any product
announcement, though of course, I couldn't help myself a little: OOo
3.0 is, after all, coming out next week, or so we are told. Instead,
however, I focused on the critical importance formats play, in
particular, that most disruptive of formats, the OpenDocument format,
or ODF.
My argument is simple but needs telling. It's that the issue is not
about applications per se but ultimately about formats. OpenOffice.org
is the best implementation of the ODF, to be sure, but the point of an
open standard format is that it enables any sort of and any number of
applications to, in effect, work together: a network linked by the way
they express data. (Chinese encompasses numerous mutually
incomprehensible languages, not just dialects, but the ideograms, the
way of writing, is the same, regardless of the way one actually
pronounces things. I guess an equivalent could be the ODF: a variety
of applications, each with a differing UI, technology, whatever, but
essentially linked and compatible, nationalized, by their common mode
of expression: the ODF.)
Since Microsoft lost the battle against ODF--actually since a little
before then, since it saw the writing on the wall--it's been arguing
that it's not the format that matters, it's the application. And, of
course, that means that MSFT will often win the battle, as it is not
really presenting this argument to new users, naive users, those who
have never used an office suite, but to those who have already bought
or otherwise obtained MS Office. They either hate or like MS Office
and are probably, regardless of their feelings, simply used to it and
loath to change, especially if they believe, as the FUD has presented,
that open source applications are uniformly bad, difficult to use,
behind the time, inadequate, unsupported. They are not--just look to
Firefox or OOo, both of which are superior in every way--but that's
the FUD, and it's difficult to argue against a lie; one has to be
persistent.
The presentation went over well; the issue however, needs repetition:
it's not just about the application. That's important, to be sure, but
not the whole story. It's about the format, in the end, for that gives
users and developers access to a universe of possibility.
-louis
PS BTW, one interesting question asked at the event was, "What happens
to the relevance of open standard and open source in a world of
successful and omnipresent web services, web apps, and SaaS? My
answer: the Affero license was designed to address the Foss issue. I'd
suggest that an open standard obligation be required, as well: that
all data must have an open standard referent, as a kind of insurance
against data loss. For there are two key points of vulnerability here:
loss of creative power and loss of data. Consider this a kind of
archive anxiety. And the lesson: loss of power, loss of data, loss of
identity is easy. Much harder to keep it alive and keep it ours.
[0] http://www.opensourcedays.org/
[1] http://www1.itu.dk/sw5211.asp
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