There are some questions people have asked me about the OpenDocument Format . The first question is what is the consumer benefit of ODF, in other words why should you care? Nice that the automotive and aircraft industries can benefit but does it mean to the average consumer?

The one-word answer is compatibility. How many times have you received a file attachment from someone and could not open it or you could open but it was unreadable? All of us have had that experience. The reason for such problems is that the file format was not compatible with your system in some way. The OpenDocument Format is designed to be "open" -- any software developer who wants to write a program to read or write an ODF file has complete access to the details of the formats. Assuming all parties are using software that supports ODF, if someone creates a spreadsheet on a Mac and sends it to friend who uses Linux and another friend who uses Windows and a third friend at a major corporation who uses IBM's Workplace software -- they will all be able to open the spreadsheet file and both read it and make changes to it. Another way to say it is that the ODF document is compatible across all of these different software systems. (read more)

Personal Computing     October 6, 2005 02:45 PM