Too Many Chefs

05-28-2008 | 02:32 PM EST

There's a discussion taking place in the international arena these days that will ultimately determine (in part) how businesses communicate, how people interact with their governments, and even how school children do their homework. To many people outside the technology development field, the topic is about as boring as they come. To mainstream news outlets, the headlines would be so unsexy that any mention is relegated to the deepest recesses of newspapers and most off-peak hours of TV viewing. But, the ramifications of the decisions being made today will not only be far-reaching but they'll also be relatively long-lasting.

When most people hear the phrase "document format standards" they probably either tune out, go off on a daydream, or simply walk away. I've got to admit that even just looking at that phrase is pretty daunting. Outside of the people who actually develop technology for a living (and people who work in law), I wonder how many people even refer to files of any sort as "documents?" Well, in the interest of not losing anyone whose already managed to get this far into the post, let me quickly say that what we're talking about here are the agreed upon rules and conventions that go into making a computer file a certain type of file. Just like there are different ingredients that go into making a cheesecake versus, say, a carrot cake, there are different ingredients that go into making different types of computer files. Moreover, when we order a cheesecake, we assume certain things about the base ingredients that will be used and what the cake will taste like. When a computer program (or programmer) encounters a certain type of file, they can make certain assumptions about the rules and structures that make up that file and how it will work. The big question these days is who gets to decide on the ingredients and what recipe should even be used?

ODF (OpenDocument Format) and OOXML (Office Open XML) are the two types of file at the heart of this matter. Both types can be used to store information created in word processing programs (like Microsoft Word and Sun's Open Office) along with spreadsheets, charts, presentations and more. ODF is (and has been for some time) an ISO/IEC International Standard. This means that representatives from various national standards organizations from around the world have thoroughly reviewed and agreed on the ODF "recipe." OOXML is a competing type of file created by Microsoft. In April, OOXML received approval as an ISO/IEC Standard only to have it formally protested this month by the South African Bureau of Standards. Currently, OOXML's ISO/IEC approval is dependent on the protest being resolved.

Groups like the Shuttleworth Foundation see this as a problem. Standards, particularly in technology, are designed to make life easier for everyone by having one agreed upon way to do things. But, by introducing two separate "standard" ways to do things, the complexity in making things work together goes up exponentially — which means more time and money are spent trying to do anything. This is particularly a problem for organizations like governments where there's a real need to have a reliable way to publish and receive information from the people being governed without spending a ton of (taxpayer) money creating many different versions of the same information. (See Massachusetts' Open Initiatives information for more on how that state is addressing this problem.) This leaves some people asking, why even have a second standard? If it's because you feel the first standard is missing something important, why not just use the standard in its current form and then work with the governing bodies, like the ISO/IEC, to get everyone to agree on the best way to implement the next round of improvements to the standard?

Well, it turns out that Microsoft actually has announced that Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 will include the ability to work with ODF files along with the ones in the OOXML format. So, does that mean the problem will be solved? Will people who use Microsoft Office will be able to create ODF files that can be shared with and used by everybody else, including non-Microsoft Office users? It's hard to know for sure. But, I guess that type of confusion is exactly what sticking to a single standard is supposed to avoid.

In the end, you're probably going to need to start saving all of your word processing and related files in one of these formats in the near future. Likewise, you're going to start seeing some new file formats coming from your local and federal government and other official organizations. How many of your tax dollars will be spent making these new technologies work? That'll depend on how many standards we come up with and how well they work together — let's hope all these chefs don't spoil the tech broth.