COMMENTARY
JIM RAPOZA
Open standards, closed minds
Standards groups waste their time when focusing on state governments
Today, i come to give praise deployments. If anything, gov- increase in the number of ODF
and honor to a group that ernments tend to be behind the files found on the Internet.
is fearless in its abilities to curve, often stuck using older So it seems that, thus far,
choose and deploy cutting- technologies and formats. one of ODF’s biggest growth
edge technologies. Ladies But if the ODF Alliance areas hasn’t been a government
and gentlemen, I give you shouldn’t be pushing for adoption; it’s been Google Apps
state governments! government adoption, where adding ODF as a save option.
What’s that? State govern- should its focus be? I think While I’m not arguing that
ments don’t tend to be fear- the group should be working the alliance should completely
less when it comes to inno- to make ODF more visible forgo lobbying governments,
vative technologies? They and usable in the applica- I do think there needs to be
tend to deal with layers of tions and tools that people more focus on getting the for-bureaucracy that make even are already using. In fact, mat into places where people
the most conservative busi- there is already an example will want to use it willingly.
ness look nimble?
Come to think of it, that’s
right! Governments are typically not the place one expects If anything, governments
to see groundbreaking uses tend to be behind the curve
of new technologies. But if
that’s the case, why do open- in using new technologies.
standards bodies work so
hard to woo governments?
The latest standards where this approach is work- When you look at most of
group to put on a full-court ing very well for ODF. today’s ubiquitous formats,
press to win the love of Over the years, I’ve been a from .zip to MP3 to JPG, they
state governments is the heavy user of OpenOffice.org. I didn’t get to that point because
ODF Alliance, which is can’t think of one occasion dur- a government chose them;
pushing governments and ing that time where someone they are what they are because
states such as Massachu- sent me a document in ODF, people found them easy to cre-setts to adopt Open Docu- but, in the last few months, I’ve ate and use. Once the people
ment Format as a standard actually had several documents choose to use a format such
for public documents. forwarded to me in ODF. as ODF, the governments will
However, I think the alli- Were those documents created follow. That’s because, when it
ance is making a mistake by in OpenOffice.org or StarOf- comes to technology, govern-putting so many of its eggs fice? Nope, they were created ment isn’t fearless, and it usu-in the government basket. in Google Apps. And when I ally isn’t a leader. ´
First, anecdotally I can’t brought this up to a member
think of many formats or of the ODF Alliance, he told Chief Technology Analyst Jim
standards I use today that owe me that since Google Apps Rapoza can be reached at jim.
their popularity to government went live, there has been a large rapoza@ziffdavisenterprise.com.
