On Thu, 2007-02-01 at 08:01 -0500, Arch Willingham wrote: > Thanks a million.....that is a huge help! Snip! > OpenOffice.org (and others) support the ODF (see > http://www.oasis.org for more information) and this format is open, > documented, unencumbered and fully usable by virtually any software that > chooses to use it. This is the ground that must be fought for. > > Likewise, things like Exchange Server and Outlook are also used to > create vendor lock-in - the addiction to the Microsoft behemoth that are > so hard to break. > Craig > Hi, Arch, Another thing to add about file formats... They change, but when they are open, tools will be created almost instantly to migrate your data to remain current, and you have the advantage of retaining the format document, which means historically you will always be able to retrieve the original information. Formats are like hardware storage, and will age, become obsolete, and so forth. With an Open format, the documentation will be available somewhere nearly forever, but with proprietary formats, you don't even get the documentation. As your data ages, it can be non-retrievable, Not important to end users, but to corporations and governements, historical records are vital to watching over the company's or country's property. ODF means Open Document Format. Open in this case does not mean everyone can see the material in the document, only that the standards are open to public view, so that new tools can be created that adhere to the standards. This will become more important as the capabilities of software and systems continue to grow. Visualization software, that is tools to generate different virtual views of data, needs to be able to extract data from existing formats to utilize it. When the format is proprietary, you may not be able to have the same vision of your data that competitors will. This can represent a loss of competitive advantage, or a gain, depending on which side of the edge you are on. Regards, Les H
