[NLnet Press] Microsoft should release deprecated file formats into public domain

[NLnet foundation press list]

                   Press release NLnet foundation

Microsoft should release deprecated file formats into public domain
----- Office market leader on crash course with history -----------

                         14 January 2008, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Dutch charitative venture capitalist NLnet [1] has requested IT company
Microsoft to release its previous file formats into the public domain.
According to the not-for-profit investor this will allow businesses,
open source-developers and the standards community to better access
their own documents in the future, and will help getting Microsoft's
products to work with the new open standard ODF.  

Especially releasing the full blueprints of the many different versions
of Microsoft's old Office formats (better known as doc,. xls and .ppt)
into the public domain is urgently required for work on future versions
of ODF. ODF (ISO 26300) is the new and broadly supported ISO-standard
for Office formats that fast becoming the default file format of choice
for text editors, spreadsheets and other office applications with
governments, businesses, NGO's and individuals. "There is no reason for
deprecated file formats not to be in the public domain," states Michiel
Leenaars, strategy manager at the not-for-profit NLnet foundation.  

Also, over the next weeks national standards bodies worldwide are due
to make up their minds about the controversial re-archiving format
OOXML currently under heavy fire within the International Standards
Organisation ISO [2]. NLnet recently joined ECMA as a member to improve
interoperability of future OOXML versions with the ODF standard. The
foundation was alarmed by the fact that even the committee members do
not get the real specifications of the file formats they are supposed
to be re-encoding. 

"Surely no-one can make - or judge - a decent re-archiving standard if
the original file formats are unknown to them", says Leenaars, the
longest sitting member of the Netherlands national standards body
committee responsible for both ODF and OOXML. Currently Microsoft
provides part of the specifications under a non-disclosure agreement
[3] but these are vastly incomplete, illegible, and available only
under very restrictive conditions - and therefore of little use to
neither standards bodies nor to the software community.  

There has been quite some controversy over OOXML in the so far
unsuccessful standardization process. Many of the technical issues
still have to be resolved in line with compatibility requirements from
a largely unknown format. The foundation fears that the continuation of
the OOXML standardisation process without the actual specifications
will result in serious misalignments and vast information loss for
potentially tens of millions of customers (and former customers) from
Microsoft.  

[1] http://nlnet.nl 
[2] http://www.dis29500.org
[3] http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/840817
    (scroll down to bottom of page)

*** Note to editors 

This press release is also available at: 
http://nlnet.nl/press/20080114-formats.html

*** Media contacts

Michiel Leenaars 
Strategy Manager NLnet
+31 6 27 050 947
m.leenaars at nlnet.nl

*** About NLnet Foundation

NLnet Foundation is a widely respected private charity fund supporting
open standards and open source worldwide, and has over the years
actively contributed to (internet) standards, open source projects and
subsidiary or enabling activities such as the development of GPLv3.
NLnet foundation is an independent organisation whose means came
initially from interest on a very substantial own capital formed in
1997 by the sale of the first Dutch Internet Service Provider. Its
private capital ensures an absolute independent position. The articles
of association for the NLnet foundation state: "to promote the exchange
of electronic information and all that is related or beneficial to that
purpose". NLnet believes in open standards and open source. At the
moment, dozens of projects and organizations are supported financially.
Amongst them: research laboratory NLnet Labs, the Free Software
Foundation, ThinkQuest, Intelligent Interactive Distributed Systems,
and the Internet Society. 

                                            More info: http://nlnet.nl
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