An open letter from the Document Foundation warns that Euro-Office, which is being “marketed” as the first open-source office suite developed in Europe, isn’t what it seems - and may reinforce Microsoft’s closed source technology instead.
… Microsoft … developed and controls the horrible proprietary OOXML format, designed precisely to prevent Digital Sovereignty by maintaining content lock-in. It is far less understandable on the part of companies that claim to advocate open source, such as those promoting Euro-Office.
Euro-Office defaults to the fully proprietary OOXML document format, developed and controlled solely by Microsoft. This makes it a de facto ally of Microsoft in its content lock-in strategy, with control remaining firmly in Redmond and far from Europe.
So, despite what is being written in support of Euro-Office — the latest of the office suites developed in Europe, and not the first — the announcement is not against Microsoft. On the contrary, it strengthens Microsoft’s strategy against European Digital Sovereignty, or, if you prefer, against the freedom of European users to control and manage their own content.
But why not have it default ODF?
Because not ever organization and company that has to work with documents produced with Euro-office uses an open source office suite and Microsoft support for ODF is terrible. Which will result company to push for Europe to return to Microsoft.
We must first make sure everyone switches to software that is capable of reading ODF files before switching to that format.
This reminds me of how Microsoft killed Java applets in the browser by “supporting” them in Internet explorer.
I suppose that makes sense. Either way though workers will have to be trained to understand the difference between the two formats and when it’s appropriate to use each. Seems like ODF will be more likely to get adopted if it’s the default, with a reminder built in to use OOXML if sharing with someone outside the organization (obviously in more user-friendly language).