Confusion has greeted the news that Oracle is now charging £55 per seat for a formerly free plug-in that lets Microsoft Office users access files stored in the Open Document Format (ODF) used by Sun's StarOffice (now called
Oracle Open Office)and the free-to-download
OpenOffice.org suite.
Oracle, which acquired Sun earlier this year, has now started charging for downloads of the
ODF plug-in for Microsoft Office, which gives users of Word, Excel and PowerPoint the ability to read, edit and save these files in the ISO standard Open Document Format (ODF).
The mystery is why Oracle believes it can charge customers for ODF support, when Microsoft itself added support for version 1.1 of the ODF format in
Office 2007 service pack 2, released in the first half of 2009.
While the ODF file formats have gained widespread backing since they were approved by Oasis (Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) and ISO in 2005, the move by Oracle seems likely to stifle future adoption.
This is made even more likely by Oracle's insistence on a minimum order volume of 100 seats for the plug-in, meaning it will cost any organisation at least £5,500 just to have compatibility with the latest version of the ODF file formats.
The new plug-in, which works with Office 2003, XP and 2000 as well as Office 2007, supports the latest version - 1.2 - of the ODF file formats and provides better ODF support than MS Office 2007 SP 2, according to Oracle.
But ODF 1.2 is not yet ratified as a standard by either Oasis or ISO, so companies might be forgiven for thinking that this is something that they can do without.
Many organisations such as public-sector bodies have standardised on ODF since it was ratified, precisely because it is an open standard, and this might be the thinking behind Oracle's move.
ODF is, of course, a published open standard, and so Oracle does not have a monopoly on it. There is nothing stopping Microsoft or anyone else from creating a plug-in to support ODF 1.2, and offering it for free.
Microsoft has not yet done so precisely because ODF 12 is not yet ratified, and the forthcoming Office 2010 only supports ODF 1.1 for this reason.
However, ODF 1.2 is supported by OpenOffice.org 3.2, the latest version of the open-source application suite, and also in the newest update to Oracle Open Office.
For some organisations, this situation therefore presents a predicament; if you have partners that use OpenOffice.org, you are very likely going to receive documents from them in the new file formats.
The upshot is that these organisations will either have to pay to license the Oracle plug-in for Microsoft Office, or download and install OpenOffice.org themselves, solely for the purpose of translating files sent by email from partners using the suite.
The alternative is to hope that Microsoft will add ODF 1.2 support to Office, or that an open source solution will come along in the near future.
This move might thus be seen as a cynical attempt by Oracle to make a profit out of a document standard previously promoted by Sun as a 'safe option' for customers that did not want to get tied into proprietary file formats.
Ultimately, this could herald the demise of the ODF file format as an open standard, as the ill will generated by Oracle's move could see organisations abandon it and turn instead back to Microsoft Office.
22 Apr 2010
