Public Comment on ODF as a Malaysian Standard
SIRIM requested public feedback on the OpenDocument Format as a Malaysian Standard. I sent the following comment:
I writing in support of the proposed Open Document Format standard to an advertisement SIRIM placed in the New Straits Times on 1st Sept 2006 to request the public comments. For purposes of clarification, it should be noted that the term “Office†or “Office software†used in this letter should be understood in the context of generic computer software that provide word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and drawing capabilities. It does not refer to any software product released by any company.
As a software engineer with several years of experience in the software development field in Malaysia, I am glad to be given the opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed standard. From the perspective of a software developer, I see several direct and immediate benefits of ratifying the proposed standard:
1. Truly Open Specifications
The primary problem of existing de facto standards for software developers is that it builds a culture of opaque creativity in addition to hobbling the capacity for innovation. With existing de facto standards, we are unable to integrate and extend existing platforms as the specifications were closed and only available on very stringent licensing requirements. With the lack of alternative parties in the software marketplace, this problem becomes extremely severe as potential innovators are held down to the demands of a single party.
This problem can be clearly illustrated by my negative experience in using closed formats:
I lead a software development team to build an extensive and dynamic Office based reporting system that would subsequently be used by government agencies and local private companies.
As per our government’s mandate for the use of Open Source Software, we attempted to build this on Open Source platforms but as Microsoft refused to license Microsoft Office for Open Source platforms, we were forced to look for alternatives.
After extensive feasibility studies, we adopted the then available specification of the Open Document Format which served us very well as:
- its specifications had all the features of the Microsoft Office format
- it had truly open specifications and most importantly,
- it was implementable by all parties without unreasonable licensing requirements.
This allowed us to deliver and execute the project on time on the platform of our choice without being hobbled by vendor lock in strategies.
2. Reducing Market Barriers and Increasing Competition
Existing licensing requirements of closed Office formats are unreasonable as they impose strict limits on the ability to build and extend software products based on the specification. Furthermore, it is a crutch to developers that only partial specifications are usually available for licensing.
This has the effect of increasing the barrier to entry to market for Malaysian software development companies in the Office software market place and lowering our ability to compete at the international level by putting us at the mercy of foreign companies.
In context of the Office software marketplace, it is strikingly frightening to read the revelations from the courts of European Union and United States where it was admitted that market strategies are used to block and decimate competition, particularly by the incumbent companies. Closed and opaque formats work extremely well in excluding future competitors from the marketplace.
Common sense dictates that it would not be to the advantage of foreign companies to open up their formats to Malaysian competition, yet Malaysia needs to insist on an open format to ensure that our nascent software development industry is not dominated by foreign interests.
In addition, due to the lack of competition and alternatives, it would be impossible for Malaysian technology companies to innovate in the software marketplace with the current restrictive licensing strategies that are currently implemented. Indeed, evidence bears out this observation as the software market place in Malaysia shows a dearth of competing Office based software solutions.
3. Building A Culture of Open Creativity
Malaysian developers are taught in schools and universities today that software can be built in a ‘point-and-click’ process, with little or no understanding of the internal structures and design considerations of the software and document formats used. This is no fault of the universities, as there is no avenue for them to teach their students without having access to the underlying technology themselves.
This has come to be known as the culture of opaque creativity, whereby it becomes impossible for Malaysian developers to learn from the technology advances of their brethren overseas due to licensing restrictions. This puts Malaysian developers and entrepreneurs at a considerable disadvantage as we are always trailing behind foreign incumbent companies.
In that vein, having a standardized document format would help balance the playing field by giving the opportunity innovate based on open technology specifications and and thereby allowing entrepreneurs to build competing technology solutions that are comparable to foreign owned companies.
Given the large scale adoption of ODF (at last count, it was used by more then 50 million users), Malaysian developers will have a large development resource to draw from and Malaysian entrepreneurs will certainly have a worldwide market to sell to.
It is therefore vital that we ratify a common standard for the benefit of Malaysian developers and entrepreneurs, so as to provide a level playing field and help build a transparent culture of creativity.
As an existing ISO approved standard, the Open Document Format fits this bill well and we should not delay its introduction as a standard to the Malaysian software community.