Who Cares About Open Document Format?

I don't care about open document format.

Joel on Software has an article about the Microsoft publishing the file format for there office formats. He goes on to describe why they are so complicated, taking 300+ pages to document.

The complexity Joel describes and the ability to accurately reproduce the format quirks is why I don't care about document formats. I don't care how open the document format is, there are many more parts to the equation:

1. It has to be stored on media that your current computer can read. I am really enjoying copying the 100 floppies I have using the last remaining floppy drive in the house.
2. You have to have software your current computer can run to be able to view the document.
3. Moreover, that software has to be able to export it into something you can use.

Number 1 is a fairly obvious problem. The crux is 2 & 3. Just because the document format is open doesn't mean that 2 & 3 will be satisfied. Unless there is monetary incentive you probably aren't going to go about creating your own software to read your high school English papers. I do agree that open document formats make it more likely you can do what you want today and in the future. However, they aren't the magic bullet to always being able to use your content.

Today people tend to demand software that interoperates well. Because of this most programs can save in a variety of formats, proprietary and non. This allows you the most flexibility.

If you are really worried about your data and documents I suggest you worry about the big picture:

1. Use best practices for backup. Redundant, geographically diverse.
2. Save on media that can be read by most computers.
3. Save in several formats.
4. Save the reading/writing software with the documents.
5. Repeat steps 1-3 every few years as technology evolves, before you can't access the old data.

I hope the better way to solve the problem is through Virtualization. Save your documents and applications in a complete virtualized environment. Then make sure you can run that on the next generation of systems. This is what many in the Apple II (you remember from elementary scool, with the green triangle Logo "turtle") have been doing for years. Be careful with the DRM content, who knows if you will be able to access that a year from now.

My final suggestion is to let it go. Don't even waste your time trying to save a bunch of content you are never going to look at again. If you can't open the file you probably don't really need the content. Leave the time capsule of great works to the professionals. Your work and mine probably isn't going to be included.