I'm talking about 100 years from now. For long-term document storage, governments would be better off printing and storing paper instead of Microsoft Word files. By implementing open standards, governments will have a much more certain and managable path to ensure that documents created today will be accessible in the future.
There is nothing preventing Microsoft or any other software vendor from fully supporting the ODF format. That is a much more sensible format for the state to standardize on than Microsoft's proprietary formats which are encumbered with a bunch of anti-competitive restrictions.
You sound like parrots repeating the same illogical point over and over.
You believe that concepts like "long-term document storage and retrieval" and "planning ahead" are illogical. It's obvious why your side lost - you lack common sense.
The only possible issue would be the technical will to restablish connectivity into the files, but even these proposed formats would require that.
Since the specifications for ODF and PDF are far more widely distributed than Microsoft's formats, the open formats will be much economical and technically feasible to access in future decades and centuries.
I've written applications to extract data from both PDFs and BIFF format, and I've developed systems to handle massive volumes of documents. The PDF project went much better than BIFF because the official data format specification was readily available. I'm pretty sure I have a lot more practical experience with these matters than you do, based on your ignorant comments on the subject.
LOL. Are you serious? What will happen over the next 100 years? Technology will go backwards...they'll look at a word doc like the rosetta stone? There may be good reasons for open doc standards, but that is definitely not one of them...that's one's actually quite laughable.
100 years from now. "I can't seem to open this document. It's made with some type of ancient encryption that our quantum computers can't even crack. If only we has the advanced techology of the 1990's we could read the document. We're doomed to failure. Good thing we can still open those PDFs though. They published their standard so we could read the format."
Well if that's your position, then use a basic text file. No need getting any of that messy proprietary formatting in the way.
So when/if M$ publishes their Office 12 XML formats and allows everyone to use that format for FREE, I assume you'll be onboard. That dove tails in with your point above, so it's great to have you supporting Office 12. Spread the word! Office 12 will use by default OPEN XML formatting.
If people outside Microsoft can get into them right now, should be a piece of cake in 100 years.
By implementing open standards, governments will have a much more certain and managable path to ensure that documents created today will be accessible in the future.
MS products are already compatible with multiple standard formats. And their new formats are even more open. There's nothing that this new ODF format provides, other than an incumbance on the constituents to load something additional and different to what most already have.
I've written applications to extract data from both PDFs and BIFF format, and I've developed systems to handle massive volumes of documents. The PDF project went much better than BIFF because the official data format specification was readily available.
So are the new formats for Office. You mean you didn't know? Or chose to ignore? BTW, this white paper specifically mentions your 100 year "dilema".