Derrin Kent

There are Open Standards for Office Software formats. There is a strong business case for adopting these standards. The OASIS defined standards are collectively known as .odf (.odf=The Open Document Format) files. More specifically, to parallel some of these with Microsoft’s old binary formats:

.doc = .odt
.xls - .ods
.ppt = .odp

I very rarely want to collaboratively edit documents I am producing with people outside my own organisation. I usually prefer to send people a non-editable .pdf (my OpenOffice software has a “one-click” export to .pdf (.pdf=The Portable Document Format) option). Editing is usually my job… my recipient’s job is usually simply to read what I am sending them and email back - or post their responses on a forum somewhere.

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There is a plethora of “Open Source” software licences and it can be easy for an ICLT strategist to get distracted by these when choosing which Open Source software to adopt. Information on such licences can be accessed via the “Open Source Initiative” (http://www.opensource.org).

Just because the Source Code is free for everyone’s consumption, this doesn’t mean that we should necessarily trust the product. We should, in fact, evaluate an Open Source product in much the same way as we would evaluate a product we pick up off the shelf in PC World.

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