India must adopt free standards
January, 2008, V Sasi Kumar, Infochange
As software and Internet usage expands in developing countries, it poses certain questions about the kind of technology that should be used in order to facilitate such usage. While the issues related to licensed software products vis-a-vis the open source software revolution are well known, another crucial aspect is often overlooked, namely the data storage formats being used. This often becomes a serious hindrance to the exchange of documented information a majority of software (for e.g. word processors like Microsoft Word) store data in proprietary format which necessitates both the writer and the consumer of the artefact to have (licensed) copies of the same software. The article analyses this problem and suggests that developing countries like India should unambiguously vote for open standards for data storage and exchange like the Open Document Format (ODF) as opposed to proprietary ones like OOXML (promoted by Microsoft). Adopting such free standards will go a long way in solving the interoperability issues that plague much of licensed software today and provide a fillip to greater electronic usage for information exchange in developing countries.