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Dear Editor, With reference to the article titled"Govt should move to OpenDocument Format" by Koh Choon Jin (ST Forum, 1 April 2006), I applaud Mr Koh on his insightful analysis. Adopting OpenDocument Formats (ODF) allows you to retain control on your choice of office productivity suite. There are many office productivity suites that support OpenDocument formats, such as OpenOffice, StarOffice, KOffice and many others. On the contrary, you are restricted to using Microsoft Office to view the proprietary Office documents. Affordability of Microsoft Office for ordinary Singaporeans is another worthwhile reason for the Government to support ODF. A Standard edition of Microsoft Office retails around S$400 and a Professional Edition retails around S$600. These hefty prices put Microsoft Office beyond the reach of the lower income families. In addition, it is also ambiguous whether the license allows a single purchased copy of Microsoft Office to be used by a whole family of users. Compare these to the price of OpenOffice which is free and you can see the immediate benefits. As Singapore is pushing for the protection of intellectual property, it is an irony that majority of the population is using pirated copies of Microsoft Office. When you look at the HDB heartlands, it is most likely a high proportion of residents use pirated copies of Microsoft Office than licensed copies. The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) have been working hard to educate the population to respect intellectual property, but I have observed the message seems to be "pay or be damned". No other alternative, such as adopting OpenOffice, was ever communicated to the population. We need to be more creative and original while we strive to be "hip" (honouring intellectual property). Also, we must not convey a wrong message to Singaporeans that you have to be rich to be "hip". Promoting the adoption of ODF allows Singaporeans to choose from commercial (such as StarOffice) and free (such as OpenOffice) alternatives. We can choose our office productivity suite based on affordability and suitability of each solution. No longer are we tied to a single vendor. With fair competition based on open standards, consumers will be the ones who benefit the most. We can already see the benefits for consumers in the local telecoms industry when it was liberalised. In addition, proprietary document formats controlled by single vendor has higher risk of obsolescence when the vendor decides not to support them. On the other hand, no single vendor controls the ODF. It is an industry standard and a soon-to-be international standard. Competitive pressures will ensure that there are vendors supporting ODF. Today, we can see governments around the world adopting ODF. Other than the Massachusetts example given by Mr Koh, we can see similar adoptions by
Australian National Archives (http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=1991153367&fp=16&fpid=0) UK's Bristol City Council European Union Germany's Munich City
Last but not least, the Government has to be impartial and not promote a particular vendor's products. Instead, it should be setting common rules, i.e. open standards, on which all vendors should compete. This is what I, a Singaporean, expects from our Government. I believe many Singaporeans will share this expectation too.
Wong Onn Chee About Resolvo Systems Established in 2000, Resolvo Systems is a Resource Optimisation company, focused on optimising clients' business resources ranging from Business Analytics, Office Collaboration and Linux Infrastructure solutions. Resolvo is a strong advocate in the adoption of Open Source and Linux in achieving "More with Less" for its clients.
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