Coffs Free and Open Technology Network

March 26th 2008 is the first annual Document Freedom Day, a global day of grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of Free Document Formats and Open Standards.

Have you ever sent out a document from your brand new version of your favourite word processor and got abusive emails in return from people who can't open the file you just sent them? They may even use the same software from the same vendor, but their version is crying "unrecognised file format"!

Ever fished an old file out of your archives and found you've got no software that can read it? Perhaps the company that made the software you used to create the file went out of business years ago. Perhaps they just didn't see any profit in continuing to support the old versions of their file formats. Either way you've just lost your data forever down the black hole of proprietary file formats.

Data loss, forced software upgrades (and associated expense), and vendor lock-in are not an inevitable part of computer use. For example, the OpenDocument format, an International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) standard for spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents, is supported by a wide range of software including OpenOffice.org, Google Docs, and IBM Lotus Symphony. OpenDocument is the file format of choice at organisations such as the National Archives of Australia, where the accessibility and long-term preservation of information is their paramount concern.

There are many other free and open file formats for text, graphics, audio, and other applications. To mark Document Freedom Day the next meetings of the Coffs Ex-Services Computer Club and ClubLinux Coffs Harbour will include a review of the best ways to ensure that your data remains accessible for as long as you want, not held hostage to the whims and fortunes of the company that wrote the software you use.