There has been a huge blow-up in the standards world recently (you should see the pile of documents I got through my Standards Council of Canada account) on the subject of open (XML) document standards. Microsoft used to basically own this field, as its proprietary (binary) Office format was the de facto standard. But industry pressure is forcing even Microsoft to open up. But the standards wars continue as Microsoft squares off against its rivals on exactly which sort of XML to use. The authors of this JISC report on open document standards write "There is an urgent need for co-ordinated, strategically informed action over the next five years, if the higher education community is to facilitate a cost effective approach to the switch to XML-based office document formats." I don't agree. What the use of an open standard allows is for people to use whatever documetn authoring software suits them the best - the idea is that you don't have to have a "co-ordinated, strategically informed action". This is the big economic advantage of open standards - decisions that used to carry considerable financial risk (VHS or beta, say, or HT or Blu-ray) now carry much less of a risk. All of that said, do read the report - the authors are right about the need to be informed.
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