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There Is a Day Dedicated to Ridding the Earth of .DocX Files

For truth, justice, and document freedom for all.
Image: Flickr/Sergio Quesada

You probably didn’t realise it, but today is, apparently, Document Freedom Day. It might not be as well known as Independence Day or even other tech-related awareness campaigns like the Day We Fight Back. But like dozens of other causes (Safer Internet Day, anyone?), the fight for open standards across documents has some people bothered enough to muster its own commemorative calendar spot, and that just happens to be the last Wednesday in March.

According to the Document Freedom website, it’s an occasion to spread the word about fair access to communications technology. They define “document freedom” as follows:

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Documents that are free can be used in any way that the author intends. They can be read, transmitted, edited, and transformed using a variety of tools. Documents that aren't free are locked to some particular software or company. The author cannot choose how to use them because they are controlled by technical restrictions, like a powerful car that is artificially restricted to 30 km/ph.

Essentially, it’s when someone sends you a Pages document and you can’t open it because you use Word.

That might sound a little low on tech freedom priorities compared to, say, the push to maintain an open web, but given the way documents are usually shared and saved—i.e., over the internet—and the data they can include, you can see it as part of the same overarching cause: Fighting the digital divide, one document at a time.

That's because while document restrictions mostly just seem annoying, they can also end up being expensive, and manipulating users into downloading software they don’t really want. This can also box out less affluent users, who can't afford to stay up to date with the latest software. That’s why the campaign calls these kind of closed standards “the basis of the worlds worst technology monopolies.” They advocate open standards across digital documents, which is similar to how the web works (just imagine if you could only open certain pages through certain browsers).

It’s also not only a problem between different companies; you’ve probably experienced the even more infuriating situation when an old version of a program is unable to open documents saved in a newer version. As Computer World writes, “using closed formats allows the vendor to arbitrarily force you to spend money to retain access to your own work, and can even render archived documents unreadable for all practical purposes—a phenomenon known as 'bit rot.’”

This leads to a situation where trying to open an old file is about as futile as trying to jam a floppy disk into a USB port, and it essentially takes your own data out of your own control.

It’s by no means a new problem, but the idea of using open document formats has picked up steam recently in some parts of the world. The UK government announced in January that it planned to switch from the “oligopoly” of companies like Microsoft to software capable of creating open document files (which are XML-based and known by the abbreviation ODF).

The Guardian reported then that around £200m (over $300 million) had been spent on the government’s Microsoft Office suite alone since 2010. Reports suggest some members of the European Parliament have also been making noises about switching to ODF, and government bodies in Brazil and Nepal held events around Document Freedom Day today.

So here’s to Document Freedom Day, and at the very least to the glimmering hope of a future with fewer “cannot open file” error messages.