The struggle in the State of Massachusetts over which document format to use internally should not be about the Open Document Format (ODF) versus Microsoft's Open XML, Sun Microsystems' chief open source officer Simon Phipps said at a meeting with reporters in San Francisco. 

Instead it should be about moving to a new generation of file format to ensure that societies, companies and individuals have access to their data in the future.

"We will continue to have this problem with drifting file formats and the loss of society's memory. It will continue to be a problem until there is a multi-lateral baseline file format," said Phipps.

Users of older versions of Microsoft Office cannot currently open documents created in the latest version of the application. Similarly, the current version in some cases will have trouble accessing documents crafted in older version of the productivity suite.

Phipps described the latter as "corporate Alzheimer's" which will be a major concern for enterprises, governments and especially archives that often find it impossible to access data that is over 10 years old.

As a solution technology companies need to create a "baseline" general standard for office documents which can be used by any software suite, thereby preventing vendor lock-in.

The ODF has been designed with these goals in mind. In addition to Sun, the standard counts Adobe and IBM among its backers. The format is being used in the OpenOffice productivity suite and several derived products including Sun's Star Office. 

Looking for a standard that can withstand time, Massachusetts said that from 1 January 2007 it would mandate the use of products based on ODF's specifications at the offices of the executive branch.

Massachusetts is the first government entity to come out in support of ODF. Many other government departments are believed to be closely watching the initiative as they prepare to follow the state's lead.

This has turned Massachusetts into a key battleground over the future of document standards and has led to accusations against its chief information officer concerning alleged corruption in attending open source conferences.

Microsoft plans to use the Open XML format in the next version of Office. The file format has been submitted for approval with the ECMA standards body. Approval of the standard there would open up the Microsoft format. 

ECMA is considered to be one of the more liberal standards bodies, however, allowing Microsoft to keep firm control over the standard.

Sun also criticized the ECMA approval process and membership criteria, which effectively locks out individual open source proponents who are not affiliated with any organisation.