OpenDocument Format

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It has been suggested that FFII should develop some activity to promote adoption of OpenDocument as a source file format which needs to be used by public administrations and other standard setters acting in public mission. This page contains some basic info and should soon also contain some hints as to what FFII could do.

What is OpenDocument ?

OpenDocument (short for OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications) is:

• an OASIS standard in tramit by ISO

• An open, XML-based file format for documents.

• A best way to integrate our office documents in Internet

• An open standard, supported by the OASIS international standard group.

• An open prospect of standard by the ISO international and public standardisation body.

• The default file format for OpenOffice.org 2.0, !KOffice 1.4, StarOffice 8, IBM Workplace and much other applications.

• A top prospect for an official format for the European Union.
• The required office format of the US state of Massachusetts.
• The required office format of several cities and regions in the world.

Detailed info about OpenDocument and its public standarization

• Wikipedia about OpenDocument

• Official FAQ about OpenDocument by OASIS

• FAQ about OpenDocument by OpenDocument Fellowship.

• Article by Daniel Carrera in Groklaw

• Valoris Report by the European Union's Telematics between Administrations Committe

• Conclusions and recomendations of the Valoris Report by the European Commission

• Official FAQ about OpenDocument Adoption by the Massachusetts Commonwealth

• Barbara Held, from European Commission IDABC, about OpenDocument and ISO

• Status of ISO standarization process of OpenDocument

• OpenOffice Format accepted at German Federal Finance and Federal Administration Court (German Law)

OpenDocument vs. "Microsoft Office Open XML" (MOOX)

• OpenDocument Fellowship: Detailed technical comparations

• Groklaw: Format comparison between ODF and MS XML

News

• 06-01-26 WW Bog Sutor's blog: Open Standards vs. Open Source, Part 1

• 05-11-21 US Financials Times: Microsoft to give Office access to rivals

• 05-11-10 US ZDnet UK: ODF Summit joins open source activists

• 05-11-01 US ZDnet: IBM, Sun to create 'OpenDocument Foundation'?

• 05-10-29 US Groklaw: Comments on Microsoft’s Letter to Massachusetts by David A. Wheeler

• 05-10-26 UK Times Online: Open formats make history - and maintain it

• 05-10-18 UK BECTA: Technical Specifications of Institutional Infrastructure

• 05-10-18 EU ZDNet UK: ISO crunch time for OpenDocument

• 05-10-03 WW ZDNet UK: Office to support PDF Creation (not OpenDoc)

• 05-09-30 WW ZDNet UK: Tim Bray: OpenDocument could 'turn the world inside out'

• 05-09-15 US David A. Wheeler: Why OpenDocument Won (and Microsoft Office Open XML Didn't)

• 05-10-15 US ZDNet: Gary Edwards: YBK is Right About the Binary Key (of MS XML)

• 05-10-20 AU The Age: OpenDoc plug-in for MS Office users

Position of "big" players

• IBM in favour of OpenDoc: Bob Sutor: IBM-Vizepräsident will OpenDocument durchsetzen (in German)

• Sun in favour of OpenDoc: Tim Bray: OpenDocument could 'turn the world inside out'

• Google in favour of OpenDoc: (Chris DiBona) Google throws bodies at OpenOffice

• Novell, Corel and Adobe in favour of OpenDoc: []

• Oracle in favour of OpenDoc: ODF Summit joins open source activists

• Microsoft against OpenDoc: Spokenperson: Microsoft denies preparations to support OpenDoc in Office 12

Arguments

• We alreay have standardised object formats such as PDF/A and HTML. Source formats are difficult to standardise. Even if OD is required everywhere, people may produce it with an application that has its own native format, and for editing the source it may then still be necessary to use that native format.

  • Counter-argument: the requirement must be that the system in question must support working with OpenDocument as a source format for all kinds of documents where this is reasonably possible.

  • OpenDocument is currently the only available open, free and productive format for office documents that allows full editing and collaboration for the whole suite of office applications (text, spreadsheet, data base and presentation).

  • Additionally OpenDocument integrates natively with Internet infrastructure thanks to be 100% based on XML.

  • No other office format is OASIS standard and no other is in (advanced) standardization process by ISO.
  • Additionally it is the supported format by the IDABC, Valoris studio, from the European Commission.

  • Any application should be able to read, edit, save and print OpenDocument no matter if it uses its own native format.

Proposed Position and Activities of FFII

• Inform FFII supporters about the issue and the status in the ISO certification.

• Ask to FFII supporters to sign the petition to Microsoft to support OpenDocument in MS-Office

• Lobby to national standarization bodies members of the ISO organization.

• Support parliamentary initiatives in various states
  • possibly in combination with parliamentary initiatives on the swpat issue

• FfiiSkEn: FFII SK (Jan Husar) has worked a lot on this issue

• We can always create an opendoc project with mailing lists for talking about OpenDocument and other file format issues

• Support the activities of the consortium OpenDocument Fellowship

Related matters

• Portable Document Format (PDF) released as ISO 19005 standard

More info and activism

• OpenDocument Fellowship

About this document (meta info)

• Info and comments about this page: abarrio at ffii·org -- Last update 060127