| OpenDocument standard garners worldwide support |
Oct. 11, 2005
Emboldened by the state of Massachusetts's dictum last month requiring the use of open-standard document formats in all state offices by Jan. 1, 2007, a group of vocal open standards advocates Monday created a new special interest group to promote use of the OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) OpenDocument Format.
OpenDocument is an open standards document format used to store data from desktop applications, such as word processing, presentation and spreadsheet software. OpenDocument is used by the open source OpenOffice.org desktop business application suite and supported by Sun Microsystems's StarOffice 8.
The budding Open Document Fellowship will add momentum to a growing trend among schools and public agencies to support open standards for the creation, storage and delivery of business documents, the group said.
ODF's mission includes "providing information about the standard such as the degree to which companies and their products are committed to supporting the format, and ensuring the compatibility of the standard across any software application or company," the group said.
Founding members of the fellowship include Mark Taylor, executive director of the Open Source Consortium, Richard Rothwell, chairman of SchoolForge UK, Gary Edwards of OASIS's OpenDocument Technical Committee, and Adam Moore of Friends of OpenDocument.
Ironically, OASIS, a not-for-profit, IT industry e-business standards group that was originally reported to be among the founding members, in fact, is not. OASIS published the OpenDocument standard (PDF format) last May.
"The OpenDocument Fellowship ... incorrectly stated that OASIS was a founding member," OASIS media relations coordinator Carol Geyer told Ziff Davis Internet Tuesday. "We are not, but I understand a member of the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee, Gary Edwards, is."
ODF member Edwards serves as an independent voting member of the OpenDocument TC.
"Everything is moving to the open Internet, and Open XML technologies are both the API, the file format, and the messaging layer for the next generation of Open Internet collaborative computing," Edwards wrote in RedMonk's blog recently. "No if, ands, or buts. Open XML technologies are essential to the Web 2.0. So essential that there is no Web 2.0 without XML."
The OpenDocument standard, which was submitted Tuesday to the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) for consideration, is based on XML schemas.
Taylor told Ziff Davis Internet that "we are keen that this is understood as an open standards initiative rather than just open source. The group already comprises many members who have nothing to do with open source, including members of the OASIS committee that defined the standard," he wrote in an email.
The creation of the new special interest group comes only a week after Microsoft Corp. announced that it would support Adobe's PDF format in its upcoming Office 12 suite of applications, but that it would continue to not offer support for OpenDocument.
"The principle value of consortiums such as this one or other community efforts like Spreadopendocument.org, in my mind, is in education," RedMonk open source industry analyst Stephen O'Grady told Ziff Davis Internet. "The Open Document Format itself is not something to be sold to end users; they need to buy rather a product that supports that format.
"But these consortiums can do an excellent job of aggregating the information that can help illustrate why the format is important, and therefore I think they do have value. One only has to look at the impact Groklaw has had on SCO Group's anti-Linux efforts to appreciate the value of education," O'Grady said.
If you found this eWEEK.com article by Chris Preimesberger informative, be sure to check out eWEEK.com's Linux & Open Source Center for the latest open-source news, reviews, and analysis.
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