Governments Take Note: Open Document Format is Updated and Improved

In an important development last week, Open Document Format (ODF) version 1.2 was adopted as an OASIS standard after four years of hard work. And it was approved with a strong 'yes' vote and no negative votes.

As IBM's Rob Weir observed in his blog, “When work first started on ODF 1.0, back in December, 2002, the idea of having an open standard for office documents was radical. Every word processor had its own format, and most formats were undocumented or had documentation available only under anti-competitive licenses. ODF challenged that status quo and shook the palace walls of companies whose business models relied on ensuring that your documents were the source of their vendor lock-in. In some places the walls crumbled. Today having an open standard document format is considered to the norm. We’re all open standards supporters now, at least in words.”...