The Open Document Format continues to gain ground with
governments as the format in which they wish to create important
documents, despite Microsoft's Office format, OOXML, being
recognized as an international standard as well.
Microsoft submitted Open Office XML to ECMA and the
International Standards Organization and won approval for it in
April. OOXML serves as the default format for Microsoft Office 2007
applications.
The ODF Alliance, with Sun Microsystems and IBM as
principal backers, announced at the end of December that Germany
and Uruguay had joined 14 other national and eight regional
governments in requiring ODF, not OOXML, as the format for
government documents. The ODF format was standardized by Oasis, an
international standards body.
The importance of government support was evident when ODF
backers initially won the support of the state of Massachusetts in
requiring documents based on ODF. The state said it wanted its
documents to be accessible to anyone far into the future, rather
than being subject to a proprietary and changing format contained
in Microsoft Office. Microsoft responded to the challenge by
opposing ODF adoption in Massachusetts and submitting its own OOXML
as an international standard.
No additional U.S. governmental departments or state governments
have required ODF since the Massachusetts fight. But those that
have include Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany,
Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, South Africa,
Switzerland, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In addition, Andalucia and
Extremadura, both states in Spain, require ODF, as do Assam and
Kerala, states in India; Parana, a state in Brazil; Hong Kong, a
state of China; and Misiones, a state in Argentina. Massachusetts
stuck with its requirement that documents be generated by the state
or submitted to the state in some open format, which may include
OOXML as well as ODF; it also allows HTML, ASCII, PDF, and RTF.
China hasn't ratified ODF, but it's based its Evermore
Integrated Office 2009 suite on OpenOffice.org, an open source
desktop applications project. OpenOffice has adopted ODF. Sun
offers StarOffice, a commercially supported form of OpenOffice, and
likewise, IBM offers a revamped Lotus Symphony application set.
"It comes as no surprise that more governments are now requiring
the use of ODF," said Marino Marchich, ODF Alliance managing
director. "Governments can be assured they will have access to
important documents over many years ... with no worries their
software provider will discontinue support for the format," he
added in a prepared statement at the end of 2008.
EIOffice is sanctioned by the Chinese government for use by its
citizens and can read either ODF or OOXML files.
Microsoft in December started announcing the details of how it
will support ODF, as it promised during OOXML standardization
debates, in Service Pack 2 for Office 2007.