ISO welcomes Open Document Format

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 4 May 2006 at 13:02

The International Standards Organisation (ISO) has approved the Open Document Format (ODF) - a decision welcomed by those supporting open standards, including the EU.

The ODF was approved as a standard by ballot, with no negative votes and a handful of abstentions and now merely faces a few formalities before it is officially christened ISO/IEC 26300.

Microsoft, too, is rushing to have its formats accepted as an international standard, fast-tracking its Open XML specifications used with its Office 12 suite through the ECMA approval system, which will subsequently escalate to the ISO offices.

The battle ground has been marked out by a new awareness in governments that settling for proprietary standards leaves them bound to those vendors, renders documents issued under such formats accessible only by using software licensed from a vendor and risks those same documents becoming unusable should the format become obsolete.

The state of Massachusetts has led the charge on this: it has decided to standardise on the ODF format but will also consider Microsoft's offering once it gains approval. The European Union, too, also promotes the use of ODF for productivity software.

In its document Signposts towards eGovernment 2010, issued in November 2005, it notes: 'Use of open standards within public administrations should be promoted. National programmes should involve this element in their national strategies and a suitable governance structure should be developed... The Commission has already undertaken action in the field of the open document format, and attention is needed to build further on this and related developments.'

The ratification of ODF as an ISO standard will undoubtedly boost its attraction still further to the EU. Other bodies also welcomed the news.

The ODF Alliance described the ratification as an 'important milestone'. Marino Marcich, Executive Director of the ODF Alliance, said: 'There's no doubt that this broad vote of support will serve as a springboard for adoption and use of ODF around the world.'

Despite the ground swell of support for ODF, Microsoft has remained deaf to calls to support the format. It seems set to try and meet government requests for openness and interoperability on its own terms by submitting its own XML-based technologies as standards: a bid to maintain the desktops of the public sector as Microsoft shops. But the software supporting ODF, such as StarOffice and OpenOffice, is becoming increasingly popular, along with the systems it is bundled with: Linux-based desktops.

Microsoft must realise that winning the fight for open-standards approval is going to be commercially vital for maintaining the lock-in it has maintained for so long.

Yet according to Groklaw, the OpenDocument Foundation has already come up with a plug in to allow users of Microsoft's Office to open, view and save documents in the ODF format.