Committee to ensure ODF apps conform to standard

By Rosalie Marshall on Nov 4, 2008 6:47 AM
Filed under Software

The Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (Oasis), which fights for open standards for information, has formed a new committee to advance the OpenDocument Format (ODF).

The ODF is an open file format for electronic office applications, such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents.

The new Oasis Interoperability and Conformance Committee (OIC) will work to ensure the growing number of ODF-compliant applications conform to the standard.

“As more and more software providers around the world are basing their office productivity products on ODF, the need to support conformance and interoperability has become extremely important,” said Rob Weire, IBM convenor of the Oasis OIC Committee.

IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Google, Novell, Red Hat, the US Department of Defence and the South African Department of Science and Technology are among those participating in the committee. Weir said the group would continue to welcome participation from all ODF stakeholders.

OIC said it will compile interoperability test documents for ODF and host multi-vendor interoperability demonstrations showcasing products that conform.

“The new OIC Committee will work closely with the Oasis ODF Technical Committee, which is where the ODF standard is maintained and advanced, and with the Oasis ODF Adoption Committee, which works to promote ODF use,” noted James Bryce Clark, Oasis director of standards development.