March 06, 2006
ECIS joins the Open Document Format Alliance

The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) has joined the Open Document Format Alliance (ODF Alliance). The ODF Alliance works globally to educate policymakers, IT administrators and the public on the benefits and opportunities of the OpenDocument Format, to help ensure that government information, records and documents are accessible across platforms and applications, even as technologies change today and in the future.

The OpenDocument format (ODF) is an open XML-based document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents (including memos, reports, and books), spreadsheets, charts, and presentations. OpenDocument was developed as an application-independent file format by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), a vendor-neutral standards organization. OASIS submitted the OpenDocument Format specification to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) on 30 September 2005 for ratification. This process is presently ongoing.

The ODF specification is advanced by OASIS, and is a genuine vendor-neutral, open standard specification. It is available for implementation and use free of any licensing, royalty payments, or other restrictions. ODF has been an approved OASIS standard since May 2005, and has been implemented by multiple vendors in a variety of products. Further, the ODF specification is available for use by any developer, including proprietary software vendors as well as open source developers. See http://www.odfalliance.org/faq.html and more generally, http://www.odfalliance.org/.