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OpenOffice.org makes use of the OpenDocument format. On 1 May OpenDocument became ISO 26300 and is now the first standardised office productivity suite standard. No more problems sending files to clients and colleuges, no matter what product they use as long as it can read and write OpenDocument formats the data can be exchanged. This is wonderful news for anyone who thrives on being productive. You have to wonder why it took us so long to get here when we have standards for everything else: graphics, the web, etc.
The following is the official OpenOffice.org announcement: The International Standards Organisation has today
approved the standard file format to be used worldwide for the
storage of files produced by office software (word processor
documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, etc.). For the
first time in the history of computing, software users will be
guaranteed that they will be able to use their data in any compliant
software package, both now and in the future. The point of an open
standard is that any compliant application can use it.
As Simon Phipps, the Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems,
observed,
"This is a landmark moment for the Free/Open Source Software
movement. An innovation that started here [at OpenOffice.org] has
been reviewed, adopted and now endorsed at the highest level as an
international standard. We now have a standard for productivity
documents that is recognised by governments, which often require ISO
approval."
The OpenOffice.org productivity suite fully supports the new ISO/IEC
26300 standard (and since version 2.0 has has fully supported the
OpenDocument format on which it is based). The Project has led the
world in charting a new path.
Louis Suarez-Potts, the OpenOffice.org Community Manager writes,
"The approval by the ISO helps level the playing field and helps
clarify what is at stake: your intellectual property, your right to
use innovative software. The open standard means not only that your
property is not held hostage to the company making the application
but also that new applications, new extensions, new ways of doing
things can be created. The user wins."
The time is now, the tools are here, the freedom is yours.
-OpenOffice.org
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