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Montag November 15, 2004

What has IBM to do with the OASIS Open Office XML file format?
I still cannot access the EU website myself, but a colleague of mine had more luck and forwarded the different letters to me. Today is a great day for OpenOffice.org and the OASIS Open Office XML file format. If you read the different letters from Sun, IBM and Microsoft as well as the paper from OpenForum Europe, you will see the result of an effort that started about one year ago.
Last year in October I got the task to provide Valoris with input for their file format study. A few months later Valoris handed the study over to the EU. Two file formats made it onto the short list, the Microsoft XML formats and the OASIS Open Office XML file format (based on the OpenOffice.org file format).
The EU invited Sun Microsystems (representing the OpenOffice.org/OASIS file format) and Microsoft for a presentation about their file formats. The outcome was a recommendation for open XML based document file formats and some requests/recommendations to Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.
The letters published on the EU website today contain the answers from Microsoft, IBM and Sun Microsystems to the requests from the EU. Simon Phipps provides a good summary in his blog.
Now that IBM also decided to back the OASIS Open Office XML file format, OpenOffice.org should have a bright future.
( Nov 15 2004, 03:39:23 PM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [2]