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Google backs OpenDocument format

Corsin Camichel [PersonRank 10]

Thursday, July 13, 2006
17 years ago3,456 views

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001713#

Google officials did not respond to a request for comment. But Marcich called Google's decision to join "a natural fit, given Writely's support for ODF and further indication of momentum behind ODF."

Art-One [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

This is a good thing to do. BTW You know that the belgian government has made a law that every new document should be in ODF and that the software that they are using has to support ODF otherwise, it can't be used anymore.

It would be one of the main reasons why Microsoft decided last week to support an open source project that is building a convertor for MS Office formats to ODF.

NateDawg [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

The State of Massachusetts has gone along the same path. http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/opensource/0,3800004943,39155361,00.htm

James Bradbury [PersonRank 5]

17 years ago #

Google needs to put ODF support in Google Spreadsheets. They need to be able to open and save XLS for compatibility reasons, but why no ODF? What about PDF? MS Open XML?

Art-One [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

If you want to help Microsoft be loved again by local governements. You could help them at http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/ ;-))

NateDawg [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I've got to give Microsoft kudos for this one. Not only are they getting someone to code their converter for free, but their making it open source. The nice thing about this for the rest of the community is that other projects will be able to use this to read the new MS OpenXML format.

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

=="belgian government has made a law that every new document should be in ODF "

Art, does this mean that ALL government documents and documenation has to support the ODF specfications ??

This is similar to the NewHampshire Initative..

Art-One [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

In fact the decision is that in a first phase, every department has to be able to read ODF documents. There will also be an impact study and if that study is positive about a year later it would be the exchange standard.

Belgian government is working quite hard on Open Standards. You have to know that Peter Strickx who's now a kind of CTO of the Belgian administration is a former top employee of Sun Microsystems (http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=551982&sik=1152300639928) and from there, I think, he's a great fan of Open Standards.

More information on
http://www.belgif.be/index.php/Open_Document_Format_for_Office_Applications
and on
http://presscenter.org/archive/20060623/432d0130470a88df1105dda38d1282b0/?lang=nl&prLang=en

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Ok thanks.. thats an interesting infonuggut!

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