Martin LaMonica of CNET News.com reports that several state agencies are exploring the open document standard, as are 13 technology companies. You can see the reason for the interest:
- For government agencies, it means not being victim to the choices Microsoft makes to survive corporately.
- For the technology companies, it means finding a way to get around Microsoft's monopoly.
The OpenDocument standard is formally called "OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications" and is designed for word processors, spreadsheets and chartmaking. And OASIS is short for "Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards."
Future improvements include:
- products for people with disabilities.
- digital rights management (copy protection)
- standardized spreadsheet formula formats
The corporate list includes Red Hat, Adobe, Computer Associates, Corel, Nokia, Inte, Scalix, Oracle, Novell. Google, IBM, and Sun.
Comments