Committee to ensure ODF apps conform to standard

The Oasis committee includes IBM, Oracle and Google

The Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (Oasis), which fights for open standards for information, has formed a new committee to advance the OpenDocument Format (ODF).

ODF is an open file format for electronic office applications, such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents.

The new Oasis Interoperability and Conformance Committee (ICC) will work to ensure that the growing number of ODF-compliant applications conform to the standard.

"As more and more software providers around the world are basing their office productivity products on ODF, the need to support conformance and interoperability has become extremely important," said Rob Weire, IBM convenor of the Oasis ICC.

IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Google, Novell, Red Hat, the US Department of Defense and the South African Department of Science & Technology are among the organisations participating in the committee. Weir said that the group would continue to welcome participation from all ODF stakeholders.

The new committee explained that it will compile interoperability test documents for ODF and host multi-vendor interoperability demonstrations showcasing products that conform.

"The Oasis ICC will work closely with the Oasis ODF Technical Committee, which is where the ODF standard is maintained and advanced, and with the Oasis ODF Adoption Committee, which works to promote ODF use," said James Bryce Clark, director of standards development at Oasis.