[OpenDoc Announce] OASIS ODF 1.2 is officially approved

[Mailing list for announcements for all OpenDoc Society members]

Dear OpenDoc Society members,


we are happy to be able to inform you that OASIS has today announced
that Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument)
Version 1.2 has passed the final vote with flying colors.

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/201109/msg00010.html

Congratulations to all members past and present of the various ODF TC's
for this splendid result. New and exciting features like smart
documents (through RDF), spreadsheet formulas and the improved
quality throughout of key features like change tracking make this an
important milestone for the entire community of both vendors and users.
In addition, many governments around the world will be applauding the
final publication in order to be able to add this much improved new
version of ODF to their list of mandatory standards.

Below you will find some quotes from around the world that might come
in handy when you are talking to representatives of the press. You
can also find these together with a lot of useful background
information on our new portal at:

                                  http://opendocumentformat.org


Your comments and suggestions to improve this resource are very welcome.

We look forward to seeing many of you in person to congratulate you at
the next odfplugfest in Gouda, The Netherlands on November 17/18th
2011 (if you haven't planned to join us yet, visit:
http://odfplugfest.org).

Kind regards,

on behalf of OpenDoc Society
Michiel Leenaars

=======================================

"Since the Dutch parliament established an explicit policy on ODF in
2007, adopting the open document format is an important instrument in
making government IT more flexible and future-proof, while giving
citizens and businesses the freedom to interact with their government
using the software they choose."

              - Joris Dirks, project lead ODF,
              'Netherlands Open in Connection' (NOiV)

"We like that ODF has been developed through an open, inclusive process
- one that welcomes government participation and input - and that there
are many products which support ODF, so vendor lock-in is not a
concern. As a vivid promoter of open standards, Fedict welcomes ODF 1.2
and encourages vendors to implement this specification on various
platforms, ensuring "universal" (any device/any OS) information
accessibility both in the short term and long term."

             - Peter Strickx, CTO Fedict
             (the agency responsible for developing and implementing
             e-gov strategy in Belgium).

ODF1.2 is the cornerstone for building interoperable assets of
information and knowledge especially within the public sector.

              - Manuel Velardo, Chief Operations Officer at CENATIC
                (part of Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism),
                Spain

Just as importantly, with ODF, governments can be assured that they
will have access to important documents and records 5, 10, even 20
years from now with no worries that software provider will discontinue
support for the format.

               - Graham Taylor, Director, OpenForum Europe

RDF is the foundation of the Semantic Web: it enables information to be
expressed in a manner that both machines and humans can produce and
process. The inclusion of RDF in the OpenDocument Format expands the
way in which people can communicate information; a single file can
contain presentation, text content, and now also explicit meaning
through RDF. People, Places, Events, Logistics, and more can be easily
shared. Word processing software moves beyond the traditional
processing of simple strings of letters to performing reasoning on
information and helping you manage the things in your life.

               - Dr. Ben Martin, freelance software developer, Australia
                 Member of ODF TC

Information today is every organisation's key asset. It's clearly
unwise to lock those assets into a format that you may or may not be
able to open tomorrow. ODF is not only future proof. Since it is a true
Open Standard, it also makes your organisation independent from any
particular software supplier. Independence and long-term preservation,
and openness as a standard: ODF sets a high bar that other standards
should aspire to meet.

               - Karsten Gerloff, President FSF Europe (Germany)

[..] considering the huge potential of eGovernance in the nation as
well as the need to adopt open standards to make our data systems more
inter-operable and independent of any limiting proprietary tools, we
feel that ODF is a great technological leap and a big boon to further
propel IT right to India's grass root levels. [..]

                - Rentala Chandershekhar, secretary of Ministry of
                  Information and Technology, India