Open Document Foundation Gives Up

Nov 12, 2007

The Open Document Foundation whose self-declared aim was to promote the Open Document Format has closed down.

The Internet page ran a message saying “The OpenDocument Foundation, Inc. is closed. We sincerely wish our friends and associates in the OpenDocument Community all the best and much success going forward. Good-bye and good luck." for a short while, before closing down completely.

Two weeks ago, the Open Document Foundation made a stir by proposing the Compound Document Format (CDF) as an alternative to the Open Document Format (ODF) and contacting the W3C committee to gain support for CDF. The reasons for the move to CDF was improved compatibility with Microsoft’s OOXML format the foundation claimed at the time. Cris Lilley from W3C contradicted. CDF is not an office format, and thus not an alternative to the Open Document Format. This turn-down is likely the reason for the abrupt ditching of the foundation.

The closure is unlikely to have any impact on propagating the Open Document Format, which was specified by OASIS, accepted as an international standard, ISO/IEC 26300, in 2006, and which has now been adopted by many major corporations such as IBM and Sun.

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