ODF published as official standard

Last week, the International Organization for Standardization published the OpenOffice Open Document Format (ODF) as an official standard. ODF is an XML-based open format for text, spreadsheet, database and slide-show presentation files. Sound familiar? That's because Microsoft's Office Open XML is basically the same thing. It's up against some stiff competition but open-source advocates are rallying around ODF, as the standard is publicly available and royalty free (the licensing status of Office Open XML remains slightly ambiguous). Corel has already announced that it will support the format in its products, alongside Microsoft's competing format, while Novell will support Office XML format in OpenOffice. It will be interesting to see how long two file formats that essentially do the exact same thing will survive before a clear winner emerges.

For more on the Open Document Format:
- see this Ars Technica article