Alliance backs open document standards

IBM, Sun, Oracle and others team up to promote open standards in file formats

IBM, Sun, Oracle and a number of other high-profile organisations have teamed up to establish the OpenDocument Format (ODF) Alliance, aimed at promoting open standards for file formats.

The alliance believes that uptake of the XML-based ODF standard by governments will ensure that public sector information and documents can be exchanged across different applications, agencies and partners, and will not tie these disparate groups to particular platforms.

"With a broad cross section of support, the ODF Alliance will work to enable governments around the world to have greater control over and direct management of their documents, now and forever," said Ken Wasch, president of alliance member the Software & Information Industry Association.

More than 30 organisations have got together to add their support to the group, with Red Hat and Corel among them.

The launch of the alliance follows recent calls from Peter Quinn, the former chief information officer of Massachusetts and a strong ODF supporter, for European governments to back open file formats. He argued that Europe’s document heritage was at risk from proprietary formats, which could hamper access to files in the future.