Members of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) consortium have formed a technical committee to advance an open, XML-based file format specification for office applications. The new OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee brings together representatives throughout the industry committed to establishing standard data interoperability for office applications. Their work will be suitable for documents containing text, spreadsheets, charts and graphs and will retain high-level information for editing.

Although the initial work of the technical committee will focus on standardizing data for content creation and management applications, subsequent phases will address simplifying the exchange of data between any application that utilizes XML, which may include business processes, Web Services, databases, search engines and other applications.

"Our goal is to achieve consensus on an open standard that will protect content -- whether it is an 800-page airplane specification or a legal contract -- from being locked into a proprietary file format," explained Michael Brauer of Sun Microsystems, chair of the OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee. "A standard method for processing and interchanging office documents will enable companies to own their data and freely choose tools to view and edit information long after originating applications have come and gone."

Participation in the OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee remains open to all organizations and individuals. In keeping with the OASIS intellectual property policy that allows both Royalty-Free (RF) and Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) licensing, the OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee will accept contributions only if they are granted to all under perpetual, royalty free, non-discriminatory terms. OASIS will host an open mail list for public comment, and completed work will be freely available to the public without licensing or other fees. Information on joining OASIS can be found on:

http://www.oasis-open.org/join [...read more...]

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