Summary: Mass-migration to OpenOffice.org in Kazakhstan may imply adoption of the international standard; Nokia makes use of KOffice, which also implies wide use of ODF

Some months ago we saw Microsoft trying to make Kazakhstan its 'client state', as it so typically does. But according to this one source, the government of Kazakhstan intends to adopt OpenOffice.org, assuming Microsoft does not stand in the way by ousting people 'Quinn style' or by sending moles who bribe. We might report on this in the future.

A move to OpenOffice.org would imply ODF support -- support which is improving in OpenOffice.org 3.2, based on this report from Malte Timmermann.

Further improvements in OOo 3.2 and/or the ODF 1.2 specification

ODF 1.2 now allows for using different encryption algorithms, and all details about the algorithms used need to be documented in the manifest.xml (which is the reason that the manifest.xml itself can't be encrypted). These ODF enhancements have been submitted to the OASIS ODF TC, and OOo 3.2 already implements them.

ODF will spread even further into phones, thanks to the good work of Nokia's Thomas Zander, who intends to move KOffice into mobile devices at the world's largest maker of them.

Today Thomas Zander from Nokia announced in a blog (http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/09/17/office-viewer-...) that Nokia will be using KOffice as the core of the office viewer of Maemo 5.

"The KOffice community is very happy to see this development", says Inge Wallin, marketing coordinator of KOffice. "It shows that our long and persistent work on compatibility and adaptibility within KOffice has paid off and is visible to outside viewers."

This ought to help KDE, which will in turn help ODF, despite the recent Microsoft-Nokia deal. Here is the original post from Zander, which leads IBM's Rob Weir to saying: "Zander rocks! RT @gwidion: Kudos to @KOfficeHacker, Thomas Zander. Just ported #koffice to the nokia #n900! #ODF to go!! #kde"

This nicely demonstrates how ODF and Free software are complementary. It may be worth pointing out especially today because it's Software Freedom Day throughout the world (there is also Document Freedom Day). According to this, the spread of ODF on phones is wider than just Nokla devices. "#odf on the iPhone (FileAid), Blackberry (Visor ODF movil), WinCE/PocketPC (SoftMaker) and soon Maemo/Nokia N (KOffice)," writes one person in Twitter. QuickOffice too is to be pressured to offer ODF support. Microsoft may try to fragment ODF [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], but people are smart enough to find ways around Microsoft's broken 'support'. ⬆