Summary: Vietnam has just made ODF a national standard whilst other new gains are noted

BACK in June we wrote about ODF heading towards a "national standard" status in Vietnam, all after struggles against OOXML and foreign interests. Well, ODF is now an official standard in Vietnam, as revealed by this new document [PDF] which Rob Weir is waving, followed by many who are enthusiastic about the news. IBM is also promoting ODF in Africa through its new Canonical/IBM desktop push, which was advertised under the headline: "IBM, Canonical and Partners Launch Cloud- and Linux-based Netbook Software in Africa"

The news about Slovakia choosing ODF is over a year old, but Wikipedia was only changed to reflect on this a few days ago. There are also some official ODF icons being spread at the moment and John Cody, an attorney at the New York State Office of the Chief Information Officer/Office for Technology, declares that "ODF has clearly won." There are other positive experiences and the relevance to curation and preservation is noted as follows:

Other formats that are suitable as LTPFs include Open Document Format (ODF), HTML, XHTML and XML. For digital images, JPEG, TIFF or PNG are recommended, and FLAC for digital audio.

None of the above is a Microsoft format; at Microsoft, digital obsolescence and single vendor control are part of the business plan. ⬆