Bonum Certa Men Certa

ODF Roundup: Norway, Germany Migration, ODF 1.2 Support, and ODF 1.1 Interop Profile



Summary: Overview encompassing 3 weeks of ODF progress and victories

IT has been a long time since our last ODF update, so here is a long post catching up with key events and developments.



According to Peter Krantz, a seminar on ODF took place at Copenhagen Business School one week ago. Bart Hanssens and others noticed it and Hanssens has added this event to the ODF Web site at XML.org.

Location: Copenhagen, Denmark Date: 12 Jan 2010 - 09:30 - 15:00 Event Type: Conference


According to published reports in Norwegian and in English, Norwegian Broadcasting moves to OpenOffice.org and ODF. This is great news, but it's nowhere as big as the news from Munich, which was mostly covered in German (rarely in English). Coverage includes:



There is a lot more about this coming from individual people, with one person saying: "congrats to the #limux team for the complete switch to #odf #linux"

Wikipedia has been updated to reflect on this and the debate carries on. Over in Denmark, a decision on open standards was said to be on the eve of a final decision after the scandals. According to a rough translation from Denmark, Midtjylland is turning to ODF and possibly leaving Microsoft Office. They cite problems with interoperability between Microsoft's versions of Office. So typical.

Some people still wonder what software is good for ODF support and Sun releases ODF Plugin 3.1 for Microsoft Office, which includes support for ODF 1.2. Microsoft itself supports MSODF, which is not ODF [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

There is also freeware and GPL-licensed software that adds ODF support to Microsoft Office.

Drupal's support of ODF was mentioned here before, but here it is again in some blog posts and in the ODF Web site, sitting there alongside another new page about OfficeReader (also see OffiViewer).

“Jesper Lund Stocholm and his friends from Microsoft are generally still trolling ODF, as usual.”Sander Marechal adds an anonymiser to Officeshots and the Microsoft provocateur Jesper Lund Stocholm trolls such a feature nonetheless.

Jesper Lund Stocholm and his friends from Microsoft are generally still trolling ODF, as usual. It seems as though Alex Brown and his buddies from Microsoft are bound to make another BSI fiasco. The Internet never forgets.

A Microsoft-sponsored ODF seminar (yes, from the company that attacks ODF) is to take place, according to Microsoft's ODF-hostile trolls. Unlike IBM for example, Microsoft still wishes to eliminate ODF. That's just its business objective.

Over in Brazil, there is a debate about ODF [OGG]. A rough translation of some coverage says that the "The director of the ODF Alliance Jomar Silva, @Homembit, was a guest at the table discussion on memory International Seminar of the Forum of Brazilian Digital Culture."

[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Direct link



Over in the UK, the OSA's Mark Antony is told that politicians can be believed "they're sincere when Whitehall is running on Ubuntu & documents on govt. websites are available in ODF..."

“Currently, Microsoft does not properly support ODF and it still treats it like a second-class citizen.”SJVN has his personal interpretation of the impact of the i4i decision [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. "Maybe in the aftermath of the i4i decision," he argues, everyone will "just have to bite the bullet & support ODF." Currently, Microsoft does not properly support ODF and it still treats it like a second-class citizen. Google too has some catching up to do, based on D. R. Evans, not to mention Apple, which has been helping Microsoft against ODF. As one person put it earlier this month, "ISO's current defect report for ISO 29500 (OOXML) has 809 pages. That are 71 pages more than the full specification of ODF 1.1! !" Miguel de Icaza helped Microsoft address some of these errors, but since then he has been crowned and named Microsoft MVP [1, 2]. He's like part of that company.

The UX OpenOffice.org blog marks the beginning of the new year and reports from the UX meeting in Hamburg [1, 2] while ZDNet Germany writes about KOffice 2.1.1 (there's more about Lotus Symphony). Bart Hanssens writes about ODF content at FOSDEM. He is preparing a talk and he has also uploaded a new draft of ODF 1.1 Interop Profile. His colleague Dennis Hamilton is happy about it.

Our reader The Mad Hatter is making valuable information future-proof right about now:

Open Formats – I’m Moving all Mom’s Poetry to Open Document Format



[...]

Of course if you do want access to Mom’s poetry, you can just go to OpenOffice.Org, and download Open Office at no cost. There’s no reason you can’t have both Microsoft Office and Open Office installed on the same computer.


In summary, even though there are no major ODF events, this international standard continues to develop and be adopted all around the world. ⬆

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

The World Needs Activists With Social Skills and Perseverance
An everyday activist makes life better for everybody, everywhere (not for personal gain or even credit)
 
More Shutdowns at Microsoft, Hundreds of Workers Impacted Shortly
It's not the entire wave, just part of it
The Register MS: About 60 Mentions of "AI" in One Day Are Paid-for Spam (Sponsored Hype, Composed by the Companies Covered)
The Register MS is a dying site
Links 22/10/2026: MElon (Elon Musk) Election Interference and Perl/Raku Foundation by the Numbers
Links for the day
Techrights Audience Grew as a Function of the Intensity of Attacks on Its Existence
We try to publish fewer stories but better (not necessarily long but at least important) stories
TechRepublic is Becoming a Slopfarm
It seems like TechRepublic became LLM slop (maybe all of it, maybe only some of it for now)
Techrights is Not About GNU/Linux, Tux Machines Is
When we say "GNU/Linux" we emphasise the GNU
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XII - Lawfare to Cover Up Microsoft's Restricted Boot Calamity (Microsoft as Authority Over Linux), Garrett Wants to Talk About Penises Instead
When lawsuits become a political weapon
Without Microsoft's Monopoly (and Monopoly Rents) the Inevitable Microsoft Mass Layoffs Carry on Endlessly
Microsoft Windows is not retaining the dominance it once had
IBM's Debt Grew About $2 Billion in 3 Months
The silent layoffs still seem to impact Red Hat
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 22, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, October 22, 2026
Gemini Links 22/10/2026: Solar MiniBBS, Building Major Tom, and Zig
Links for the day
Links 22/10/2026: Busan’s Celebrity Shark in Canal Again
Links for the day
Links 22/10/2026: "Software Developers Have Been Promoted Into Incompetence"
Links for the day
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XI - Losing Over a Million Pounds (Borrowed Money) to Try to Silence Critics of Restricted Boot With Microsoft-Controlled "Certificates"
Garrett is also very jealous of Daniel Pocock
Links 22/10/2026: eBay to Lay Off a Tenth of Staff (Again), Node.js and PHP Security Crises, Climate News
Links for the day
Red Hat Layoffs Still Going on This Week (Whilst IBM's Debt Grows in Spite of Mass Layoffs)
IBM is bluffing/cheating the shareholders again
IBM's Debt Continues to Increase While the Company Rapidly Shrinks
This is what a dying company looks like
Linux Kernel Needs Diversity and Diversity of Good Code, Not LLM Slop
Linux (and Linus) are kicking a can down the road
Microsoft Shrinks Every Year
Microsoft will try to spin or twist this as "efficiency"
Gemini Links 22/10/2026: Holiday Inn and Emacs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 21, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 21, 2026
Techrights Was Right About a Fake Security Model Built Around Lies or Built Upon Trust in "Certificates" and "Authorities" (like Microsoft)
We have begun to amass some media reports and blog posts from technical sites
Windows Monopoly is No Longer Sustainable (the Case of Oceania)
This is why Microsoft layoffs are happening all the time
Some Downtime Possible Shortly (Router Work)
We don't use PHP in the site anymore
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft This Week and/or Next Week
Cannot pull a bunny out of some hat
With Its Future on the Line, EPO Management (Dictatorship) Resorts to Further Escalations to Fake 'Production' and Curtail Industrial Actions
It's clear that with a yearlong campaign of industrial actions - including strikes - Campinos cannot save face anymore
Gemini Links 21/10/2026: Summer Day in Tokyo (30c in Late October) and Whole Food for the Whole World
Links for the day
Links 21/10/2026: "Zelensky Took the Gloves Off This Time With Convicted Felon" and "Cellebrite iPhone Radio Zero-Day"
Links for the day
Reuters is Becoming Slop, Not a News Agency (Treat Reports From Reuters Sceptically)
In their own words
Disclosure/s Crisis at The Register MS (Promoting a Ponzi Scheme for Money)
So now they sell several schemes/scams at the same time, not limited to the slop
Links 21/10/2026: "The Tragic Death of the Republican Party" and "No War But Data Center War"
Links for the day
Internet Relay Chat Still Growing
The numbers go up, not down [...] Don't believe the doomers
Intercontinental Brigading - Part X - American Back Doors Inside Our Computers, With Transatlantic Swatting Against Critics Thrown 'Into the Mix'
"If your Windows PC's Secure Boot certificates are out of date, your system is vulnerable to malware like rootkits."
Gemini Links 21/10/2026: A Walk Through Amsterdam and Pythagorean Theorem
Links for the day
More Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Weeks From Now, Then Again Months From Now
Microsoft's crisis is not limited to XBox
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 20, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 20, 2026