Office Open xml will be welcome

Alliance Statement On Microsoft/Novell Collaboration Regarding Document Format Compatibility

Washington, DC, November 3, 2006

The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance), a broad cross-section of organizations, academia and industry dedicated to improving access to electronic government documents, issued the following statement regarding Microsoft and Novell's announcement regarding collaboration on document format compatibility:

"We see yesterday's announcement as further acknowledgement from Microsoft that ODF is something customers are demanding," said Marino Marcich, Managing Director of the ODF Alliance. "By making it easier for some Open Office users to access files stored in Microsoft's Office Open XML format, it makes it easier for customers to adopt ODF without worrying about the difficulty of tapping into files stored in a proprietary format that others may send them, or that they may have stored in their own systems."

"Open Office and other ODF-supporting implementations already support a variety of legacy or proprietary formats, and Office Open XML will be a welcome addition. In terms of Microsoft's translator project that would save Word files in the ODF format, the Alliance still thinks that the translator project does not yet provide true interoperability, and we encourage Microsoft to provide native support in Office that will allow users to save to ODF as easily as any other format."