It's a few days late, but happy first birthday to the ODF Alliance. The Alliance was formed last March (Novell is a founding member) with the goal of encouraging the adoption of the ODF document format by governments and public sector organizations worldwide. In a press release put out on Tuesday, the Alliance highlighted some of the key developments on the ODF front over the last year. Lifting from the press release:
- 7 national governments have recommended ODF or open standards for document formats in legislation, policy statements or interoperability frameworks including Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, and Norway.
- 4 regional governments have made, or are in the process of implementing, pro-ODF policy commitments, including Extremadura (Spain), Hong Kong (China), Massachusetts (USA), and Misiones (Argentina).
- More than 50 federal, state, and local bodies across the globe are using office applications that support ODF, including the India Election Commission, Finland's Ministry of Justice, and the City of Vienna.
The Alliance also highlights ISO approval, accessibility enhancements, costs savings proof points, and application support as important gains for ODF over the last year.
Novell continues to be a big supporter of ODF and the OpenOffice.org project, and we ship OpenOffice with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. Congrats to the ODF Alliance on turning 1, and keep up the good work.
The SABS have been approached by Microsoft SA to vote positively on MS's OOXML standard proposal. The SABS have initiated a committee representing all interested parties (I'm sure Novell SA should be there).
To join in on the discussion please mail admin@compunite.co.za or Danie Smit (SABS) "Danie Smit" .
Herewith the open invitation:
Dear All
You are invited to attend the first meeting of StanSA SC 71L:Document description and processing languages. I sincerely apologize for the late invitation.
Date: Tuesday, 17 April 2007
Time: 9:30
Venue: SABS (Room 137), 1 Dr Lategan Road, Groenkloof, Pretoria
Background:
Standards South Africa received a request from Microsoft South Africa, to look at the possibility of establishing a new national sub-committee, who will be acting as a mirror committee of the JTC1/SC34 international ISO committee.
After discussions within our department, we agreed that it would be a good idea to establish such a committee with the same title as the international committee, namely, "Document description and processing languages". The committee will be responsible for national standardization in the field of "Document description and processing language".
We have received the following list of contact persons who might be interested to participate in a local committee. It is vital to ensure that the mirror committee is representative of the whole industry and that it includes stakeholders from users, academia and government, in addition to suppliers.
1. Consultant Architect, Gartner, S Africa – Eion Gibson
2. IT Security, Shaya Technologies represents SA on Interpol – Ian Melamed
3. Wits University – Prof Barry Dwolatzky
4. IBM SA – Representative still to be named
5. Mint Net – Grant Hodgkinson
6. Intervate (Pty) Ltd – Migal Van As
7. State Information Technology Agency (SITA) – Norman Baloyi
8. Microsoft South Africa – Potlaki Maine
9. nVisionIT – Kim Archer
10. Faritec – Faiza Brown
11. Compunite – Raymond Koekemoer
12. Barone, Budge & Dominick – Willy-Peter Schaub
Prof Dwolatzky from Wits University, was nominated, to be the committee chair.