File Formats for Office Applications

Novell and Microsoft recently signed a set of agreements, covering a broad range of business and technical topics. One portion of the technical cooperation agreement covers interoperability between the Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org office suites, and will serve to increase document compatibility between the suites.

The agreement does not change our existing commitment to enhance OpenOffice.org, assist customers with deployment and support of OpenOffice.org on Windows and Linux, and encourage customers to standardize on OpenDocument Format (ODF). The agreement is designed to ensure that customers using OpenOffice.org will continue to be able to read and write documents using future Microsoft Office file formats, as they do with the existing closed and proprietary file formats employed by Microsoft Office today. OpenOffice.org Novell Edition will continue to use ODF by default.

Novell will continue to contribute as part of Ecma International Technical Committee TC45 to ensure that file formats used by future versions of Microsoft Office are well specified and available to all to implement. We will also continue to contribute as part of the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications Technical Committee to enhance ODF and ensure that ODF standards are the premier file format standards for office applications.