Celebrating Two Decades of Open Document Format: A Milestone in Software Freedom

It has been two decades since the Open Document Format (ODF) was established as a standard. Nonetheless, during this time, it has failed to surpass Microsoft Office in popularity despite various efforts.

To counter Microsoft’s dominance, developers at Sun Microsystems created OpenOffice, primarily using the StarOffice codebase they had acquired in 1999 following their purchase of the German firm Star Division. At that time, some analysts joked that the acquisition cost less than purchasing Microsoft Office licenses.

Sun believed that the Extensible Markup Language (XML) format used for OpenOffice documents could serve as a common open standard for office application files and introduced it to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) in 2002. The OASIS Technical Committee spent several years refining the specification, ultimately approving ODF as an official standard on May 1, 2005.

Microsoft did not acknowledge the need for a recognized standard format for Office files and developed its own competing version based on XML. This led to the inclusion of Office Open XML formats in the Office suite, which were later ratified by the international standardization organization Ecma. Ultimately, these formats replaced the binary file types used in earlier Office versions.

As a result, most businesses and consumers continued to use Microsoft’s default formats, although some governments and public sector organizations designated ODF as their standard for file storage and exchange.

For instance, in 2014, the UK government adopted ODF as its standard for «file sharing and collaborative work,» while the European Commission encouraged all European institutions to use ODF for data sharing with citizens and member state administrations.

ODF was designated as a mandatory standard within NATO’s standards and profiles as early as 2008. Several governments, including India, South Africa, and Brazil, have also approved it.

“ODF is much more than just a technical specification; it represents a symbol of choice, support for interoperability, and safeguards for users against the commercial strategies of major tech companies. In a world increasingly dominated by proprietary ecosystems, ODF ensures that users retain full control over their content without restrictions,” stated Eliane Domingos, Chair of the Document Foundation.

The Document Foundation oversees LibreOffice, a fork of OpenOffice created after Oracle acquired Sun, which raised concerns about the potential discontinuation of OpenOffice support by the database giant. However, Larry Ellison and his company handed over the project to the Apache Foundation, an open-source developer group. This move did not significantly alter the project’s trajectory, as much of the developer community had already shifted its focus to LibreOffice.