History of OpenDocument

Page: Submitted by admin on Mon, 2006-08-28 20:17. Last updated on Fri, 2008-02-08 16:19.

The OpenDocument format has a long tradition of openness. The first work on the file format started as early as 1999. Right from the beginning ODF was designed as an open and implementation neutral file format.

The open specification process started in 2000 with the foundation of the OpenOffice.org open source project and the community efforts within its XML development project. An even higher level of openness was established in 2002 with the creation of the OASIS Open Office Technical Committee (TC).

Date / Time Frame	Event / Milestone
1999	The Development of an XML default file format begins at StarDivision. Limitations of the old binary format and a need for Unicode support trigger the change. The goal is to create an open interoperable file format that can be used and implemented by other vendors as well.
August 1999	Sun Microsystems, Inc. acquires StarDivision.
13 October 2000	The OpenOffice.org open source project gets founded by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
13 October 2000	The XML community project gets setup on OpenOffice.org with the goal to define the specification of the OpenOffice.org XML file format as on open community effort.
2002	Definitions for CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) and complex text layout languages get added to the OpenOffice.org XML file format specification.
2002	The first collaborations with the KOffice project begin.
16 December 2002	OASIS Open Office Technical Committee (TC) holds first conference call
May 2002	OpenOffice.org 1.0 and StarOffice 6 get released, both using the OpenOffice.org XML file format as the default file format.
August 2003	KOffice decides to use ODF as its default file format.
2003 / 2004	The original OpenOffice.org XML file format specification gets modified to reflect recent developments in the XML and office application area, e.g.: * Introduction of XML namespaces that conform to the OASIS naming rules * Switching from XML DTD's to Relax-NG as the schema language * Improvements of the schema to better support the validation of documents * Adaptation of the schema to new versions of standards * Adaptations for additional office applications (KOffice) * Adaptations for new office application versions (OpenOffice.org 2.0) * Removal of inconsistencies in the specification * Error corrections
December 2004	A second committee draft gets approved, and the tile of this draft gets changed from “OASIS Open Office Specification” to “OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument)”
January 2005	TC is renamed to OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC.
February 2005	The third file format specification draft including public review feedback gets approved as a committee draft.
May 2005	OpenDocument Format (ODF) is approved as an OASIS Standard
September 2005	Sun Microsystems releases StarOffice 8 with ODF support.
September 2005	OASIS submits ODF for ISO/IEC approval
September 2005	INdT (research group belonging to Nokia) contributes ODF filters for Abiword and Gnumeric.
October 2005	OpenOffice.org 2.0 is released with ODF support
October 2005	Sun issues a patent covenant statement: “Sun's public non-assertion declaration may be summarized unofficially as an irrevocable covenant not to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation of the OASIS OpenDocument specification”
December 2005	Softmaker releases Textmaker 2006 with ODF support
January 2006	IBM releases IBM Workplace with ODF support
March 2006	ODF Alliance is founded to promote ODF in the public sector
March 2006	OASIS ODF Adoption TC gets founded
April 2006	KOffice 1.5 which uses ODF as the default file format gets released.
May 2006	ISO and IEC approve OpenDocument OASIS Standard
February 2007	OpenDocument 1.1 is approved as OASIS Standard

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