Lotus Symphony won in the Office Productivity Software category beating out other nominees Microsoft Office, OpenOffice 2.3.1 and Think Free Office.

Read the complete article here http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/cnews/article.php/3727446

And another follow up one here:

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3732321 

The University of Salamanca in Spain has just passed a regulation that requires open access in its electronics documents as well as in the University's institutional web. Their regulation names OpenDocument, PDF and XML/XHTML as approved document exchange standards.

Read the complete announcement (in Spanish).

The progress of ODF in the marketplace has all the prerequisites for a great book: billions of dollars at stake, global maneuvering by some of the world's most powerful companies, legions of lobbyists, and more. The first chapter of that book by Andrew Updegrove is available at the Standards Blog.

Superficially, the conflict between ODF and OOXML would seem to be a classic, if more than usually hard-fought standards war. In fact, it's simply a skirmish in a far broader conflict being played out across an IT landscape that is undergoing fundamental change.

The ODF Alliance Response to the Burton Group's Report describes, on a page-by-page basis, 18 flaws with a recent Burton Group publication, “What's Up, .DOC? ODF, OOXML, and the Revolutionary Implications of XML in Productivity Applications”. The ODF Alliance analysis aims to clarify issues for the benefit of others, especially for the government officials who are evaluating their options to gain control over their documents and may be confused by some of this content.