The Netherlands Cabinet will start the introduction of ODF as the format for reading, writing, exchange, publication and receipt of documents internally and with subsidiary government bodies and citizens and businesses. As such, the Netherlands remains in step with international developments. Denmark and Belgium (international leaders) have also chosen to introduce ODF for governmental applications. ODF is therefore currently available alongside and in addition to other, already-used, file formats (such as DOC and PDF) and any new future open standards.

Ulteo, a company staffed by Linux veterans, has launched the test version of a service that lets people run the OpenOffice.org desktop suite in the Firefox or Internet Explorer browsers. The hosted version of OpenOffice version 3.2 supports PDF printing. The service is designed
to let people collaborate with OpenOffice documents online and use the open-source application suite without having to download it. People can also exchange documents in Microsoft's Office format or PDF. The service also supports the OpenDocument Format standard.

The release of OpenOffice.org 2.3 brings several significant improvements to the open-source office productivity suite, including easier upgrade paths for existing Microsoft Office users, improved measures to prevent security breaches, and an array of snazzy new features introduced in the suite's word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and database applications.

Sun has announced that it will be offering approximately $1 million per year in awards to participants of any of several contests. Community involvement in any of the following six open-source initiatives is required:

SEPT-Solutions, the leading provider of OpenDocument software for mobile devices, is proud to announce a new version of its award-winning software “Mobile Office”. This updates the version for S60 3rd Edition as well as UIQ3 to version 1.2. Besides the ability to read encrypted ODF files, for the first time ever on smartphones, for enhanced security support as well as improved ODF list support, the application is now also fully compatible with the Nokia N95 and E90.

All new features in this release:

• fully E90 and N95 ready