The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance) is an organization of governments, academic institutions, associations and industry dedicated to educating policy makers, IT administrators and the public on the benefits and opportunities of ODF. Launched in March 2006, the ODF Alliance now has over 480 member organizations in 53 countries.

ODF, an international standard, is an open standard for any vendor to implement without restrictions. Massachusetts recently recognizing both ODF and OOXML as document formats, and Denmark running multi-format document trials. the European Commission has endorsed Open Document while various authorities in Austria, Brazil, France and the United Kingdom have adopted applications that support ODF.

The ODF Alliance today greeted with scepticism Microsoft's announcement of its intention to include support for the OpenDocument Format in the first half of 2009. "The proof will be whether and when Microsoft's promised support for ODF is on par with its support for its own format.

The first international workshop of Open Document Format (ODF) public sector users took place in Berlin on 29-30 October 2007, hosted by the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Swedish Standards Institute (SIS) approved the Open Document Format (ODF) as a national standard, the ODF Alliance reported this week.

The Open Document Format Alliance has released a paper [PDF] refuting the recent Burton Group's Report on ODF and MSOOXML. I asked for and received permission to publish it here on Groklaw. The ODF Alliance response takes 18 points from the Burton Group's Report and answers them point by point. I think you will enjoy it. And I have a few impressions of my own to share with you, and then you can tell me what you think of it all.

The recent decision by the Open Document Foundation to substitute the World Wide Web Consortium's Compound Document Format in place of the format it was set up to promote, the Open Document Format, has sparked a contentious debate over what shape the format should take.

"Today is Document Freedom Day: Roughly 200 teams from more than 60 countries worldwide are organising local activities to raise awareness for Document Freedom and Open Standards.

As Microsoft's Office Open XML document format remains in ISO limbo, a trio of countries are pushing forward an adoption of the alternative Open Document Format (ODF) instead, according to an ODF advocacy group.