ODF 1.2 has been approved as an OASIS standard

ODF 1.2, the document format adopted by LibreOffice, has been approved as an OASIS standard. Although we are still waiting the formal OASIS announcement, there have been a dry email by Chet Ensign and a more enthusiastic post by Rob Weir who provide several details about the story.

ODF 1.0 is the ISO/IEC standard 26300:2006, and has been widely accepted by governments worldwide as the reference format for editing and exchanging documents. It will be soon updated, as soon as ISO/IEC JTC1 will approve ODF 1.2.

Standard document formats are key for liberating the user from the lock in of proprietary formats. ODF has been inspired by OOo document format and is now supported by most personal productivity software, and many other computer programs. Once created with ODF, a document will be forever accessible, because the format is documented and the specifications are available to everyone.