(November 21, 2002) - Members of the OASIS standards consortium have formed a technical committee to advance an open, XML-based file format specification for office applications. The new OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee brings together representatives throughout the industry committed to establishing standard data interoperability for office applications. Their work will be suitable for documents containing text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphs and will retain high-level information for editing.

Although the initial work of the technical committee will focus on standardizing data for content creation and management applications, subsequent phases will address simplifying the exchange of data between any application that utilizes XML, which may include business processes, Web services, databases, search engines, and other applications. Arbortext, Boeing, Corel, Drake Certivo, and Sun Microsystems are among the companies working together on this project.

"Our goal is to achieve consensus on an open standard that will protect content - whether it is a 800-page airplane specification or a legal contract - from being locked into a proprietary file format," explained Michael Brauer of Sun Microsystems, chair of the OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee. "A standard method for processing and interchanging office documents will enable companies to own their data and freely choose tools to view and edit information long after originating applications have come and gone."

Sun Microsystems intends to contribute the XML file format specification utilized in the OpenOffice.org 1.0 project to the new OASIS Technical Committee under reciprocal Royalty Free terms. OpenOffice.org is an Open Source full-featured office productivity suite that works transparently with a variety of file formats to enable users of varying office suites to exchange documents freely with one another.

Participation in the OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee remains open to all organizations and individuals. Information can be found at www.oasis-open.org/join.