Corel, Novell Reaffirm Commitment to OpenDocument

A week after stating that the OpenDocument standard requires some development in order to be used, Corel has reaffirmed its commitment to the OpenDocument Format, and called for its adoption.

In an interview published on BetaNews last week, Corel Corp.’s Richard Carriere noted that Corel is a founding member of OASIS, the consortium responsible for the OpenDocument standard. But he stated that there’s no adoption of the standard, and that some development needs to be done “to make it into a real product.”

In an attempt to both clarify the company’s position and put more emphasis on its commitment to ODF, Corel’s communication manager for WordPerfect said, “Corel is pleased to support the continued development and adoption of the OASIS OpenDocument Format, and Corel strongly endorses ODF, much as we strongly support the adoption of open standards industry-wide.”

Novell Inc. has also given more prominence to its role in the ODF movement . Although the company has been active in promoting the format in the past, this is the first day that Novell has been officially listed on the membership roster of the technical committee at OASIS.

Both Novell and Corel had representatives in the discussion of ODF adoption by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The state approved a plan to transition to ODF from Microsoft Corp.’s Office file formats, although there is still debate over the issue, with hearings proposed by the state’s senate.

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