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Euro-Office, open standards, and native ODF

A welcome commitment to open standards — and why it should end with ODF as Euro-Office’s native document format. The Euro-Office pre-announcement has generated considerable coverage across the European press over the past few days. The Document Foundation welcomes the attention that open standards are receiving — and welcomes still more the commitment the announcement makes to them. Before the discussion settles, we would like to clarify one point and state one expectation. Several reports have described Euro-Office as “the first European open source office suite.” Reading the pre-announcement carefully, we do not find the coalition making that claim, and it is not one we would endorse. Europe has been building free and open source office software for many years: LibreOffice, developed by this Foundation and a worldwide community, is itself European, mature, and far from alone. The “first” framing appears to have emerged in the speed of a launch day rather than in the text of the announcement. We note it not to claim precedence — precedence is not the point — but because accuracy serves the cause of open standards better than enthusiasm alone. Read on its merits, the announcement gives a great deal to welcome. The promise

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