Organisations worldwide are joining major IT vendors such as IBM, Oracle and Sun, to promote ODF

Support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) Alliance has grown rapidly since its launch last month, with 100 new organisations joining the fight to ensure documents remain accessible.

The alliance was set up to encourage the adoption of ODF as standard across the public sector. The aim is to ensure information can be easily retrieved now and in the future – regardless of the application or platform on which it was created.

The ODF Alliance now has 138 member organisations worldwide, including The American Library Association and the Indian Institute of Technology. These members join IT vendors such as IBM, Oracle and Sun Microsystems, which are keen to promote the use of the XML-based ODF over alternatives such as Microsoft’s OpenXML, which the software giant is also pushing as an open standard.

To encourage interest in ODF, Sun late last year began offering a free conversion service to switch .doc files to the ODF format, which is supported in Sun’s StarOffice and also in OpenOffice

The alliance is also supporting the proposed adoption of ODF as a standard by the International Standards Organization and the International Electrotechnical Commission. The approval ballot ends on 1 May.

Also last week, the group announced the appointment of Marino Marcich as managing director. Marcich is a former senior official with the US Department of State and an advisor on standardisation strategies.