June 21th 2005 was the day KOffice released version 1.4. I highlight that release because it was the first release where KOffice switched its native format to the OpenDocument Format. That would become an official ISO standard in May 2006.

The direct gains may be that there is no conversion step required in loading docs from other application in their native format, but the long term gains are much more substantial.

Being able to work with all the industry leaders on the creation and maintenance of the format (and there are quite a lot in the Technical Committee of ODF) allows us to level the playing field and let office applications compete on features and ease of use instead of on who uses what suite and what your partners have chosen.

This means real competition where the end user is the clear winner with lower prices for better quality software.

It won't surprise you that I believe that KOffice has the upper hand due to its superior design and foundation.

Several months ago Microsoft saw that people noticed that customers demanded the shared and open fileformat as governments started choosing ODF by droves.

So, today we are at a point that the ISO member countries have a vote they have to cast in 5 months whether the Microsoft format (OOXML or Echma 376) indeed becomes an ISO standard.

Full Story.

Also:

During FISL 8.0 I caught up with PostgreSQL contributor Josh Berkus who was there to present on PostgreSQL and meet up with the local PostgreSQL community. Josh is a member of the PostgreSQL core team and works at Sun Microsystems as part of their open source database team. Over lunch, Josh shared how KDE plays an important role in the release coordination process which Josh oversees.

Josh explained, "We create a press kit for every PostgreSQL release that is sent out to 600-700 people by email in up to 11 different languages. The translation is done by our translation community which is made up of teams of 1-4 people per language."

How does KDE factor into this process?

Josh Berkus: KDE Aids The PostgreSQL Team