The Open Document Format Alliance (ODF Alliance) is a

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

–based

lobbying Lobbying is a form of advocacy, which lawfully attempts to directly influence legislators or government officials, such as regulatory agency, regulatory agencies or judiciary. Lobbying involves direct, face-to-face contact and is carried out by va ...

organization established by

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

and SIIA to "promote and advance the use of

OpenDocument Format The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, standardized as ISO 26300, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML ...

(ODF) as the primary document format for governments" Although originally focused on promotion of ODF "via legislation or by executive policy decision", the ODF Alliance also did extensive PR and lobbying in opposition to the

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

-backed

Office Open XML Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized the initial version ...

standard. Founded by IBM, Sun and 33 other companies and organizations on March 3, 2006, the Alliance has more than 500 members. However, funding sources are not itemized in the organization's 2007 annual report, so membership financial participation is unclear. The ODF Alliance does not give a physical location on their website, but from documents filed with the

State of New York New York, also called New York State, is a state in the northeastern United States. Bordered by New England to the east, Canada to the north, and Pennsylvania and New Jersey to the south, its territory extends into both the Atlantic Ocean and ...

, the organization appears to be headquartered on the 6th floor of 1090 Vermont Avenue NW in Washington, DC 20005, sharing offices with the

Software and Information Industry Association The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) is a trade association dedicated to the entertainment, consumer and business software industries. Established in 1984 as the Software Publishers Association (SPA), the SIIA took its new nam ...

(SIIA), one of the original backers of the ODF Alliance.

Staff

The executive director is Marino Marcich, who served for four years in the Bush administration's

State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...

prior to joining the ODF Alliance. While at the Department of State, he was part of former Secretary of State Colin Powell's inner circle. Prior to joining the Bush administration, "Marcich also served as the

National Association of Manufacturers The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is an advocacy group headquartered in Washington, D.C., with additional offices across the United States. It is the nation's largest manufacturing industrial trade association, representing 14,000 s ...

(NAM) assistant vice president for international economic affairs, leading key lobby campaigns for

World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland that regulates and facilitates international trade. Governments use the organization to establish, revise, and enforce the rules that g ...

accession and trade-promotion authority." Public Relations for the ODF Alliance are handled by Rational PR, headed by Kathyrn Brownlee. Although Rational PR does not list the ODF Alliance as a client as of April 2008, SIIA is listed.

Structure

The ODF Alliance

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provides no information on funding or management structure. At this time, the website lists 6 "national chapters" outside of the United States;

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

and

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

, but it is unclear if those chapter organizations have any input into the policy decisions of the organization.

Activities

ODF Preferences
The ODF Alliance has also been very active in

U.S. State and International

governments A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a m ...

on ODF issues to promote

legislative A legislature (, ) is a deliberative assembly with the legal authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country, nation or city on behalf of the people therein. They are often contrasted with the executive and judicial powers ...

mandates for the use of the ODF document format. The ODF Alliance has provided public testimony in the following fora: * 2008 April 9: Testimony before the Government Reform Committee, State of Texas; * 2007 February 7: Newsletter to ODF Alliance Members; * 2007 April 17: AB 1668 California Assembly Bill: Bill Analysis. Anti-OOXML
During late 2007 though 2008, the ODF Alliance was focused on lobbying ISO members in order to prevent OOXML from being accepted by

ISO The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Me ...

. * Ongoing: OOXML Updates and Analysis; * 2007 June 7: "ODF Alliance posts documents about OOXML/OpenXML/whatever"; * 2008 February 25: Open Forum Europe

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

Conference. Last known Newsletter
The ODF Alliance website's last snapshot saved by Archive.org dates back from March 24, 2013. Even then, the latest published news was the "ODFA Newsletter" from October 2010, implying the Alliance ceased to operate long before the website was shut down. During 2014 the domain name odfalliance.org went from displaying error pages to briefly displaying ODF-related news, and to finally housing legal information about injury lawyers. In 2015 odfalliance.org housed cigar news. No news could be found about exactly when or why the ODFA was dissolved.

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://www.odfalliance.org/
ODF Alliance, Who, What, Where (and Why?)
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commentary. Free and open-source software organizations Open standards