Fifth Anniversary of ODF is May 1st

We’ll be hitting a significant date next month.  It was on May 1st, 2005 that Open Document Format (ODF) 1.0 was approved by OASIS.

I hope we can all take time to reflect on far we’ve gone, with the specification itself,  with the quality and diversity of implementations and with world-wide adoption.

As we read that the other “standard”, after only 2 years,  appear to be circling the drain, I hope we take a few moments on May 1st to ask ourselves why ODF did not suffer a similar fate.  What worked well with ODF?  And what can we teach the world about open standards?

Of course, not everything in ODF is perfect, but to be still so relevant after 5 years is an accomplishment worth bragging about.  Not every standard makes it this far.  We should celebrate.