ODF Summit joins open source activists

Even vendors that do not sell Office-style productivity applications have an interest in OpenDocument, RedMonk's O'Grady said.

An e-mail company, for example, could bake support for the format into its software and allow a user to embed a fully formatted document within a message without having to launch a separate application, he said. Another possibility is for a wiki server to use XML to programmatically extract data from OpenDocument-formatted documents.

Government interest
Because OpenDocument-based products are not widely used, the financial incentive for corporate or governmental customers is still not thoroughly tested, analysts and industry executives said.

NASCIO's Gallt said that state governments are looking at whether Massachusetts can make the case that adopting OpenDocument will provide a compelling return on investment.

In a closely watched decision, the IT Division of Massachusetts decided in September to standardise on OpenDocument for state agencies in the executive branch. State officials argued the move will save millions of dollars and that an "open" format developed through a multiparty standards organisation ensures the state "sovereignty" over documents and electronic public records.

That policy, however, is being challenged by the state senate, which is considering the creation of a special committee with industry representatives to approve technical standards. Various industry groups have criticised the move as well, saying it limits the choice of office suites for customers.

Gallt said that the other states' agencies exploring OpenDocument are doing so in a far more scaled-down and less visible way than Massachusetts.

"It's still, in a lot of ways, behind-the-scenes discussions and evaluations at this point, because it is such an emotional and volatile topic, as Massachusetts has found," he said.

Some foreign governments are looking seriously at OpenDocument, IBM's Sutor said. "Particularly in Europe, to many it seems like a fairly obvious direction," he said.

The French state tax agency said on Wednesday it intends migrate 80,000 desktops next year to from Microsoft Office 97 to OpenOffice, an open-source product that uses OpenDocument. The move will save about $34m (£20m), the agency's chief technology officer told ZDNet UK.

Those moves toward adoption suggest that the time is right for Microsoft's rivals to take on the software giant and its dominance in desktop products. The ODF Summit's technical and marketing initiatives could make OpenDocument-based products more viable replacements.

"We seem to have reached some important point where people feel this is a must-win battle," said Sutor. "I think this is critically important."

Ingrid Marson of ZDNet UK contributed to this report