In particular, I'd like to see:

1. Additional vendors that support ODF, such as Corel and Microsoft (and yes, before you ask, I have already extended a direct and person invitation to Doug Mahugh at Microsoft)
2. A representative from KOffice
3. A representative from the OpenDocument Fellowship, which has already done some work on an ODF test suite. Wouldn't it be good to combine our efforts?
4. Representatives from non-desktop ODF implementations, e.g., web-based and device-based.
   
5. Broader geographic participation.
6. Participation with specialized skills to help define and review test cases in areas such as: Accessibility, East Asian languages, Bidi text, etc.
7. People with an interest in archiving, to help to define an ODF/A profile.
   

So, if you fall into one of those categories, I hope you'll consider joining the new TC. Heck, even if you are outside of those categories you are welcome to join.

I hope those of you who are technically skilled and so able to follow the bouncing ball in the meetings, and who are willing to spend the time and make the effort this kind of work requires, will sign up to help. Standards work is like flying a plane. Hours and hours of boredom punctuated with sudden moments that require total ability to act decisively and effectively. But this is a *technical* committee, not a political one, so if your purpose is to make points and push standards politics, please leave comments here on Groklaw instead. Sometimes we've seen what appeared to me to be deliberate efforts to interfere with progress. This isn't for such diversions, and so Submarine Dark Side Operatives need not apply.

There's no reason, other than money, Groklaw couldn't join as an entity, so talk among yourselves about that possibility, too. We could take up a collection, after all.

*****************************

Introducing the ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC, by Rob Weir

... We are starting with many commercial and open source implementations. In some cases, with some editors, interoperability is quite good. In other cases it is rather poor. But when a user loads a document, which they may have downloaded on the web, or received via email, they have no idea where that document came from, what application, what operating system. And when you create an ODF document, you may not know who will eventually read it. It isn't enough to have good interoperability between some ODF implementations. We need good interoperability among all ODF implementations.

From a technical perspective, this is a goal we all know how to achieve. It has been done over and over again throughout the history of technology standards, especially network standards. You develop test suites, you test your implementations against these test suites, you have interoperability workshops (or plug-fests as they are sometimes called). You iterate until you have a high level of interoperability.

For the past 6 months I've been talking to my peers at a number of ODF vendor companies, to fellow standards professionals in OASIS, to ODF adopters, as well as to people who have gone through interoperability efforts like this before. I've given a few presentations on ODF interoperability conferences and led a workshop on the topic. I led a 90-day mailing list discussion on the ODF interoperability. Generally, I've been trying to find the best place and set of activities needed to bring the interested parties together and achieve the high level of interoperability we all want to see with ODF.

The culmination of these efforts is the creation of a new Technical Committee in OASIS, called the ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC, or OIC TC for short. The official 30-day OASIS Call for Participation went out last Friday. You can read the full charter there, but you can get a good idea by just reading the "Scope of Work":

Initially and periodically thereafter, to review the current state of conformance and interoperability among a number of ODF implementations; To produce reports on overall trends in conformance and interoperability that note areas of accomplishment as well as areas needing improvement, and to recommend prioritized activities for advancing the state of conformance and interoperability among ODF implementations in general without identifying or commenting on particular implementations;

To collect the provisions of the ODF standard, and of standards normatively referenced by the ODF standard, and to produce a comprehensive conformity assessment methodology specification which enumerates all collected provisions, as well as specific actions recommended to test each provision, including definition of preconditions, expected results, scoring and reporting;

To select a corpus of ODF interoperability test documents, such documents to be created by the OIC TC, or received as member or public contributions; To publish the ODF interoperability test corpus and promote its use in interoperability workshops and similar events;

To define profiles of ODF which will increase interoperability among implementations in the same vertical domain, for example, ODF/A for archiving;


To define profiles of ODF which will increase interoperability among implementations in the same horizontal domain, for example ODF Mobile for pervasive devices, or ODF Web for browser-based editors.

To provide feedback, where necessary, to the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC on changes to ODF that might improve interoperability;

To coordinate, in conjunction with the ODF Adoption TC, Interop Workshops and OASIS InterOp Demonstrations related to ODF;

To liaise on conformance and interoperability topics with other TC's and bodies whose work is leveraged in present or future ODF specifications, and with committees dealing with conformance and interoperability in general.

• Robert Weir, IBM
• Bart Hanssens, Individual
• Dennis E. Hamilton, Individual
• Zaheda Bhorat, Google
• Charles-H. Schulz, Ars Aperta
• Michael Brauer, Sun Microsystems
• Donald Harbison, IBM
• Alan Clark, Novell
• Jerry Smith, US Department of Defense
• Aslam Raffee, South Africa Department of Science and Technology

1. Additional vendors that support ODF, such as Corel and Microsoft (and yes, before you ask, I have already extended a direct and person invitation to Doug Mahugh at Microsoft)
2. A representative from KOffice
3. A representative from the OpenDocument Fellowship, which has already done some work on an ODF test suite. Wouldn't it be good to combine our efforts?
4. Representatives from non-desktop ODF implementations, e.g., web-based and device-based.
   
5. Broader geographic participation.
6. Participation with specialized skills to help define and review test cases in areas such as: Accessibility, East Asian languages, Bidi text, etc.
7. People with an interest in archiving, to help to define an ODF/A profile.