ODF appears to be a rather innocuous standard file format based on XML. One conversation with Gary Edwards, president of the OpenDocument Foundation, however, will change your mind.

But first, let's dismiss the upcoming Microsoft Office XML file format by saying it is not open. OpenDocument, Edwards says, is the first XML file format for productivity suites that is completely open.

As a stand-alone format, OpenDocument is perhaps trivial. But we know that desktops are part of a larger and ever-growing community of information domains, mainly driven by the Internet, Edwards says. Although Microsoft Office products are somewhat interoperable with one another, Office is still a closed world. ODF breaks down those worlds in dramatic fashion.

Embedded inside ODF documents are descriptions of what the documents are. The descriptions can be accessed by any other content or transactional resource, such as SOA services, and by content and archival management systems. This is not just about applications or productivity suites, but about collaborative computing.

For many people, their first initiation into collaborative computing was Lotus Notes, and then Writely (http://www.infoworld.com/4146). "Writely is a collaboration processor, not a word processor," Edwards says. The software lets you invite others to join you in managing a document. By moving into a workgroup, the document can become part of a larger business process.