The Document Foundation congratulates the UK government for their revolutionary and historic choice of open document standards

UK citizens will be the first in Europe to be liberated from proprietary lock-ins

Berlin, July 23, 2014 – The Document Foundation (TDF) congratulates the UK government for the selection of the Open Document Format (ODF), in addition to Portable Document Format (PDF), to meet user needs. LibreOffice, the free office suite developed by TDF, supports both ODF – the native document format – and PDF (including PDF/A).

The original UK government press release is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/open-document-formats-selected-to-meet-user-needs. In addition, the UK government has published a policy paper with more details: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government/sharing-or-collaborating-with-government-documents.

“TDF has always been a strong supporter of ODF, and a believer in open document standards”, says Thorsten Behrens, TDF Chairman. “July 22 will be a date to remember, as the culmination of a dream inaugurated when ODF become a ISO standard on November 30, 2006. By standardizing on ODF and PDF, the UK government is showing the world that it is entirely possible to find a way out of proprietary formats to enhance user freedom”.

LibreOffice is a reference implementation of ODF, a document standard which is supported by a growing number of applications (including proprietary ones). ODF is independently managed by OASIS (https://www.oasis-open.org/), a non-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society.

To leverage the advantages of ODF, you can download LibreOffice from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions and templates to supplement the installation of the software and add specific features can be found here: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/.

Complementing ODF, LibreOffice manages Hybrid PDF files, which combine the advantages of PDF and ODF by embedding a fully editable ODF document into a PDF without breaking any of the standard characteristics of both formats.