Independent conformance testing needed for ODF and OOXML implementations

Tineke Egyedi, senior researcher of standardization at the University of Delft, The Netherlands, president of the European Academy for Standardization and vice-chair of the International Cooperation for Education about Standardization, send an open letter (PDF) to software vendors with the title Who pays for interoperability in public IT procurement. In her letter she calls upon vendors to submit their implementation of the OpenDocument standard and the Office Open XML standard in software products for independent conformance testing and to verify the interoperability. She feels this is needed to make sure that governments and it’s citizens do not head into a new vendor-lock and to ensure vendors do not alter the open standards along the way.