The Document Foundation has welcomed the release to OASIS of TC Committee Draft of ODF Version 1.3 for ratification. At the end of the process, ODF Version 1.3 will be submitted to ISO to become a standard. The final approval is likely at the end of 2020 or early 2021.

ODF 1.3 features digital signature and OpenPGP-based XML encryption of documents, plus several improvements to features already available in ODF 1.2.

“The third revision of ODF is now well on the way to becoming a ratified standard and confirms that the crowdfunding approach TDF seeded at COSM is an effective way to have the open document standard maintained without needing a deep-pocketed international corporation behind them”, said Thorsten Behrens, TDF board member.

Editing of ODF Version 1.3 Committee Draft has been sponsored by the Community of ODF Specification Maintainers (COSM), a project launched by The Document Foundation in 2017 to assist the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) Technical Committee (TC) in the timely publication of updated versions of the ODF standard at OASIS and in the process of their ratification by OASIS and ISO.

So far, the COSM project has been backed by Microsoft, Collabora, the UK Government Digital Services, CIB, the European Commission’s StandICT project and Open-Xchange.