I'm not involved in this, but passing along the news in case anyone is interested.
The Open Source Business Alliance today issued a press release announcing a call for proposals for improving the MS Office interop of OpenOffice and LibreOffice. A group of German and Swiss towns, as well as other government agencies are coordinating on funding this effort. The press release is here: English: http://www.osb-alliance.com/index.php/de/home/5-lisog/622-authorities-publish-specification-for-better-support-of-ooxml-in-libreofficeopenofficeorg-new-qoffice-interoperabilityq-working-group-within-osb-alliance-to-coordinate-implementation German: http://www.osb-alliance.com/index.php/de/home/5-lisog/619-behoerden-veroeffentlichen-spezifikation-fuer-bessere-unterstuetzung-von-ooxml-in-libreofficeopenofficeorg-neue-working-group-office-interoperability-der-osb-alliance-koordiniert-umsetzung The specification is here (German only): http://www.osb-alliance.com/images/stories/PDF_Files/spezifikationlayoutgetreuedarstellungvonooxmlv06_neu.pdf I know we've had many discussions on this list about how the broader ecosystem could develop and how those with strong expertise in this code base could find sponsorship to continue their good work. This could be a good opportunity. It is worth noting that they are requiring the Apache 2.0 license, so whatever code is produced would be available to AOO as well as LO. -Rob
