GOSCON 2007 recently closed with a compelling panel of experts representing the perspectives of Adobe, IBM, Microsoft, the Open Document Foundation and Sun Microsystems. Time ran out before the discussion did. We’ve invited our five panelists back to give each a fuller opportunity to address questions our audience provided on 3 x 5 cards at the conference, continuing the discussion here with you.

Andy Stein, panel moderator, framed the conversation: "The panel discussion will focus on a single question: what should the user community do, what actions should they take in light of competing Open Document Formats? Each of our industry experts will be asked to present their practical response.

Multiple evolving document standards are competing for acceptance: OOXML, ODF and CDF. We evolved from different proprietary formats to different open standards. The user community would prefer a single universal file format that is open, universally interoperable, application-platform-vendor independent, with an acceptable user driven governance. They want compatibility with existing file formats and documents, interoperability with existing applications and convergence of the desktop, server and web systems."