"The problem with the proprietary approach of Office is that it really means if you want to communicate using Office documents then you need to use Office applications. Unless you have Windows (or Mac OS X) this is not a choice you can make. The document compatibility issue came to a head when Massachusetts State declared their decision to only support documents based on open standards.
"Open document standards (through the OpenDocument Format (ODF)) mean that exchanging documents and information between applications should be easier. That engenders choice, and means that you can use the application that you want on your choice of platform and environment, while retaining the ability to use and share documents based on the OpenDocument standard.
"A number of companies and applications have already stated that they will support the ODF format, some natively (i.e., ODF will be the default format, as in StarOffice 8) and some will support ODF as an available exchange format. At the time of writing (Dec 2005) Microsoft have not yet embraced the ODF standard and continue to push forward with their own XML-based format..."
