“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…”