Why OpenOffice.org? Open Document Formats
Found on Slashdot on Saturday, 11 December 2004
"In this current article about OpenOffice.org (also covered at Linux Today), I try to make a point about OpenOffice's commitment to open document formats and interchange as the strongest selling point - never mind cost. The OOo developers are putting a lot of effort into their XML format; will this pay off, and will users notice the significance of OpenDocument/OASIS document formats?" This can't be said enough: file formats are what determine whether and how easily data is portable, or whether the user is just stuck.
Open Office isn't bad at all. I recently needed to get some data from an old Excel file; even tho I have a complete MS Office here, I downloaded Open Office and used this one instead. Yes, it does have a few oddities, but in general, it works fine.