December 15, 2005
Open Documents
When I talk to people about Linux or OpenOffice.org, invariably their first question is: “Will it be compatible?” They most often mean compatible with the Microsoft Word or Excel documents. Since Microsoft does not make MS Office for Linux, a separate office suite must then need to be able to open and save MS Office documents.
In my experience, the conversion mostly goes without a hitch. In 10 years I have rarely had a document completely unreadable. But, since the MS Office file formats are not public, I could never say that compatibility is 100%.
All the talk with Massachusetts moving to Open Document Format has started to change this. Microsoft has been unwilling to move their format to the Sun and IBM backed ODF, but has recently stated that they will ensure their new XML format for the next version of MS Office will meet the open standards required by Masschusetts.
This is great news because now people can decide on what Operating System and which Office Suite to use based on features or price or ease of use, rather than having the compatibility trump card limit those choices. This is very good news for everyone!