OpenOffice 1.1 vs Microsoft Office
Microsoft has a two page data sheet up for resellers and partners serving as a competitive guide to OpenOffice.org.
This open source product includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites. Sophisticated and flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office. It runs natively on Solaris, Linux and Windows.
I found two things interesting here. One, the brief and clearly stated anti competition message described for VARs and system builders. This is something we should be doing at least as well in my company.
Two, I’ve always been under the impression that reading and writing Microsoft Word files is difficult because the file format has been deliberately obscured. Now, here is an open source project that is file compatible with Microsoft Office. That’s a very good thing.
Digging around further, I found the file format description for Microsoft Excel. Where’s the doc on the Microsoft Word file format?
Posted on March 26th, 2004 under Work • 
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