“Microsoft’s proprietary formats like .doc and .docx dominate the office productivity landscape. Most people and organisations rely on these formats for daily document work. This creates a predatory situation where vendor lock-in is the norm and compatibility issues are taken as an omen that moving away from Microsoft Office is a bad idea. OpenDocument Format (ODF) offers an open alternative. It is an ISO-standard XML-based format for text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and graphics. ODF works across multiple office suites, including LibreOffice, Collabora Online, and Microsoft Office itself.”

Open standards are critical to the future use and access to data. Open data also helps prevent vendors locking you into their service. Open standards also help lower the costs of services as it increases competition in the market.

In summary, open standards protect users. Unfortunately, many organisations work actively against open standards as they stand in the way of their profits, and of course big organisations can lobby governments…

As users, we all need to support open standards. We cannot take on the big organisations, but we can decide to prefer to use services based on open standards. And yes, believe it or not, besides the marketing PR, you do NOT NEED to use MS Office. There are perfectly good alternatives, with many being free of cost. If you do still use MS Office, at least choose to save everything in ODF format.

See https://itsfoss.com/news/odf-1-4-release

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