Story: Microsoft must drop its Office politics

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More than an industry standard - an *open* standard is what is needed. One of the simplest formats is plain ascii (now UTF8) text. Documents created using plain text are still visible today from the begining of the of the microcomputer age and beyond in some cases (I still have files from the early 80s - that are still alive and well on my current hard drive - not so many Microsoft spreadsheet and Word documents who's formats have been deprecated and discontinued - luckily I translated those to plain text to avoid the inevitable that did indeed occur; there is nothing to say it wouldn't happen again, and I would tend to think it will).

With new maneuvering by Microsoft and other players, more attempts are being made to lock up your data inside of proprietary (DRM) formats. Who owns the data - you or Microsoft?

With enough buy-in an open standard may become 'industry standard' - but then again, who cares? The main point is having usable documentation that can not be held hostage to a monopoly's desire to rule your computing world.

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