FOSS smashed one Microsoft monopoly. After 20 years of failure, it's time to smash another

Word up

OPINION The best way to bust out of jail is not to get locked up in the first place. There are options once you're inside, legal and illegal, and all are complicated, time-consuming, and probably won't work.

Microsoft Office users have been banged up since 1990, a 36-year stretch normally reserved for the most horrendous crimes. In that time, individuals and organizations alike have built up a planet-sized pile of documents, spreadsheets and other files that rely on Office to give them life. It's not that there is no escape. There's always a way, just the results can be ugly, expensive or inconsistent. Even today. It is practically impossible to move any non-trivial Word document out of MS Office to a non-MS suite and back again without it being more trouble than it's worth.

Which is odd because those jail doors have been open for nearly twenty years....

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