Microsoft Office - pros and cons (was: Re: [Ti] OpenOffice on Mac)

[Chris Olson]

On Nov 22, 2005, at 12:34 AM, Ardeshir Mehta wrote:

> Don't get me wrong: I am not in favour of Microsoft *qua*  
> Microsoft. Windows, in particular, sucks, and so do Internet  
> Explorer and Outlook. But in Office, and especially in Word,  
> Microsoft has provided users with something no one else has,  
> unfortunately ... and credit ought to be given, I think, where  
> credit is due.

Microsoft also has the defacto standard client/server groupware  
application - Outlook/Microsoft Exchange.  Entourage has done a  
respectable job of integrating Macs into Enterprise Exchange  
networks, although still not with the full functionality of Outlook  
on Windows.

> What about incentive? Open standards means, does it not, that  
> developers don't have a financial incentive to come up with  
> something better and better as time goes by ... yes?

Open standards means no such thing.  Open standards means the  
specifications for a specific file format, etc., are open and  
published and accepted by a standards organization such as ISO.  This  
does not mean it's free and/or open source.  It means that any  
software developer has access to the published specification to build  
applications that adhere to the standard.  An example is MPEG-4,  
which an internationally recognized open ISO standard.

Open standards foster competition for the best implementation of the  
standard.  The open-standards approach means that the standard has  
many more people who scrutinize one another's work than is possible  
from a single vendor, resulting in a more stable - and ultimately  
more satisfactory - result.  Obviously, open standards help reduce  
the possibility that a single vendor could hold customers hostage, as  
has been the case with Microsoft's Office file formats in the past.

-- 
Chris

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