Jacken’s Blog

Isn’t this a bit embarrassing? Here we have a monopolist trying to smear one of the few competitors they still have.

He has also dismissed open source Microsoft Office competitor Star Office, describing it as being as “good as what we were shipping seven years ago,” citing lack of total compatibility with Microsoft Office and a robust e-mail client.

Is it just me that think it’s funny that he mentioned the lack of compatibility with Microsoft Office? The followup question should be “And why is that?” And the answer is that the Microsoft Word format is a proprietary and closed specification. So here’s a shocker for all you Word users, everything is in a format you have no control over. And I hope that’s one of the main reason, except cost, that is swaying governments around the world to use Open Source is the ability to know how the stuff is stored. Because It could be a good thing in 2031 when someone want’s to read something written in Word. I used to use a backup program under linux, and on every tape it wrote a small text file with the C code on how the information was written on the tape. That’s the way it should be done. The information is hopefully going to be with us a long time.

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