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Date:      18 Feb 2002 08:45:42 +0000
From:      Wayne Pascoe <freebsd@molemanarmy.com>
To:        "Mike Meyer" <mwm-dated-1014449929.13fb95@mired.org>
Cc:        dmmcf@uiuc.edu (D. Michael McFarland), questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Advice sought re MS Office compatibility
Message-ID:  <m2it8vtbyh.fsf@set.ehsrealtime.com>
In-Reply-To: <15472.44937.241831.56766@guru.mired.org>
References:  <15472.44937.241831.56766@guru.mired.org>

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Apologies for partial post in previous mail. 

"Mike Meyer" <mwm-dated-1014449929.13fb95@mired.org> writes:

 
> If the only reason you're running it is to read documents from people
> who are to lazy to convert them to a non-proprietary format, just go
> back to running the older versions of StarOffice until you get a
> document that it doesn't understand because one of them upgraded and
> forgot to save it in the old version so that everyone else has to
> ugprade to read it.
> 
> Of course, the best thing to do if you're collaborating on a document
> is to load it into *your* favorite application for dealing with
> documents of that type, do your work, and send it back to them in that
> applications format. A truly fitting sabotage.

I have to weigh in on this issue. While it would be nice if we could
get people to understand the evils of proprietary formats, and get
people to move off of things like Microsoft Office, sabotage is often
not a good option.

As a business user, I have had to get a separate machine just to run
MS Office. If I cannot collaborate on a document with a client, or use
their Word templates to submit a tender, one of my competitors
will. And in most of those cases, the client will probably end up with
Windows on their server, where I would have put FreeBSD in instead.

-- 
- Wayne Pascoe
                                 | You have zero privacy anyway, get 
freebsd@molemanarmy.com          | over it - Scott McNealy
http://www.molemanarmy.com       | 

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