As Mike says the big idea behind ODF and especially the ODF plug-in is that it gives users a choice. And that is fantastic!

As soon as the plug-in is released _everybody_ should start using it and saving all newly created documents in ODF format. (Even if they currently plan to keep using MS Office).

Why? Because, if in 2 years time you decide to adopt, say, OpenOffice then all the documents created in the 2 years will be immediately readable.

(OpenOffice does, of course, have the ability to open and save in MS Word format, however this will not always give 100% fidelity.)

There are 2 important points contained here:
1) The importance of any document will decrease with age.
2) The one-off process of conversion will always be less accurate than if the document is stored in just one format from the time it is created.

If, on the other hand, you wait 2 years and then decide to evaluate OpenOffice you are bound to find instances of documents that are not converted 100% accurately.

Sod's law says that this would be the case with the Financial Directors monthly spreadsheet. As likely as not this would immediately kill the project despite the fact that you could have saved ten of thousands of dollars in MS licensing fees.

So remember this is all about choice. About giving yourself the option of moving between almost every Office suite on the market depending on your needs. Maximize your choice by acting now!

Anyone who has ever used Visio before, during and after Microsoft's acquisition thereof, knows how the file format lock-in is central to their plan. There is now a complete division. Any versions of Visio before and including 2000 are in one camp and any versions after that are in another. You can be sure that Microsoft will ne'er make the twain meet.

Probably by the time any of this makes a difference, people will have forgotten why some of you hate Microsoft so much, and altruistic cult figures motivated by this hatred who will write software for free will be a forgotten blip on the historical radar scree. In the future we will be glad there is still a software company able to afford to write software and pay it's employees well to do so. The free software model is destined to grind to a halt, lets hope there is enough profit left in the endeavor that someone will do it for money.

I agree everyone should look into it. How many times have we found ourselves locked in a format and not be able to retrieve the information (out of date programs that don't run on modern OS, etc)? Microsoft won't play fair either and that means we would end up being stuck again.

What if Microsoft goes out of business tomorrow? Think it funny and improbable? Think again, giants do fall. What if another company decides to work on filters to retrieve those old formats at a premium?

There would always be the Open Source community but this is a step in the right direction where we can voice our concerns to never again be locked up with one single vendor by downloading.

We all have to remember that Office is the major revenue source at Microsoft, so obfuscation of formats is in their financial and strategic interest.

But, my whole research lab is in Linux (and a couple of Sun UNIX machines), except for my computer (use Access and other MS programs for technical reasons, even though the Database machine is MySQL). And my laptop, even though it's Win XP, I use Open Office on - I save everything as ODF, and then export as Word or whatever format if I need to send to someone else - normally, when I forward documents, I send both formats.

If you are IT worker in the US isn't it in your best interest to see the proliferation and universal use of proprietary software produced by US firms (some with development spans of a decade or more) thereby forcing if possible foreign users/businesses to adapt and thereby pay for one of the few things we still export, "IP".

Open source sounds great INSIDE the castle. But throw it back when it comes over the walls, no?

When I started reading the article, I started to feel my blood pressure rising, however I kept going to the end, and yes, you did finally get the exact point I was wanting to make, namely that ODF is more than simply a "file format" It is probably the number one key at this point to unlocking Microsoft's strangle-hold on the desktop industry. Linux has taken hold in the server room, but MS Office has shackled most people to MS on the desktop. If the ODF people can break the "DOC FORMAT ONLY" mindset, then suddenly people will have a choice of what Office suite, and hence, what desktop best suites their needs.