The next release of Microsoft's Office 2013 will have support for Strict Open XML and Open Document Format (ODF) 1.2. Also, it includes support for opening PDF documents, so they can be edited within Word and saved to any supporting format. But, the catch here is that this change did not happen on its own. Microsoft was actually forced to include the ODF format along with PDF format due to the standardization of these two Open Source document formats.
This victory has brought out two important facts about open source. “First, open source software can be the perfect competitive pacesetter. Second, open source innovation provides giant's shoulders upon which others can stand,” reports Simon Phipps of Info World.
Microsoft enjoyed monopoly in the productivity software market since the beginning of the year 2000. Sun Microsystems, had then introduced an open source office suite project, StarOffice known as OpenOffice.org. According to the report, “The StarOffice/OpenOffice.org developers accelerated a project to create a modern, XML-based file format for their suite it helped in better promotion of both inter-operability with other office tools, as well as to maintain compatibility between different versions."
Open source may not touch the lives of common PC users but people tend to benefit from a competitive market as it forced Microsoft to adopt both version-to-version file compatibility and the concept of interoperability.
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