My Office Is Open

In a recent post I mentioned that I had built a spreadsheet with OpenOffice. OpenOffice.org is an open-source application and it is free. I do not use it because it is free. As I said in the ZDNet interview, the issue is not "free" -- the issue is "freedom". OpenOffice is a multi-platform office productivity suite compatible with all major file formats and it runs on both Windows XP and on Linux. I use both operating systems and I don't want to have to remember the idiosyncrasies of two different office suites. OpenOffice is identical on the two platforms. Some people worry about file compatibility, but I have not found that to be an issue. (read more)

Personal Computing March 1, 2004 10:28 PM