Second, open source innovation provides giant's shoulders upon which others can stand.īack at the start of the last decade, Microsoft Office had chased away almost all competition in the productivity software market. File formats may not be the most obviously exciting topic, but this announcement casts light onto two important facts about open source: First, open source software can be the perfect competitive pacesetter.

In those dry words we find echoes of a history lesson that demonstrates the power of open source to create valuable competition and innovation in software markets. By adding support for these standardized document formats, Microsoft Office 2013 provides users with more choice for office document interoperability. We have also added support for opening PDF documents so they can be edited within Word and saved to any supported format.

In the next release of Office, we have added two additional formats for use: Strict Open XML and Open Document Format (ODF) 1.2. In a blog post earlier this week, Microsoft's manager for Office standards Jim Thatcher described upcoming changes to Office:

Microsoft office vs openoffice org