James Reisenbuechler wrote: > I'm trying to determine the equivalency of OpenOffice 2.3.1 to the latest > (whatever that may be) version of MS-Office. > That's a huge job. There are many similarities and differences. Depending on what you plan to do, those differences may or may not be relevant. However, here are a couple of big differences.
1) OpenOffice is open source. This means the source code is freely available for those who wish to modify OpenOffice or incorporate parts of it in other open source software. Microsoft Office is proprietary and closed. Source code is not generally available. 2) OpenOffice is free of charge. Microsoft Office costs a significant amount. 3) You can install OpenOffice on as many computers as you like and also give it away. Read up on how the Business Software Alliance (BSA) has sued companies who couldn't prove, to BSA's satisfaction, that they had paid for their software. Even the Windows sticker isn't sufficient proof. So, if you're a company using Microsoft software, you have to be very careful about having enough licenses, even if that requires paying more than once, for the same software!!! 4) While OpenOffice can read & write Microsoft Office files, it defaults to the ISO standard ODF file formats. Microsoft refuses to support ODF, because it will reduce their "lock in" of the office market. With the open ODF standard, the file formats are completely open, which means anyone can write applications that work with it. You can also easily dissect a file to get to the contents. This means your data will always be available. With Microsoft Office, your files are trapped, should Microsoft drop support for that format in the future, as has already happened. Please respond only to the mail list ([email protected]) and not directly to me. -- Use OpenOffice.org <http://www.openoffice.org> --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
