[A]n INI configuration file in the Windows Canary channel, discovered by German website Deskmodder, includes references to a “Subscription Edition,” “Subscription Type,” and a “subscription status.”
Good enough for who?
I’ve seen too many cases of word docs being hosed, or not working right in Libre. So from a business standpoint that’s a no-go. And that’s the challenge.
It’s an industry standard.
Go see what lawyers use. Until fairly recently Word Perfect was still a thing for them (well, about 10 years ago anyway).
You don’t get to choose the formats other people use, or what you’ll have to deal with.
Your attitude is the stereotypical never-had-to-face-reality mindset.
It’s a monoply, not a standard. It’s not a standard as no one else can properly implement it. There are undocumented binary parts that were meant to be transitory to get through ISO. Which was just one of many dirty MS tricks to get it through ISO. The reference implementation is closed.
I don’t expect normal people to understand formats. I expect law makers to.
The UK government got this right : https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-principles/open-standards-principles
The EU have clobbered MS before over this kind of nonsense and should again. And Google and Apple and others.
Competition needs to be possible. We need to avoid today being tomorrow’s digital darkage.
The very reason why that cross compatibility is so hard and broken is Microsoft sabotaging the fuck out of it. Microsoft has always been about money, dead stop. If theyust make great software for money, they will. If they can get away with mediocre to absolute shit software while sabotaging the competition, then that is what they will do (and have been doing for decades)