Well, I contend open source is much better positioned to make these changes, and in less time than M$ to the offending file format....I've seen changes made available in hours as opposed to weeks in the M$ case. If M$ decides to do this, they risk pi$$ing off a whole cadre of corporate customers who are slow to upgrade anyway.
At 22:47 8/12/02 +0200, you wrote: >At 9:41 AM -0400 2002/08/12, William Warren wrote: > >> StarOffice to the rescue. > > Only until they change the file format again. Microsoft can > afford to change the file format on an even daily basis, and come out > with patches for the previous patches, and call them all "security > patches" so that everyone is either forced to apply them or dump > Microsoft altogether. > > Open source projects can't possibly afford to keep up, if > Microsoft decides to go down this road.