It looks M$ might just open up its file format in V11 of its office software suite. This is great if it actually happens.

The co-inventor of XML, Tim Bray, has been talking about the newly XML-enabled version of Microsoft Office, code-named **Office 11** and tells XML-Journal that when the huge universe of MS Office documents becomes available for processing by any programmer with a Perl script and a bit of intelligence, all sorts of wonderful new things can be invented that you and I can’t imagine.

When that happens, the product will have to compete based on features and stability instead of just simply customer lock-in. Then other products such as [[OpenOffice]] might have a chance to make an impact.