If governments start churning out documents in odf people will start noticing it, and a lot will follow suit. 'The government do it, it must be right - they are the best of the best after all'.

Certain bodies now MUST use open-standards, so if OOXML becomes ISO then the governments can use it and we are exactly where we were with .doc at the beginning.

The point is, if an organisation you deal with uses ODF you may use whatever software floats your boat in your own org or at home. No problems.

If they use OOXML, you MUST pay for MS Office. Like it or not, you pay.

SCHOOL. It's where they started with the same trick. Here's cheap/free OS.

How generous they all say. Then realise they need MS OS at home to be able to do homework. And, so it began. OOXML, and so it begins.