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The antitrust case helped, but it's only thanks to massive reverse engineer efforts by open source developers that this kind of compatibility exists. Even when you have the specs, it's a massive effort to re-implement.

> Being retro-compatible in a walled garden only doesn't make all that sense.

It makes perfect sense from the company's point of view.




>> Being retro-compatible in a walled garden only doesn't make all that sense.

> It makes perfect sense from the company's point of view.

Yeah, for sure, but I was criticizing OP that was praising MS for still being compatible with their own 20+ years old proprietary and hegemonic document format.


Well, it was kind of the old way of inplementing a subscription based business model: want to stay compatible with the rest of the world? Pay up!




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