Meeks: Measuring the true success of OpenOffice.org

The only circumstance in which I would consider using OpenOffice.org is that
requiring collaborative editing of a document with a user of Microsoft Office.
I am glad OO.O exists for those people who need such interoperability, and I
would use it should collaboration with MS-Word users become necessary.

However, having experienced the benefits of LaTeX for a decade now, I don't
want to go back to using a word processor, which would be a big step in the
wrong direction. I also suspect that the barrier for entry into LaTeX macro
package development, for instance, is lower than that of OpenOffice
development.

Important lessons ought to be learned here. The next major typesetting and
document processing system needs to be designed with extensibility and
flexibility in mind, so that it can attract extensions and improvements just
as TeX, Emacs and Mozilla do. A graphical interface should be optional, as it
is in the TeX environment. Interoperability with HTML and XML will be more
important in the future than legacy, binary formats issuing from Redmond,
Washington.