Despite being free, one of the main issues stopping people from making the switch from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice is compatibility. While the suite is generally compatible with Microsoft's formats, every now and then, users run into weird quirks with formatting and layout.
In fact, The Document Foundation (TDF), the folks behind LibreOffice, have called out Microsoft in the past for what it sees as anticompetitive behavior. It has long been argued that Microsoft's file formats are intentionally complex to keep users locked inside its ecosystem.
Now, TDF is doubling down, accusing Microsoft of overlooking everything "for its own commercial interests." In a blog post by Italo Vignoli, a founding member of TDF, he called the idea that "OOXML is a standard format, and we have to accept it," "outrageous".
Vignoli argued that OOXML could "never be a standard format" unless Microsoft was willing to completely redesign its Office apps. One example Vignoli gave was Excel's long-standing failure to properly handle gene names, which corrupted scientific data and had consequences for research into genetic diseases.
You see, Excel's default behavior is to convert certain text entries into dates. It makes sense for general spreadsheet use, but not for geneticists. Genes, like Membrane Associated Ring-CH-Type Finger 1, are given alphanumeric symbols (MARCH1) as a shorthand for their full, complex names. When a scientist would input "MARCH1" into an Excel spreadsheet, the software would automatically interpret this as a date and convert it to "1-Mar".
Similarly, a gene symbol like "SEPT1" would become "1-Sep", and "DEC1" would be converted to "1-Dec". Obviously, this is a problem for scientists. A 2016 study published in the journal Genome Biology examined 3,597 published papers that included supplementary Excel files with gene lists and found that approximately one-fifth of these papers contained errors that were attributable to Excel's auto-formatting.
For a long time, Microsoft's position was that this was a niche issue affecting a small number of users, and it did not provide an option to disable the automatic date conversion.
Finally, in 2023, three years after the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC), the body responsible for standardizing human gene names, was forced to rename around 27 genes, such as MARCH1 to MARCHF1, to prevent misinterpretation, Microsoft rolled out an update to disable automatic date conversion. By then, though, the damage had already been done.
Vignoli complains that Office Open XML (OOXML) is anything but open. Other criticisms he had included the sheer complexity of the specification. It is a huge 7,000 pages, making a complete and correct implementation by any third party almost impossible.
He also pointed out that Microsoft Office does not even adhere to its own "Strict" standard, instead using a "Transitional" variant that contains dependencies on legacy formats. For instance, the OOXML specification contains instructions that require other software to clone the behavior of old, proprietary versions of Microsoft Word. There are elements like "autoSpaceLikeWord95" and "shapeLayoutLikeWW8" that directly reference the behavior of ancient software. The format also recommends proprietary Windows Metafiles for graphics instead of open, cross-platform standards like SVG.