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Office 2003 Bug Locks Owners Out
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Microsoft Office 2003 bug is locking people out of their own files, specifically those protected with Microsoft's Rights Management Service. Microsoft has a TechNet bulletin on the issue with a fix. It looks like they screwed up and let a certificate expire. There's no information on when the replacement certificate will expire, though, or what will happen when it does."
It's still vendor lock in if there's no competing product that reads their open formats.
Umm... There are a huge number of programs that read/write ODF (OpenOffice's default format). Wikpedia has a fairly extensive list of software that handles the various ODF files.
Eventually the bigwigs get tired of the fact that they cannot understand how to use save-as-older-format, and they dislike having their underlings telling them to do things, and they cannot bear to find all the files they saved and re-save them before they downgrade back to the old version... So the entire company naturally has to pay to upgrade everyone.
Or, the admins download and roll out the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack and leave the CEO with his new shiny-shiny.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
And then the admins get to deal with documents that can't be handled by the converter. I had one last month, had to install 2007 to open it. I forgot to check Open Office first though. 2007 isn't as bad as the problems '97 caused, but it still causes some.