News Microsoft warns of Word zero-day vulnerability

No, it isn't. It's bundled with Windows, which last I checked is a paid-for proprietary operating system. That's like saying that Ford gives away free steering wheels.

Dude, enough with the scare quotes. OpenOffice is open. Here, have the source code. Care to offer me the same for any recent version of Office or Wordpad? Yeah, that's what I thought.

As we've proven, historical compatibility issues are largely a thing of the past. I can send you files made in LibreOffice and you can open 'em just fine. Remember the experiment we just did? Hmm?

 

I'm not trying to convince anyone to do anything. As I frequently have to clarify: I couldn't give two hoots what software anybody uses. You want to use Microsoft Office, more power to your elbow. I just wanted to correct some misapprehensions about the alternatives, including your claim that LibreOffice and OpenOffice (again with the scare quotes - shall I start referring to Micro$oft like it was the 90s all over again?) were completely useless for sharing files with Microsoft Office users. As our experiment proved, that's not true. You can make claims to having received any number of incompatible files you like, but it flies in the face of the very public evidence of our experiment.

Again: anyone is welcome to use whatever software they like. You use Office and it works for you; I use LibreOffice and it works for me. Hooray for choice!

 

Apology accepted, and I apologise for being in any way unclear in my postings.

Incidentally, did you know you *can* download the source code for Microsoft Word? Granted, only for non-commercial research and experimentation, and it's Word for Windows 1.1a, but still. It's quite fun having a search through for key phrases like 'bug,' 'hack,' 'nasty,' and 'god!'

 

Nobody here has tried to claim that; in fact, the whole OpenOffice discussion began with the claim that its users were safer because it's not as popular as Microsoft Office and therefore isn't under constant targeted attacks, not because it's inherently more secure.

Now, there is the argument that it's easier to find security bugs in open source and free software because you can actually look at the source code; sadly, as recent events have shown, that doesn't always help. Apple's recent "goto fail" whoopsie, as an example, occurred in open-source code; worse, gnutls had an authentication error that could allow for man-in-the-middle attacks for an estimated eight years before somebody at Red Hat spotted it in a security review. Embarrassing.