Symptoms vs. Causes

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There latest storm in the teacup that is Swedish IT is caused by the national news agency TT decision to move from OpenOffice to Microsoft Office, mainly because ‘I (head of development) do not want to sit here wondering how I will connect OpenOffice with a hundred eleven other systems’. I believe ‘a hundred eleven’ is a long form for ‘a lot’.

This has in almost deterministic fashion caused people from both sides of the OSS-MS divide to wave their party flags. But no one asks the to me more obvious question - why do you connect your office suite with all those systems, and why is that a problem if you do not have Microsoft Office? Seems more like an architecture question if you ask me.