In the previous article, we explored the importance of standards: how the unspoken agreements governing electrical sockets, paper sizes and file formats form the foundations of a world in which choices remain open and power is not concentrated in the hands of a single player. We concluded with a question: if open standards are so beneficial, why aren’t they universally adopted? The answer, in the case of document formats, lies in a single page produced by Microsoft Office. Getting rid of it is harder than it seems. A file is never just a file When you save a document on your computer, you are choosing a format — that is, the language in which your document is written in a way that the computer can understand: the set of rules that determines how words, tables, images and formatting instructions are stored and, consequently, how they can be retrieved, shared and read in the future. For decades, the dominant format for office documents has been that produced by Microsoft Office. Initially as binary files with extensions such as DOC and XLS, then as XML-based formats introduced with Office 2007: DOCX, XLSX and PPTX. These formats are used by hundreds of millions