In Word or text format please...

I received some questions from an online journalist yesterday regarding some Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) deployments in my company and I responded to them in an OpenOffice document. A few minutes later, I got this response:

Dear Yoon Kit,

Could you kindly resend document in either Word or text format?

Thanks!

Now, normally in business dealings, I would. However this was after all queries regarding FOSS, and it seems so hypocritical to discuss FOSS and yet send it back either in a proprietary format, or text which is good, but loses the pretty formatting.

Here was my response.

just download from openoffice.org: its free.

yk

Now if need be, there is the standard lengthy response one can use from the FSF, and also why its important that we use freely viewable files.

Hopefully the journalist takes the opportunity to test drive some FOSS applications so as to be an informed reporter on the state of the quality of the very software being written about.

yk.