OpenOffice.org 2 is the cheap, legal, and open alternative to MS Office

I’ve been using OpenOffice.org 2 for a few months now, and before that, Openoffice.org 1.x for years. Before that, I’ve used MS Office, StarOffice, IBM Works, WordPerfect, etc. At why.openoffice.org there are references to studies that show that upgrading from MS Office to OpenOffice.org 2 costs like 10% of the upgrade to the newest MS Office – licensing fees and user training included.
Another good reason to switch to OpenOffice.org is that Microsoft is getting more evil – acquiring software spying companies, adding tracking code into Office, etc. Of course, if you pay the licenses, and understand the licenses, and can be sure that all your company techs understand the licenses and don’t violate them by doing an illegal installation somewhere, you’re fine (although a lot poorer). But why bother? Just switching to OpenOffice.org gets you off the hook – no more licensing worries, employees can borrow the installation CDs (or even make copies of them), and you can all focus on something more important than controlling Office use.
But maybe the most important reason in my opinion is the lack of standard on the part of MS Office. The approved standard format for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations is OpenDocument. Of course I understand the reason why Microsoft refured to support OpenDocument (the reason being, of course, that when you are a monopoly, it’s cost-effective to spend all your funds (minus $1) to protecting that monopoly, and this is what Microsoft is doing – keeping its software closed, locked and non-compliant, and hiring every patent lawyer to graduate from Stanford (according to Lawrence Lessig at OSBC 2005)). Currently I just feel embarrased for all the people who send me Word documents, and profusely claiming that they’ve been checked by a virus scanner. Good for them, but why, oh why, must I put up with that stupid proprietary format still? Of course, Openoffice.org opens MS Office files without a hassle, but still.