How I came full circle from being a Free Software purist to totally rejecting the sentiment and back to appreciating at least one aspect of it: the preservation of personal power of the user.

Ever since Open Document Format was standardized by ISO and Microsoft started pushing its own “open” format a significant portion of the Free Software community has been buzzing about how bloated, not really open and ultimately redundant Microsoft’s format is and moreover how Microsoft is using various “dirty tricks” to get its format approved as an open standard.