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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

There is a sophisticated mechanism by which proprietary technology ecosystems maintain their grip on users and institutions, even when those users and institutions believe they are making free choices, using open standards, and building independent digital infrastructure. The mechanism does not work through force, but through a subtler and more durable strategy: the layering of dependencies, in which each layer obscures the one beneath it, so that when the system fails the apparent cause is something other than the real one. It is a structural pattern with identifiable components and predictable failure modes, and with a single political consequence: the systematic attribution of interoperability failures to open alternatives rather than to the proprietary dependencies that actually cause them. Understanding all of this is essential for anyone working on a genuine interoperability policy, because without it even the best-intentioned policy interventions address the visible symptom while leaving untouched the larger problem of the underlying architecture, which goes on working exactly as designed. The perception of malfunction Let us start from the user’s experience, because this is where the political damage occurs. A document is created in Microsoft Word and sent to a colleague who uses LibreOffice on a Linux desktop. The