> Another reason not to use it is because the FOSS alternatives are free. Free as in "free beer" isn't free. There are many costs beyond the cost of acquisiti

> Another reason not to use it is because the FOSS alternatives are free. Free as in "free beer" isn't free. There are many costs beyond the cost of acquisition that are often overlooked. Usability isn't nearly as good with the FOSS alternatives. Microsoft has a paid team of usability experts designing and testing the usability of features for many different user audiences, including disabled users who rely on special usability features. People likely have some familiarity with Office applications, so training costs are lower. For the training employees need, there is a large wealth of training resources out there, from free to pricey. There is also no question about being able to get support in the future, as Office as been around almost 30 years, and is going strong. Office has no real competitors in the marketplace, so as long as there is money to be made in selling word processors, spreadsheets and other office-centric desktop software, those document formats and applications will be supported. Office has a very flexible plug-in architecture for customization by thousands of software devs who can develop for that. Microsoft isn't naive to the needs of European governments, they have government editions of their software and cloud services to align their software with government regulations. The foreign company argument isn't really meaningful these days. No country is an island (except island nations!). Everything in IT is dependent on foreign resources, PC parts from Asia, tech support from India, Software from US companies, cloud services, etc. If you don't want to have to rely on foreign companies, go back to typewriters.