How so? You can open Word docs in LibreOffice and save them as well...
Every six months or so I check out OpenOffice/LibreOffice to see whether the documents I'm being sent survive the open/edit/save cycle.
Every time so far I end up with a document with widely differing formatting from the original.
So at least for me, LibreOffice isn't suitable for my usage patterns.
I imagine other people are the same.
In addition, many funders require that submitted proposals be .doc files. Sure, one could play roulette with other programs, but when thousands to millions of dollars are on the line, it's easier to simply use Word.
The hiring manager, who appeared to be clueless to any web technology or coding, complimented me by saying that my resume was the only one 'normal' without a bunch of code garbled in.
what a waste of time...
Which version? If they don't specify the version of Word to use for the files you're still playing roulette. The chances of getting an exact formatting match, for even a small document, across versions of Word use to be approaching zero.
Did they fix it?
If I'm submitting something read-only, PDF seems like the obvious choice. If you're going to edit it, maybe .doc is the solution, but really, Google Docs would make collaboration easier.
What does a Word file have that other solutions don't, other than mindshare?
It's one thing to be able to open a foreign doc without an error/exception, be able to edit it, and then save it without an error/exception and even then be able to open it (without error/exception) with the foreign (Word) program. Etc, edit, back and forth, "look Ma, no exceptions."
It even looks really good, in isolation.
It's quite another thing to get exactly the same results from everyone using different programs (or versions of the same program) and then hope that everything matches up.
Above some size, it just doesn't happen, and I don't want to have to be the one that slinks away when the shouting starts.
Both give incentives to the user to highlight every title and select Times new roman, 24pt, click the B button for bold etc.
Files generated with both applications get to you with tabs to simulate left margin! weirdly different fonts on each paragraph and other hellish things.
the whole concept of word is wrong. libreoffice is just a little better on following standards for the internal stuff. the part exposed to the user, is still a version of purgatory.