You may be saving privacy, and security.
Proprietary Software registrations, licensing, and validation kits warehouse personal information, with very little regulation.
Further, Microsoft scripts and Active-X are proprietary methods exploited frequently enough on IE, and for this reason are the scorn of most Enterprise networks that historically refuse link permissions to MS Access, Excel, etc..
Open office automation is based on PERL, and other peer-reviewed developments with a long history of improvements in the public domain.
Open source models draw upon these projects and talents from all over the world, but it doesn't pay very well.
The global-programming community proved they could easily free the world from Microsoft's monopoly by creating both a cross platform and more secure office suite (Open Office) and browser (Mozilla FIREFOX) that both work on PC's, MAC's, Linux, etc..
But, now the market must decide if these Open-Source standards should be adopted en mass, beyond the enterprise, or supported enough to attract 3rd party add-ons and extensions, which have enjoyed a long ride on Microsoft's profit wagon.
