That's ridiculous. There are plenty of programs that output MS Word format, or even RTF.

Sure, but most of them aren't 100%, and tend to lose formatting nuances. My resume looks awful when exported to MS Word, so I always have to load it up in a pirated copy or on someone else's computer, tweak it there, and then send it on. I hate the idea of using commercial software that I haven't paid for, so it just irks me that this is required.

dude, in some companies these days, you better off not mentioning MS WORD as an integral part of your toolbox.

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Yeah, but the MS Word format is vague enough, that the only way to ensure that someone else sees the same document you're seeing is to ensure that they're opening the document on the same version of Word, with the same OS and the same fonts that you have.

True, but Open/Libre Office is freely available and can save to Word formats.

In my experience, for anything but the simplest document, OpenOffice will absolutely mangle all formatting.

True, but I can create a word doc using Google Docs for free.