This. I was a freelance editor (and now full-time editor) for years, and Word (and Excel and PowerPoint) have always been required by all of my clients and my employer. In fact, one of our freelancers recently tried to get away with using LibreOffice rather than use a computer compatible with MSOffice. The resulting file couldn’t be opened by the proofreader or two managers, and once someone finally found a program that would open it, the file conversion caused some significant issues with formatting. It was extremely unprofessional on the part of the freelancer and wasted a lot of people’s time.
I agree with both Dean's and your point, right tools for the job and everything... but I also feel like your anecdote is either very dated or there was a lot more going on in terms of PEBKAC and Microsoft's past thumbing of standards compliance with the freelancer in question that possibly wouldn't have been fixed by them
just using MS Office. (Which means this is relevant to the OP, as well.) Microsoft has supported opening and saving ODF 1.2 in their own special way since Office 2013, and Microsoft's OOXML and MOX document standards have been implemented and supported to the best of TDF's ability in LibreOffice for years now.
Say what you will about compatibility and formatting consistency between the products, but I've never found it to be show-stopper levels of different in basic documents (especially if the user is mindful of this), and the difference level is typically all minor formatting details that frequently get wonked up anyway even between MS Office major revisions, their online versus full versions, and their Windows versus OSX releases, as well as LibreOffice's own quirky formatting inconsistencies between even their own Windows/Linux/OSX releases. This is why PDF is a thing, and anyone expecting formatting consistency with an editable document between systems is insane, which is why all text editors operate on a horseshoes and hand grenades model of formatting and rendering. This isn't to say that Office hasn't done some gnarly things to bulletpoints and the like on ODF import to exert it's 800lb gorilla status with users, but that sort of thing is easily mitigated by not sending ODT files to Office users in the first place and just exporting it to the same file format you got to begin with, DOCX. To be as hosed and difficult to use as you're suggesting would indicate a level of incompetence on the freelancer's part above and beyond the typical formatting issues, even a decade ago.
If the level of detailed formatting capability that's needed is so high that even the difference between O365 and desktop is a showstopper, then Ebella is using the wrong program for what needs to be done, and should be using InDesign, Quark, LucidPress, Scribus, or even Publisher for layout and formatting using embedded fonts before exporting to PDF or sending to a printer... but they shouldn't be using Word. Just because Word has the tools to do basic layout doesn't make Word a publishing editor. It's a good enough tool for simple documents for people who don't know how to use real publishing software which means they have to accept a certain level of fudge in its layout, and if expectations aren't in line with that reality, then perhaps expectations need to be readjusted.
