This, of course, is irrelevant to those confronted with the today's issues of distributing document-based information. To those decision makers, a large number of alternatives that did not exist in 1989 are available and viable today. The number of word-processors available on the market today is significantly smaller than it was five or ten years ago. So limited is the choice today that distribution of documents in one of the two dominant proprietary formats is not even questioned. In a worse-case scenario, RTF can be used.
Electronic paper is another alternative.
Postscript files are routinely used as a distribution format, as any extensive browser of FTP sites will know. Most importantly, all these technologies work transparently on all production hardware and software platforms. The traditional SGML argument of portability has been overtaken by technology. Viable, low-cost alternatives exist, and there is no reason to believe that they will disappear. On the contrary, indications are that they will get cheaper and more robust.