[R] Import from excel 2007

[Scionforbai]

I just wonder: why should R and its community try to support such an
awful program, with its protected formats and unmantained
features/bugs?
I mean, from both philosophical and technical point of view: R is free
software and should rather try to be 'viral' than to compete. It
already has the strength, in my humble opinion.

You want to use excel: go and use, you payed for it, so you have a
commercial support elsewhere. You are not able to communicate with
other applications? That's the fault of excel, not of R, which is free
software and uses well documented formats.