The Redheaded Stepchild

[KingBahamut]

From the article: 'Microsoft is 100 percent focused on Windows: We have invested billions of dollars in it. We have created Office for the Mac but--and I thought I had been clear on this already when I said 'No'--we have no plans at this time to build Office on Linux,' Nick McGrath, Microsoft's head of platform strategy said.

External Links
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,39274435,00.htm
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26734

Thats a rather brash statement. Given in leiu of the Google complication -- see inquirer link above -- Id think that Microsoft would try to be a little more inclusive. But no, they are spending billions to fight us , rather than try to get along with us. I see a long list of events, This one, The Google Office development, the Mass. OpenDocument argument, The incredible hardware requirements of Longhorn aka Vista, its exclusive payments services for Antivirus and Antispyware and many others as a sign of the times. Now maybe Im wrong, and Microsoft has a couple of hidden nukes in their arsenal they havent let out yet, and thats totally possible at this point or almost likely, but Id think by now that wed have seen this already, or gotten hint of it.

[glug101]

Interesting that they are saying that they are definately not going to do this. MS is usually pretty good with vaporware and postponing allready anticipated software. (Keeping the public in suspense is more of an Apple thing ;) ) They must really think that they would be hurting their sales of Windoze.

Historically, though, they have had to go through 3 versions of a piece of software before they come up with something useful. (Windows, Office, etc...) Could you imagine Linux users keeping their patience through 3 versions of Office for Linux while we have Open Office about to reach the 2.0 mark?

However, M$ software running on Linux by design is an interesting idea. One that I'm sure will come one day;)

[daveisadork]

However, M$ software running on Linux by design is an interesting idea. One that I'm sure will come one day;)
I can see it now:

$ msword
msword: Microsoft Word for Linux must be run as root

[Spoofhound]

From the article: 'Microsoft is 100 percent focused on Windows: We have invested billions of dollars in it. We have created Office for the Mac but--and I thought I had been clear on this already when I said 'No'--we have no plans at this time to build Office on Linux,' Nick McGrath, Microsoft's head of platform strategy said.

On the otherhand, Microsoft's latest reorganization really starts to put some distance between Windows and Office. The strategy is to position Office as a standard front end to business application SW - in particular SAP. As many SAP implementations run in a Linux environment I would doubt if Office on Linux will be far behind.

[xequence]

I doubt they would get many sales anyway if they did offer MSOFFICE on linux. People who use linux like free software, and will use openoffice.org or something else free. People who use windows ether dont know there is a choice, downloaded it, or like to pay for software.

[23meg]

how many of you would pay for Office if it were available in Linux? anyone?

[mstlyevil]

how many of you would pay for Office if it were available in Linux? anyone?

I wouldn't pay for office for Windows.

[arnieboy]

how many of you would pay for Office if it were available in Linux? anyone?
I will, taking into account the status of Openoffice, the best open source alternative to Microsoft Office. Its still too far behind its closed source competitor. I would love to think differently though but certainly not for the time being.

[arnieboy]

From the article: 'Microsoft is 100 percent focused on Windows: We have invested billions of dollars in it. We have created Office for the Mac but--and I thought I had been clear on this already when I said 'No'--we have no plans at this time to build Office on Linux,' Nick McGrath, Microsoft's head of platform strategy said.

External Links
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,39274435,00.htm
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26734

Thats a rather brash statement. Given in leiu of the Google complication -- see inquirer link above -- Id think that Microsoft would try to be a little more inclusive. But no, they are spending billions to fight us , rather than try to get along with us. I see a long list of events, This one, The Google Office development, the Mass. OpenDocument argument, The incredible hardware requirements of Longhorn aka Vista, its exclusive payments services for Antivirus and Antispyware and many others as a sign of the times. Now maybe Im wrong, and Microsoft has a couple of hidden nukes in their arsenal they havent let out yet, and thats totally possible at this point or almost likely, but Id think by now that wed have seen this already, or gotten hint of it.
Its not a brash statement. Its a smart business move. One of the biggest reasons why most generic windows users stick to windows is because of Microsoft Office. It's way ahead of any of its competitors (closed or open). If Microsoft made its trumpcard available on linux, it would lose out on a substantial fraction of its OS clientele and it would almost be like hacking its own feet. No smart business house can afford to do that.. certainly not MS. The linux community needs to stop cribbing about this fact and try and bring OpenOffice to the level of MS office if not beyond it.

[Artificial Intelligence]

I can see it now:

$ msword
msword: Microsoft Word for Linux must be run as root



:D :D :D

and rm -r /

[Brunellus]

I will, taking into account the status of Openoffice, the best open source alternative to Microsoft Office. Its still too far behind its closed source competitor. I would love to think differently though but certainly not for the time being.
80/20 rule comes into effect though; for 80 percent of users only use 20 percent of MSOffice's capabilities. most people would actually be adequately served by Abiword, never mind OOo Write.

where I see Office ahead is in the large enterprise environment--my own office is addicted to MSOffice, in the sense of lots of (proprietary) macros and plugins...not to mention a dependence on Outlook/Exchange.

For the latter, Evolution and OpenExchange exist. But the high cost of rewriting all the MSoffice mods for OOO is going to keep them from moving to free software, much to my annoyance.

[arnieboy]

80/20 rule comes into effect though; for 80 percent of users only use 20 percent of MSOffice's capabilities. most people would actually be adequately served by Abiword, never mind OOo Write.

where I see Office ahead is in the large enterprise environment--my own office is addicted to MSOffice, in the sense of lots of (proprietary) macros and plugins...not to mention a dependence on Outlook/Exchange.

For the latter, Evolution and OpenExchange exist. But the high cost of rewriting all the MSoffice mods for OOO is going to keep them from moving to free software, much to my annoyance.
The question is how u guys come up with such figures and ratios. I can pretend to be an expert and make it 20/80 instead of 80/20 and publish a paper on that in a top business journal as well and probably gun for a nobel prize somewhere in the future for this "great" finding of mine.

Luke...Luke.....Your targeting computer is off....Stay on target....Stay on target.....KB.

[Goober]

how many of you would pay for Office if it were available in Linux? anyone?

It depends on the price, but maybe. It is mainly because I need M$ Office specifically for College, and, well, obviously I must keep Windoze around in order to have M$ office. It would be extremely convenient of M$ Office came for Linux so I could install it, then promptly reformat my Windoze HD.

[KingBahamut]

It depends on the price, but maybe. It is mainly because I need M$ Office specifically for College, and, well, obviously I must keep Windoze around in order to have M$ office. It would be extremely convenient of M$ Office came for Linux so I could install it, then promptly reformat my Windoze HD.

Uh...Crossover office runs office xp relatively well.

Who says you need to keep windows.

[Brunellus]

to be honest, I pulled it out of my ***.

Anecdotally, it seems to be true. I have had very little cause to use the 'advanced' features of Word. Or to put it better, I have not yet found a feature tha I had used previously in Word that I could not use in OpenOffice (or Kwrite or Abiword, for that matter).

I observe that MSWord in particular has become a ridiculously bloated application, and many people are using it for purposes outside its original scope--web page authoring (for the super n00b) and page layout, for instance. I have never bothered to learn those features, because in each case I have sought more specialized applications.

[arnieboy]

Uh...Crossover office runs office xp relatively well.

Who says you need to keep windows.
Crossover office is a buggy piece of <explicative removed> which most serious users of Microsoft Office would be best advised to stay away from. All it does is tell u that it indeed is possible to run MS Office on Linux but when U actually get down to using it, it eats up thrice the amount of memory that MS Office would use on its native OS, crashes and thrashes your system the moment u start clicking ur mouse too fast and leaves u screaming in exasperation. The site claims that MS Office is a "gold" application on Crossover Office (implying its fully supported) which as a matter of fact is farthest from the real truth. Nopes. if u wanna use MS Office in office, u better be on windows.
The jokers even manage to demand 40 bucks for their crappy app.. that sucks the most.

[darkmatter]

I can see it now:

$ msword
msword: Microsoft Word for Linux must be run as root


How about this one

$ msword
msword: msword cannot find msword. Please insure you have msword installed

[arnieboy]

to be honest, I pulled it out of my ***.

Anecdotally, it seems to be true. I have had very little cause to use the 'advanced' features of Word. Or to put it better, I have not yet found a feature tha I had used previously in Word that I could not use in OpenOffice (or Kwrite or Abiword, for that matter).

I observe that MSWord in particular has become a ridiculously bloated application, and many people are using it for purposes outside its original scope--web page authoring (for the super n00b) and page layout, for instance. I have never bothered to learn those features, because in each case I have sought more specialized applications.
Microsoft Office is not bloated. I will call it a comprehensive Office suite. what makes u so sure that u belong to 80% (or thereabouts) of MS Office users just because u make use of less than 0.1% of its capabilities?

[BWF89]

If they offered MSOffice for Linux I wouldn't buy it.

Not just because of the obious moral reasons of supporting a company with unethical business practices but because I hate useing MSO. OpenOffice's interface just seems more friendlier.

[KingBahamut]

Ultimately, Functionality-wise StarOffice, and its baby child OpenOffice, is for my tastes much more functional than Microsoft office as a whole. Many of the newly advented features to be released in OOo2 make it even more so. So to the idea that Microsoft would even need to entertain the idea of porting over MS Office to a Unix platform is , at best, to me an utter joke.

As far as a platform thats comprehensive , it may be that, but it largely involves no innovation or added feature that wasnt required to go into it. UI changes and so forth I do not consider adding any more or less functionality. If it had, I would have stopped using StarOffice a long time ago, if I felt that MSO were anywhere near comprehensive enough for my use.

[poofyhairguy]

I can see it now:

$ msword
msword: Microsoft Word for Linux must be run as root



That was very funny. MS's multiuserness is a great thing to make fun of.

[KingBahamut]

But Poofy, its a Comprehensive Office suite capable of soooooo much.

[mstlyevil]

It was in the news a few days ago that Microsoft and Sun came to an agreement to make Word and Star Office fully compatible. Why would we need Word in Linux if you will be able to port your work back and forth between the two if needed. Also, Microsoft is going to include support now for PDF format so you will also be able to port your work back and forth between Word and any suite you choose. It looks like MS is caving to the pressure slowly to conform to standards.

[arnieboy]

It was in the news a few days ago that Microsoft and Sun came to an agreement to make Word and Star Office fully compatible. Why would we need Word in Linux if you will be able to port your work back and forth between the two if needed. Also, Microsoft is going to include support now for PDF format so you will also be able to port your work back and forth between Word and any suite you choose. It looks like MS is caving to the pressure slowly to conform to standards.
now thats a step in the right direction.

[blastus]

I don't think Microsoft is caving into any kind of pressure for open formats--at least not yet. They have rejected supporting OpenDocument in MS-Office calling it a locked-in, closed, unsuitable, and incapable document format. By their own words, Microsoft has proven that they are either completely ignorant about open formats or they are too arrogant to admit that OpenDocument is an open format and their patent-laden MS-Office XML schemas (which are nothing but proprietary XML vocabularies under their complete control) are closed formats.

Anyone who know anything about XML, XML Schema, RDF, RDFS, and OWL knows what a "vocabulary" is and they know that vocabularies can be proprietary. Just because a vocabulary is specified in an open format (obviously) does not mean that the vocabulary itself is an open format. To argue otherwise is a fallacy. Unless the MS-Office XML Schema vocabulary is submitted to a standards organization and is free of proprietary patents, it is NOT an open format. Examples of open vocabularies are Dublin Core, MathML, RSS, OWL-S etc...to say that the MS-Office vocabulary is an open format is to place it in the same as class as these which it obviously isn't.

OpenOffice lacks nothing useful that MS-Office has save advanced MS-Excel features and MS-Access. Plus OpenOffice is free. Last time I checked, MS-Office Professional (with MS-Access) was over $700 C.D.N! What the hell, I'm not paying that much especially to an abusive, lying, manipulating criminal monopoly.

[super]

Last time I checked, MS-Office Professional (with MS-Access) was over $700 C.D.N! What the hell, I'm not paying that much especially to an abusive, lying, manipulating criminal monopoly.

that's what i'm talking about!! (but not in such poetic language;-) )
ms office is ridiculously overpriced. sure it has capabilities that openoffice lacks, but imo it definitely doesn't have anything that makes it worth $700 when oo.o fits my budget so nicely.

if ms office was ported to linux i would not buy!

[mstlyevil]

I don't think Microsoft is caving into any kind of pressure for open formats--at least not yet. They have rejected supporting OpenDocument in MS-Office calling it a locked-in, closed, unsuitable, and incapable document format. By their own words, Microsoft has proven that they are either completely ignorant about open formats or they are too arrogant to admit that OpenDocument is an open format and their patent-laden MS-Office XML schemas (which are nothing but proprietary XML vocabularies under their complete control) are closed formats.

Anyone who know anything about XML, XML Schema, RDF, RDFS, and OWL knows what a "vocabulary" is and they know that vocabularies can be proprietary. Just because a vocabulary is specified in an open format (obviously) does not mean that the vocabulary itself is an open format. To argue otherwise is a fallacy. Unless the MS-Office XML Schema vocabulary is submitted to a standards organization and is free of proprietary patents, it is NOT an open format. Examples of open vocabularies are Dublin Core, MathML, RSS, OWL-S etc...to say that the MS-Office vocabulary is an open format is to place it in the same as class as these which it obviously isn't.

OpenOffice lacks nothing useful that MS-Office has save advanced MS-Excel features and MS-Access. Plus OpenOffice is free. Last time I checked, MS-Office Professional (with MS-Access) was over $700 C.D.N! What the hell, I'm not paying that much especially to an abusive, lying, manipulating criminal monopoly.

Star office is the proprietary version of OO.o. If a company buys that software, they will be able to render both OO.o and Word formats. I do not see why every body keeps talking about porting Word to Linux when Star Office 8 is going to support Word format. Also with MS adopting PDF support, you could save your work to PDF format and move it to a Linux machine. Microsoft has refused until this week to consider supporting both of these formats. Microsoft does not need to directly support OO.o as long as they support the bussiness canidate Star Office 8. Both are owned by Sun Microsystems. OO.o is to Star Office what Firefox is to Netscape.

[izmaelis]

So I read this article for a few times. It would be quite a facinating news, but it isn't... it's a hoax.
Well Sun never owned (and never will) OpenOffice. There is no such thing as Sun's OpenOffice, it's Sun's StarOffice. It's not even OpenOffice, it's OpenOffice.org

[Sirin]

I can see it now:

$ msword
msword: Microsoft Word for Linux must be run as root


I can't see it. Not when Microsoft is currently trying to lash out on Linux for every little nonproprietary crumb they can find. :mad:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts/default.mspx

[mstlyevil]

So I read this article for a few times. It would be quite a facinating news, but it isn't... it's a hoax.
Well Sun never owned (and never will) OpenOffice. There is no such thing as Sun's OpenOffice, it's Sun's StarOffice. It's not even OpenOffice, it's OpenOffice.org

You better read the liscense agreement again. It specifically states that OO.o is owned by Sun and that it is liscened under GNU. Sun uses it to develop features for Star Office. So go dowload a copy and read the liscense agreement before you call me a liar.