MS Office for Linux?

[jcallen at narsil.com (Jerry Callen)]

Derek Martin wrote:

> First, let me say that I think that forcing Microsoft to do a port of
> office for Linux as a punishment for being a monopoly is a silly idea.
> Wether it sells well or not, or even if they give it away for free, it's
> still a Microsoft product, and if anything at all, would DISCOURAGE
> competition from other office software developers, rather than encourage
> it. This is hardly the penalty I want a monopoly to endure.

I wholeheartedly agree.

> Others use Linux because it is a very solid
> OS, where MS products tend to crash a lot.  I wonder what market Office
> would have on Linux products.  While I'm sure there are some who would buy
> it, I suspect that the numbers are reletively small.

I'm solidly in that group. It may drive me crazy from time to time, but
the Office suite generally does what I want it to do, and (big point) I
already know how to use it. Sure, I use emacs for text editing, but text
editing is not word processing, nor is it presentation preparation, or
building spreadsheets. I love the stability of Unix. I hate the instability
of Windoze. I like (not love...) Office. What's a mother to do?

> And since all of business has decided to standardize on MS Office,
> the sensible choice (among other penalties) is for Microsoft to open up
> the definitions of their file formats so that all software companies
> and OSS developers can write software that can manipulate these documents.

That would be a start. But it doesn't really address the issue before the
courts, which is about Microsoft's OPERATING SYSTEM monopoly. What *I*
want is for Microsoft to be forced to provide sufficient detail about the
Windows API to enable WINE to *really* run Windows shrink-wrap software.
Then I can run Office, or Lotus SmartSuite, or Quicken, or *anything*
that doesn't try to get cute with the hardware (but, personally, I don't
care about games).

How many people would run Linux if it could run Windows software? I
think you'd see a huge shift away from Windows by business desktop
users who are sick of multiple reboots every day.
 
-- Jerry Callen                      Mobile: 617-388-3990
   Narsil                            FAX:    617-876-5331
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