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Microsoft On Linux: Forecast Or Fantasy?
FarHat wrote to us about an article currently running on CNN regarding the long-term prospects of Microsoft and Linux. One of the launch points is the persistent rumors of Microsoft porting Office to Linux, as well as Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning was the Command Line. Fun read, overall.
I guess maybe Microsoft is starting to learn that if they are going to continue to be succesful then they'd better start making ways for people who don't use Windows or Macintosh to use their other products.
"Have you eaten your
I'm sure many NINJA are dying to put their forks down, step away from their pancakes and share their NINJA feelings on this topic. Any takers?
Why not? They already have plenty of stuff for macs so why not Linux? of course most of the people that use linux despise M$ so I doubt that it would sell very well, but you never know.
...to make my linux box run twice as slow like my windows box. I can use vi/emacs to do text processing...there are other apps that I would care about if they were being ported to Linux...
It's nice as a student because I like linux for programming etc, but am make presentations / excel type stuff in Office - It's just easier to integrate with what professors etc. use.. Also, besides using html, powerpoint is available in all the rooms with projection systems.. I know that i can Export etc, but still need office to test, tweak etc.. just my thoughts
Where I work, and at a number of other places, I've noticed that most people aren't so much dependent upon windows as they are on office. If MS ported office to linux, people would be able to smoothly make the transition to linux without having to lose all of the files they've made with MS office on windows. They also would not have to spend a lot of time learning a new office suite. I personally like the other office suites out there right now for linux, but I think this would help bring the average joe over more quickly.
Myth: If I use Linux and encourage others to use it, I'm not hurting anyone.
Fact: Employees of microsoft depend on the sale of Windows to support their families. By not buying Windows you will force them to starve on the street with their families. You can help prevent this by spending your rent and food budget on Microsft products.
Myth: Using Linux will make me a super stud.
Fact: Linux causes severe erectile disfunction. In a recent study, 47 impotent men were given computers running Linux. All 47 reported an inability to maintain an erection after using Linux for several days.
Myth: Using Unix-like OS's will help me grow a thick bushy beard.
Fact: Almost 7% of professional Unix admins do not have thick bushy beards.
I hope this clears things up for y'all.
Thanks,
--Shoeboy
(full disclosure: I am a Microsoft employee.)
I'm sure that in the end M$ will port msoffice to Linux. Office is their big cash cow, making more than everything else, and they are bound to realize that as long as they can sell copies, the bottom line doesn't care if they wrote the OS or not. Right now it's a mostly political thing, but as they start to open up their possibilities, they'll move into software areas that they aren't in right now (hard as that may be to believe) and start looking at the bottom line again.
Wouldn't Linux users be more likely to use an application that is Free and easy to use ?
Besides, does M$ have the patience or the know how to create the different distros of office, or are they going to distribute the source code out for the applications ?
(Of course it would be fun to have the source code.....)
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We recently had several clients start running Office 2000, and were amazed to note that it added several Unix-like features to the *OS*, mostly as services on known ports - like Quote of the day!
One theory is that these may form the beginnings of Microsoft's "3 great new anti-piracy features" licensing engine. We see these posters in Europe, and find them odd... anti-piracy isn't usually a marketing angle that works. But the posters are everywhere in the airports.
Anybody monitored traffic from a NT workstation or 98 box with Office 2000 on it? We dissuade clients from "sharing" software, but I'd love to know what our pals in Redmond are doing. I think they'll have a hard time convincing the judge that the Apps are part of the OS, yet it seems that Office is about to start integrating completely.
I thought that only Trolls and ACs did crap like this.
I guess I am wrong..again.
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WOOO FUCKING HOOO
Moo...FUCKAZ
Please remove the above.
"Reality is less than television."-Brian Oblivion
YEE FUCKING HAA YOU POOR REPUBLICAN BASTARDS!!!
This sig will bend over for a dollar!
from: http://cryptome.org/madsen-hmhd.htm
WAYNE MADSEN
For what it is worth, I am a 20-year veteran of the computer security community. I have served in the Navy, National Security Agency, State Department, Computer Sciences Corporation, RCA, and have consulted on computer security with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, international banks, telecom companies and even firms that manufacture candy.
While working for the FBI and Naval Investigative Service, I put one US Navy official in Federal prison for espionage and other crimes, and I was involved in U.S. counter-terrorism work in Greece and the Philippines. I think I know how the "spook" community operates and, more importantly, how it thinks.
The hype associated with the recent Internet flooding is outrageous and serves the agendas of the military and intelligence communities regarding new vistas for bloated Pentagon and espionage budgets.
On 17 February, National Public Radio's Diane Rehm Show had a round table discussion featuring James Adams, a former London Sunday Times reporter in Washington who is now a drum beater for information warfare, and Jeffrey Hunker, the former head of the White House Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office. Adams suggested that for critical infrastructure protection certain civil liberties must be forfeited. He also stated that Internet transactions should not be afforded the same degree of privacy as the U.S. mail.
Hunker was uncomfortable that some people think that scare mongering has been at the center of the recent packet flooding of the Internet. Adams supported the CIA's creation of IN-Q-IT, a CIA Trojan Horse in the Silicon Valley. According to Adams, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a virtual CIA proprietary firm, is funding, through IN-Q-IT, a program called Net Eraser. None of the participants in the Rehm Show were willing to talk about Net Eraser and some seemed very nervous about discussing it in detail.
This radio program is highly indicative of the current hype surrounding the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks on DOT COM sites on the Internet. Even the use of the acronym DDOS is amazing. Here they are, twenty-something DOT COM executives, who probably never thought about computer security except for watching re-runs of "Hackers" and "Sneakers," using Pentagon-originated terms like "Distributed Denial of Service" attacks.
Why? Who told them to use those terms?
Then Clinton manages to take 90 minutes to attend an Internet security summit on February 15. Northern Ireland's peace agreement is falling apart, the Israeli-Palestine agreement is unraveling, and Russia's new President is putting ex-KGB agents in his government, but Clinton has enough time to talk with a group of e-commerce barons, computer security geeks, and even one hacker. The whole thing appeared to be staged and scheduled way in advance.
The whole so-called Internet "hack" smells of a perception management campaign by the intelligence community. Perhaps the system flooding was coordinated by one group -- however, those types of attacks probably occur on a daily basis without being reported by the world's media. It is important to note that one of the key components of information warfare -- according to the Pentagon's own seminal documents -- is perception management -- psychological operations to whip up public support for a policy or program. The early Defense Science Board reports on Critical Infrastructure Protection actually call for a campaign to change the public's attitude about information system and network security.
The Pentagon is a master at deception campaigns aimed at the news media. They constantly broadcast disinformation to television and radio audiences in Haiti, Serbia, Colombia, Mexico and elsewhere. They are now extending this to cyber space. Critical infrastructure protection is a masterful ruse aimed at creating the myth of impeding cyber-peril.
The major domo is a weird chap named Richard Clarke, a Dr. Strangelove-type character who is Clinton's counter-terrorism czar. He always talks about defensive cyber-warfare but clams up when it comes to offensive US cyber-operations. That is classified.
However, it is certain that the US Government has already done more to disrupt the Internet than any other actor -- state-sponsored or freelance. For the past few years, US government hackers have penetrated networks at the European Parliament, Australian Stock Exchange, and banks in Athens, Nicosia, Moscow, Johannesburg, Beirut, Tel Aviv, Zurich, and Vaduz. The US also engaged in network penetrations in Yugoslavia during the NATO war against that country.
Why doesn't NPR, CBS, ABC, NBC and the others focus on what the US is doing to disrupt the Internet? They are instead falling into a familiar Pentagon trap of deception and diversion.
It does seem kind of bizare. If Linux had MS Office support, it would get Linux a lot of converts.
...Which makes it extremely interesting that there are rumors that microsoft might do exactly that. But hey, they put office on the Mac, so who knows.
I program for a small buisness, and just a month ago, the prez was looking into switching his (rather computer intensive) buisness over to Linux. He almost did, too. The only thing that stopped him was that there weren't enough good office tools for Linux yet, that he could trust the rest of the office staff with. (read as: the people who DON'T program[gasp!]) If Linux had MS Office, then he would probably make the switch in an instant. And I'm guessing that he's not the only small buisness president who looks longingly at Linux's impressive stability record. I think that if MS supported it, it would sort of "legitamize" linux for a lot of people who have heard of it, but dismiss it as "a passing fad", or "something that only true computer geeks can use".
That was a long drop for a wee person like yourself. Hope you didn't split your cantelope on the bottom...
Sheesh--- Slashdot should REALLY weed LFs on posts...
It's the day your bitch mother licks my dick after I cum up her crusty asshole.
YEAH BITCH SCK IT!!!!
If we were, however, to see a split up of Microsoft in which the portion that makes Office is independent of the OS, then I'd say the chances we'd see Office on Linux would increase.
Of course, I can't say what will really happen. Maybe MS will port Office to make a quick buck. Who knows?
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Hehe, thank you, but people will see it under the original article. It's at Score 4 now, and so long, people that are interested in that will notice it. ;) There is no need to post this sort of thing on another forum.
Normally I would reserve comment, but... This announcement makes PERFECT sense to me. See, by having the Microsoft software engineers write code for a REAL operating system, Bill must be hoping that they'll actually learn good development techniques (that is, besides hitting the REBOOT button or slapping a three finger salute-- things they're assuredly experts at). By coding in an environment where mistakes mean just trying again instead of another trip to the water cooler, things might start to really look up for the quality of Microsoft's code. Just one more way that Linux is going to change the world! Never thought it would actually be by SAVING Microsoft's ass... But chalk it up to Bill for having the master plan! BWA HA HA!
I'm not really anti-MS (or any other OS/Software Co. for that matter, as each has thier place), but at the same time am not looking forward to bigger companies coming into the Linux fold fullforce to sell thier costly wares. One can only wonder how long it will be until the primary pieces of Linux software excepted by business (and the masses) would consist of items that you have to pay exorbent prices for instead of using the collaborative freeware projects that have made Linux what is is: A great opsystem bulit by people who aren't in it for profit but for freedom, innovation, and to provide a free alternative to people who can't afford costly software such as MS. I mean if Office 2000 was available for Linux, would business expect MS Office or would they settle for something like AbiWord? Sure, freeware will always be around, but I could see a future in which if you use Linux you'd be expected to work with and exchange information with 'name brand' software and the like that you see with the Win32/Mac envirnoments. I think Linux is commercialized enough as it is, and the addition of MS could potentially be the final nail in the coffin. Hopefully the community will be aware of this and won't loose sight of the GPL, the FSF, and the very spirit of Linux: a collaborative and free opsystem made for the people by the people.
of course most of the people that use linux despise M$
Then again, some of the linux user base/newer linux user base could be people who're switching to linux because of external influence (i.e. someone said "aww, come on, try it" or something) and they may want to be able to keep their windows apps because they're just stubborn that way (or, if M$ had already ported it/made it available on the CD as either for win or linux), and they'd use it da dee da.
Therefore, this might appeal to people who are already accustomed to Microsoft's product/interface and they like it/don't feel the need to find something new, or maybe they're just new to linux from the windows world and would rather have some small piece of windows familiarity. Of course, if I were the target audience, I wouldn't want the product, but i'm not everybody..
Insert mind here.
He was recently stripped of his Karma Whore status and lost moderator access. He must be still reeling from the humiliation.
Because one of the predominant characteristic of OSS is that it's free. So it would make more sense that Microsoft, trying to explore its possibilities in the Linux arena, ported its applications that are already free.
I think it's obvious that the effort required to port Office would be much bigger than porting IE. So it would be better for them if they made some pilot projects.
Plus, there's Star Office (which it's free) so MS would probably be forced to give away Office for free. Do you really think they're going to do that when 2/3 of Microsoft profits come from Office?? A lot of people would move to Linux just to have Office for free. IMHO, it just doesn't match with their business model.
"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams". Elias Canetti
msft would certainly put out Office for linux if they saw dollars in it. Could they expect to make money on it?
Would you pay $250 for Office for Linux? Would it be unwieldy to port to Linux due to support issues on all the distros?
Msft could offer Office for Redhat Linux (insert favorite distro) but then they would really be into antitrust problems. Would it be really difficult to port to Linux? Or is the support issue holding them back.
How is Correl doing with support?
no sig.
If microsoft was to make a linux port of any of their products, it would mean admitting that there is a linux market that they can make money off, and that they do not dominate the operating system market - at least to themselves and their supportors. - Loss of face is usually accompanied with publicity consisting of "Ha ha, look at , they are ineffective!" And their stock drops... Now do you really think that MS will release linux specific ports?
Desperation is a stinky cologne
This is HUMOR. Not flamebait. I'm getting tired of moderators moderating even _funny_ anti-linux posts down. Don't moderate something down because you disagree with it. Moderate it down because it is of the hot grits or Natalie Portman variety.
My $2E-2
Jim
There is a really easy way to distinguish distributions of software for Linux (and Linux itself). Tux can be on every box, or as a readme.gif file along with a distribution.
The girth of the software or distribution defines how fat Tux is! See, for Embeddable Linux, you have a Tux that hasn't eaten in a few weeks. For RedHat, you have one that's been eating too much caviar instead of the regular fish. And for Office for Linux, you have a Tux that has had WAY too much Mackerel, and is really starting to look like he needs to pull his own weight around here....
And who in hell is going to want to buy a product that has a penguin that looks like Fat Bastard stamped on the box?
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
What better way to demonstrate that you're not a monopoly than to port your biggest cash cow to your up and coming rival OS. I've gotta believe that there's some slick consultant telling them to do this to sway the ongoing lawsuit.
"So we port Office 2000 to Linux to demonstrate how even handed we are. Who knows, we sell a few copies and then make it worthless by changing the file formats and slow rolling the port for the next version. By then, the government case will be over and we can resume our quest for world domination. Heh Heh Heh...".
Yeah, I'm a rabid Linux user. I hate Microsoft, because they haven't done anything worthwhile since releasing DOS 5.0. But, that having been said...
;)
I would happily use any Microsoft software that was ported *decently* to Linux. (you know what I mean if you've used Microsoft's "Internet Explorer for Unix". Ugh.)
Unfortunately, I have a feeling that the Wine project will beat them to it. I ran Excel '97 a while back on Wine, and that stupid paperclip came up just fine. Not much else worked, though. I'm sure it's better now. Of course, there's always VMWare, but that's not even close to native! (need a copy of Windows, too much RAM, etc., etc...)
...and if Microsoft can't play fair, let 'em burn. They've been asking for it for years. I'll happily give them another chance, I just don't think they can change their ways by now. But we'll see what the trial brings. Windows 2000 will probably make them more arrogant than ever, now that they've invented a few more features from Unix.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
It ain't happening. No way in heaven or hell is MS porting Office to Linux until it has absolutely no choice (and even then, Gates would probably rather go down fighting).
It isn't the office suite monopoly that maintains MS' dominance. It's not even the OS monopoly. It's the combination of them that is so lethal. It's like that classic hack where you get two intruder processes running as root. Whenever the sysadmin kills one of them, the other immediately restarts it. The only way to kill them is to kill them both simultaneously (not as easy as it sounds) or reboot. The two together are orders of magnitude stronger than either alone.
In the same way, Windows and Office together are literally orders of magnitude stronger than either alone. Whenever Office is seriously threatened by a competitor, MS comes out with a new version of Windows with shiny new features, and a companion version of office using all those new features. By the time the competitor manages to catch up with the new OS, it's all over. Similarly, Office enforces the presence of Windows in literally every computer workplace in America- Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and Powerpoint presentations are the lingua franca of the modern business world, and no self-respecting business user can be without them if they want to communicate with anyone else. All those who have been asked for a resume in Word format raise your hands. I thought so.
The proof is Macintosh- MS Office for Mac, when MS decides to sell it (which is far from always), has always been at least one major version behind the Windows equivalent. This, probably more than any other factor, is what killed the Macintosh as a business product and what will sooner or later kill it entirely.
Mac once accounted for over 10% of the desktop market. Linux now accounts for about 4%. The only concievable reason for MS to sell Office for Linux would be for the revenue, which could hardly amount to more than a few tens of millions. Linux is the most credible threat to MS's dominance in the last 5 years at least. Let's think about this. Is MS going to shatter their iron triangle of software dominance in exchange for an additional 4% of a market they already completely dominate? If you believe that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you for a really great price...
I'd love to see Office on Linux. I really would. But don't hold your breath.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
...as the first company to release software which consistently crashes linux boxen.
Really, kids. MS office is cuddly and all, but I don't really want to have to deal with a 200megabyte office suite that loads slowly and never does what I want it to do. Before I got my hands on StarOffice, I just used emacs to write my papers. It was quicker and easier.
All I want to know, is how many people clicked on the bare breasts in New Orleans video link in the top right corner of the page?
You can get the full text of the Neal Stephenson article at this URL: http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning. html.
This article was posted on Slashdot a while back, so surely Hemos knows about it. However, instead of freely sharing information, he has opted to put up a link to Fatbrain.com, which earns him money. What happened Open Source, Free Software, and the hacker ethic?
If anyone still doubts that Slashdot content has been affected by the editors' own greed, you can now be sure that they have also been corrupted. Wasn't all the money you earned from the Andover IPO enough for you, Hemos? Or has it just made you even more greedy?
Slashdot is a geek site. I guess that the term "geek" has nothing to do with the hacker ethic anymore. Now a geek is a techie who is profitting from the Internet, at the expense of free sharing of information.
I apologize for the rant, but I am very distressed at what has happened here. How many people will buy the book from Fatbrain, instead of reading it online, as Neal Stephenson has intended?
Hello? Signal 11?
Parkay.
Is that you?
Parkay.
That's not Signal 11! It's a cheap substitute!
Parkay.
I don't use Micresoft Officeon my Win box and I wouldn't use it on my Linux box either. I resent it and find it tragical that my fellow students force me to use it to actually write in when doing group projects...
The only tragical part about a port of Office to Linux is that a lot of people probably would use it instead of Koffice, Staroffice and similar suites. That would be bad, cause they really need all the support they need.
I think the Be OS would make a nicer platform than Linux. After the 5 release (soon) the scale will shift. Linux will be left for Internet/Server use where it's BIG brother FreeBSD will not leave enough room for it.
.... in 2002 ;-)
"If" they port to Be, they don't have to open the source and they can charge the same as they do for their platform.
___
I'd give anything to see the stats in 2002 for Microsoft | BeOS | Mac | Linux | FreeBSD |
I predict MS=#1, BeOS=#2
Even without the prospect of a breakup they might have been working on one at a low priority anyway. It would be stupid not to plan for future contingencies. But there's more reason at least for someone to want this to get done quickly.
When MS is broken up, Bill will probably leave with the applications division in his pocket. OS is looking less and less attractive. Win2K is being squeezed from below by Linux and from above by Sun. It will never be the goldmine that Dos/Windos has been. As for that former goldmine, Win9x is the product that's in legal trouble and under scrutiny: dealing with it is just going to get more and more tedious following the settlement/Court Order. Anyway, applications are where it's at profit wise --I thought almost everyone around here agreed that Office is really the basis of the monopoly. And keeping applications under his control keeps Bill mobile in a post-breakup world.
If he wants to remain the Grand Vizier in the future that he has been til now, Bill will abscond with applications and suddenly become Linux's best friend.
Then you will see Bill Gates magically produce "Office for Linux" as if plucked it from under Judge Jackson's robe. At which time, the most common Mac application will be his property, the most common Win32 apps will also be his, and the applications that give Linux the legitimacy to vie at last for world OS dominance will also belong to Bill Gates. During these feats of pretigitation he'll have never left the audience's gaze on center stage for a second, and he should easily find ways to become the biggest beneficiary of the world's "Great March To Linux".
Meanwhile, since that future route (breakup) is not yet necessary, he can slow the adoption of wouldbe competitors in the Linux field. Aren't we just around the corner from Corel's Office2000 for Linux announcement?
When you hear that Microsoft is working on a port of Office for Linux, you can file in it the memory hole--Microsoft may be working on a port, but Microsoft won't be a company anymore when or if this thing is ever released. IOW: it's a vapor announcemnt from a company that hasn't even been born yet. Pure BogeyMan, and nothing to lose sleep over.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
Announcing a Linux distribution with 79% uptime.
Now we are seeing that Linux itself is becoming a commodity - a component which can be plugged in to use in a multitude of purposes. If you are using Linux, you get a solid, clean base that you can build your things on (this applies to other free unices, too, in a lesser extent).
By using Linux, you gain competitive advantage over your rivals who haven't embraced the open source phenomenon. It's only lately that the Big Boys of the industry have begun to understand this. IBM certainly knows it; they are very clearly committed to Linux. SCO got the message. Intel realizes this - and let's not forget the recent announcement by Motorola.
And - you can be very certain of this - Microsoft knows it too. You can be sure that the top heads of the corporation have thought of what Linux may become and how they might counter it. In the end, they, too, might have to submit.
As many others have pointed out, Microsoft is in a difficult situation. By not releasing Office for Linux, they are losing. By releasing Office for Linux, they are losing. The key point is to make the release at the time when they lose the least - or even better - when they have the opportunity to make an advantage of it. The time is certainly not now - and I don't think it's because they are incapable of producing software for Linux; such claims are ignorant FUD from the unwashed Linux advocates. It's not a far-fetched idea that they could release Office for Linux tomorrow if they wanted to - it just doesn't make sense for them.
If the near future goes as I think it will go - if Linux is being made a standard which everyone must (should) conform to (World Domination anyone ? :), Microsoft will start supporting Linux. And they are going to do it the same way as with any other commodity - embrace and extend. They will do everything in their power to corrupt Linux, while making a profit from their Office package.
It's well known that Office is the main cash cow for Microsoft besides the OEM Windows installs. For them to port Office over to Linux (amongst other things) would mean they'd somehow benefit from it - but what are the benefits? More installed seats? Another solution to "compete" with (the "free") StarOffice, ApplixWare etc? IMHO the only benefit is perfect document conversion from Windows to Linux...
You can download a copy of In the Beginning Was the Command Line from Neal Stephenson's site http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning. html in plain text format, or read it nicely reformatted into HTML here.
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
nobody uses linux on the desktop. no, the readership of slashdot does not count. There is no reason for ms to make apps for linux when it will only harm them. this is the dumbest idea I have ever heard.
and no, this is not like the argument for why ms will never make office for mac. Mac was never a threat to MS. Linux is.
(Disclaimer: I've never run Linux - so shoot me down. Tell me where I'm wrong - cause mostly I'm just making guesses when it comes to Linux and what it can and can't do.)
...). Where do you stop - there are a lot of things that "exist" on Windows that would probably take a lot of effort to implement in or port to Linux.
Microsoft does not really gain anything out of porting office to Linux.
They have to:
- develop a whole bunch of "services" that don't really exist under Linux in order to get office to play nicely. (Think OLE / ActiveX type stuff / ADO / OLEDB / ODBC / Unicode? and code pages / Internet Explorer integration
- shoot themselves in the revenue foot becuase now people don't have to buy Windows. I know - I know, but the Mac has never historically eaten into Windows sales - It was an extra revenue source. Linux will be detrimental to Windows sales.
- Train people to support linux? and the office on top of it? I don't think so.
Microsoft never wanted to be in the Unix business. A long long time ago Microsoft had one of the most popular *nix OSes for the intel platform (Microsoft Xenix). They sold it off becuase of the way Windows and OS2 were developing - I believe it was bought by SCO and Xenix either became SCO unix or a lot of it went into SCO unix. (long time ago - could be a bit wrong here...)
End result: They have to work incredibly hard for a very small return... It's not going to happen.
Well I guess the port could be done, but as previous poster have mentioned Office is tighly alligned with Windows. Uncoupling this will take time, IE5 has Solaris/HPUX versions, but they had to start from scratch basing the code on O/S neutral techniques and it STILL doesn't cope with multiprocessor Unix boxes (you have to bind IE5 to a particular CPU to get it working).
Given the functional complexity of Office 2000 (hey even 95 and 97 for that matter) this will be no mean feet.
Also with added competition from the like of StarOffice/ Abiword/K-office and the Linux/Unix desktop environments like gnome/KDE I think that M$ will have some really good competition in the corporate market place (which is where it gets most of its revenues from).
basically these are "Interesting Times" for M$ (thanks to Terry Pratchett for this one:-)
I see people spouting statistics (%5 of users use linux... etc) My question is where are you guys getting these stats? Are they guesses or fact? Anybody got a link?
They misunderestimated me. -- George W. Bush
Are you implying that somehow Sig11 is neither?
If you think Microsoft will ever release Office for Linux you need to take a stroll down monopoly lane. They may start rumours about porting Office to Linux and if the heat gets to them expect them to make a formal announcement of Office for Linux. Just don't expect to see it. They have provided several precedents. Company "X" gets all kind of glory by selling a product Microsoft doesn't have and they need to respond. They announce their intention to make a product that's 10x better, free, and is mere weeks from delivery. At this point they have already won the battle -- everyone waits quietly for the Microsoft solution (who gets fired for recommending Microsoft?) and no one invests in a competitor. Now their options are open. Either they can delay the project indefinitely or they can come out with crappy product that no one buys and blame the lack of sales on the fact that there was no market. Option #1 was used for NetPC, option #2 was used for SMS. Either way the competitor loses and the market is lost. So yes... expect to see Office for Linux announced some day but don't ever expect to see a viable product hit the shelves.
They want to sell copies of their OS too. If they port Office, it'll increase Linux's market share, and I'm positive they'll lose more money from the drop of Windows sales than they gain from the rise of Office sales. Of course, when they eventually make their own Linux distribution, things will be different. That is if they survive The War. :)
Uh, if you mean that it adds services and applications to the OS then yes, that's what software does. I'd hardly refer to it as "modifies NT OS" like that, sure you could think of it that way, but then it's nothing more than an addition.
Just cause Unix distributions generally come with QOTD, doesn't mean it's part of the OS. Anyone could write a service to add QOTD etc to Office. Gee hard. I mean look at VMWare, they managed to write VMWare for NT without any access to NT source code. It's extending the OS without source that windows is good at.
It's not unlikely that Windows apps will be ported to Linux. Seeing as Linux is the 'thing to do' (stamp Linux on anything and it'll sell).
:P.
This is ESPECIALLY true now that Mainsoft have released MainWin for Linux (basically a complete port of Win32 to Linux - includes COM/ODBC/MFC etc). This is the porting tool Microsoft used to get Internet Explorer and Outlook Express on Slowlaris a HP-UX.
Ofcourse, I'm refusing to use any Offfice product on Linux until X has antialiasing
BTW, these people who thinks MS Office is 'bloated', should try Star Office. 30 second load time comapred to 2 second load time....not to mention the way it pretends to be a shell...
There is one thing that alot of people keep forgetting when discussing Microsoft's plans for Linux, even though it has been discussed here several times. The final hurdle Linux has before becoming a major contender on the desktop is having a decent browser. Face it, Netscape is bloat, Mozilla might never be ready, and Opera and Lynx just don't have the features everyone wants. I can see Microsoft porting Office to Linux, without making the slightest dent on its Windows profits, because Office suites are not what people get a computer for anymore, the Internet is. The day Microsoft decides to port a free, full-featured version of IE to Linux (and I know they already did to Solaris) is the day that Microsoft has given up on fighting the open source movement.
Enter the DirtMerchant
Let me explain. I am an expert in the field of Marketing, working for a very large software company (naming no names). Over the last year me and my department have been tasked with "developing a coherent Linux Marketing story". To this end, I have been taking advantage of the Slashdot readership, exploiting their vast knowledge of Linux to truly get inside the minds of the "open source" and "GPL" communities.
Sometimes I have met with outright hostility, and sometimes I am accused of being a "troll" (whatever that is) but since I am getting paid for this, I have to endure it. Indeed it seems such robust interaction is part-and-parcel of the whole "Open source" community. Us Marketers didn't grasp that before, we took our eye off the ball, but trust me, we will not be blindsided again, like we were by the Internet in 1994.
Anyway, my point is this, my large software development organisation has investigated the Linux phenomenon, and we see several key barriers to market dominance of the desktop.
1) Technological
Linux has no support for de-facto industry standards. DCOM, and DirectX are the main examples, but there are many others.
2) Lack of software
Linux lacks the industry standard word processor - Microsoft Word, and spreadsheet - Microsoft Excel
3) Marketing
This is the real problem. Our marketing department has studied Linux for over 4 years, with real serious effort being expended in the last 18 months. We cannot produce a coherent marketing story for Linux. This is despite having one of the largest marketing budgets in the industry. We therefore cannot hope to sell our software on the Linux platform.
There are a whole host of other issues, mostly to do with perception and marketing, rather than technical details. Points 1 and 2 are easily fixed. Our Marketing department was surprised to find that Linux, despite being written by a "communistic" process, actually had quite good security controls. We also found that some of the source code in there was quite well written, even compared to the code some of our best (and by best I mean highest paid) hackers have produced. All in all, the Linux issue is not a technical one. Our products could be ported if we could just figure out a business model where it would make sense. But no such model exists. We spend $millions. Believe me, we would have found it if it existed. The problem is the "Linux Zealots".
The zealots are Linux's market. They are not lucrative. They dissuade naive user takeup of Linux. They talk down, condescend and patronise. They are arrogant. They scare people off. They mumble under their breath about "suits" and "clueless newbies".
Our software company has significant Market share in its chosen niche (some would say too much share). We do not need the incremental revenue that a Linux port of our products would produce.
Therefore we have no plans to port our software to Linux now, or in the next two to three years.
Obviously I am not able to post under my real name, so I sign off, now as before.
thank you
dmg
There are three reasons that microsoft might do this.
1) They think they have lost the OS war and don't want to lose the Office Suite War (This isn't happening yet, and probably won't for a while)
2) They are extending their FUD strategy to create an illusion that linux is a real threat, and if successful, they will have an easier time defending their position that they are not a monopoly in court.(I believe this makes the most sense, at least at the present)
3) They are setting up to build their own distributions, in which their "enhancements" only work with their distribution, therefore causing a migration to their distribution(this is also not very likely, and it would be tough to do this without violating the GPL)
We are Microsft. Lower your shields and surrender your kernels. We will add, extend and extinguish your technology to our own, your OS will adapt to service us.
Jonathan.
--
jonathan@easypenguin.co.uk
well dmg, as one of the "zealots" you so kindly refer to in the above excrement, i wish you luck. unlike most people in the us, i don't apply the same tyrannical connotations to the concept of communism, and as a user of the "communistic" os varity, i would like to point out to you that the internet has grown so enormous due to its "socialistic" practices and the gift economy it embraces (take a night class in sociology or poly-sci, it might actually help with your marketing strategies, plus you might also be able to discern between the two philosphies). i wish you good will, but i am afraid your ideas are a thing of the past. (and good ridance to bad rubbish)
Enter the DirtMerchant
Still, he did title his essay In the Beginning was the Command Line, which you must admit has a sort of comp-sci history feel to it, so maybe Stephenson was trying to project the impression that he's an expert. =)
-Noodle
Well, at least they didn't push any cookies this way when I turned the proxy off temporarily.
NOSPAM@REMOVETHIS.NO.SPAM - you'll find the real address somewhere
. If MS ported office to linux, people would be able to smoothly make the transition to linux without having to lose all of the files they've made with MS office on windows.
But this is M$' whole modus operandi. They suck you in with easy applications, then tie you to a crappy OS by integrating the applications with the OS. Office for Linux is the first step on the road to MS-Linux. And nobody wins when that happens, but the "mass market" users never get to know what they've lost.
I suppose that we could hope to rely on the GPL to keep the source open, and to stop MS-Linux from taking over the whole shooting match, but are we sure the GPL is watertight? My brother works for an IP law firm (not the one run by Bill Gates' dad, but they're pretty big), and he claimed to me that he had a document detailing eight major and 12 minor weaknesses in the drafting of the GPL. Who's to say that some of these weaknesses can't be tricked up by an expensive lawyer into a justification for closed-source MS-Linux? Which then comes to dominate the market because it, unlike the open source Linuxen, has a credible suite of office applications.
Would the webmaster please delete the above post, which contains proprietary and confidential information. This is a polite request; I hope that no further request will be necessary. I understand the Internet as well as the next man, and I mean no disrespect to this site or its values, but I cannot allow the above post to remain.
--John Saul Montoya.
44/E1403 Avenue of the Americas
In HMO office is the best wordprocesser/spreadsheet package around, however I don't think that Lotus SmartSuite is to bad either.
Basically me and most other users would be happy with either one. Is there any chance of IBM doing a smartsuite port to Linux I wonder? They don't have any problems with OS's any more (OS2 is dead) and they would have the staff for it.
They have just finished porting Lotus Notes r5 to linux, which also shows they take Linux seriously.
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
Why in god's name would we want that bloated hunk of crap? It's awful.
Do we really want a word processor that intentionally fscks up its file format with every new version so that when one guy/gal in the office gets a new machine bundled with the latest version, the entite company is subtlely reminded that they'd better upgrade or be left behind?
Do you really want a word processor that uses 25% of your screen real estate for undecipherable buttons that access hundreds of obscure features that you'll never use?
Do you want what is arguably one of the more important computer program's design to be determined by an asshole marketdroid named Brad who gets promoted based on his haircut?
Do you want a goddamned paper clip making idiotic suggestions every ten seconds?
We can do this ourselves. Let's stop yearning for shitty software. Let's stop reinventing MS' lowest common denominator garbage. Let's write stuff that's actually GOOD. Write stuff that's really revolutionary.
This is our time. This is our movement. We do not have to be condemned to reinventing shoddy apps.
Which is not to say that MSOffice is unimportant--I understand how fundamental it is today. But if we're to make our computing lives better, we need to stop being content with the same market-driven crap that's been shoved down our throats since 1982.
I don't mean that we should use Emacs or even TeX. It's pretty obvious that the world would like a good word processor. We could very easily give the world one that doesn't completely suck, and without too much effort.
I've tried AbiWord, StarOffice, Applix, Word Perfect...they all pretty much suck as well.
So when will it happen? Why don't I do it? I don't know...maybe because there are too many confusing X toolkits, or that X sucks in general, or that people are afraid that a word processor that doesn't attempt to clone Word will die.
Whatever, I'm going to get back to writing an X CD player.
MS have heard of Applixware, StarOffice, KOffice, Gnome Workshop, and all the other independant apps, like Abiword. None of these are marked with a big "Microsoft" on it. None of these bring money to Microsoft. This is a big pain in Billou's ass. Microsoft don't want to see Offices that are not prefixed by "MS". Microsoft don't want to see software that don't bring them money. So Microsoft will make everything to prevent development of non-ms applications on Linux. The only way they have is to say "Hey, soon you will have MS-Word, and MS-Excel, MS-Access, MS-Paintbrush! Don't try to use the poor tools other people could made, use MS-Application, and BUY THEM!" But porting MS-Office or MS-Visual Studio to Linux will allow people to abandon Windows. They don't want it. They don't port anything. Microsoft strategy is vaporware. MS-Office for Linux *is* vaporware. What Microsoft ignore is that this strategy won't work on Linux, because Linux live thanks to peoples wanting to make it a complete OS, without need for commercial applications. Microsoft hype and vaporware won't discourage people to code for Linux. Hopefully one day Microsoft will die, or (better) be forced to change their mind and behavior.
M$ Office must be destroyed and replaced by useful programs with stable file formats, preferably open standard. hey thats a neat idea, imagine if every word processor shared the same file format. u could do this with XML or even HTML anyway *now*
Seems like the only way Microsoft would do it would be if they happened to break up the company (for the sake of team morale, or to keep their competitive edge, or something), splitting themselves into an OS company, an Office software company.....
Then perhaps they would have a compelling reason to expand the market for MS Office
-- not dmg
(and I mean it)
Microsoft have a policy of only supporting UNIX platforms that run on non-Intel architectures. It is Microsoft doctrine that its OSes are the only official OSes on Intel platforms (hence the way their OSes clobber the MBR without asking, and sabotaged OS/2 file attributes).
It would take a drastically changed environment for MS to support Linux.
Great, that's all I need, a paperclip dancing around my screen.
--
Lab test show that use of micro$oft causes deadly cancer in lab animals.
here is how it shall work, remember os2? o yeha i just reminded you of it, thats windows in about 10 years.... name me 3 os2 applications.... you cant? o well thats windows in 10 years.... i use windows not linux, only because IT IS EASYIER TO USE FOR WHAT I DO, but as far as it being "stable", windows 3.1 didnt crash as much as 9x, nt and 2000. linux will no doubt be run by 75% of the world before too long becuase its open source, and is STABLE.
Apple didn't go with Linux, because of the license issues. And now Mac OS X is a BSD. It would make much more sense for MS to use a BSD for both their ports and a distribution if they decided to make one.
Linux distributions (we must make the distinction between Linux -- a kernel -- and a true distribution) have always been something of a Frankenstein, different pieces thrown together from all across the globe. BSD systems are much more centralized. Yes, a percentage of the userland code is shared, but the organization is MUCH better. Microsoft has always enjoyed controlling all aspects of their distributions in a similar manner, and the BSD model goes along with this very nicely.
I personally enjoy the zen of BSD, a feeling I never quite had with Linux. scouring obscure FTP sites for source packages (I was a Slackware user) and compiling everything myself was fun for a while but it became a monumental waste of time. Dual booting to Linux and FreeBSD just made me feel dirty, so bye-bye Linux and hello OS ZEN.
I look forward to Microsoft BSD and taking advantage of their applications myself. Maybe Linux users should start working on a good FreeBSD emulator.
--Updating src-porno
Here are some likely scenarios where MS will port Office to Linux/Unix and still stomp on competitors:
(1) Microsoft is broken up into smaller units due to the anti-trust litigation. This seperate entity has more leeway choosing its destiny and profits are not tied to the sucess or failure of Windows.
(2) Microsoft releases the X-Box as an inexpensive sub $200 system. Instead of taking $100 or the complete system integration profit it gets to take the entire deal. Competing vendors must pay MS for the OS and face narrower profit margins or swith to Linux, Solaris or some other free alternative. The OS for the X-Box is either a dumbed down version of Win2K or NT with gaming improvements or 98 minus the bells and whistles.
(3) Microsoft plays NT (or a variant thereof) against Linux like Intel plays the Celeron against AMD Athlon. NT will be priced to undercut Linux distros while Win2000 becomes the premium choice. Office runs on either but they ensure it runs just a little bit better on NT. NT becomes slightly compatible with Unix but Win2000 and future releases don't. RH, SUSE, Mandrake, and TurboLinux struggle to compete selling distros under $20, providing support and paying the new Suit's salaries. Corel remains the wildcard with the tools necessary to compete with MS.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
That's it guys, I'm going home.
I've been using this M$ app lately and i've noticed - please don't kill me - it does pretty much everything I need as far as word processing goes. Its called Wordpad.. The only thing it really lacks is pagebreaks :) But otherwise I find it fine for a nice, quick word processor one step up from Notepad and one giant bloatware leap below the bs of the Office suite. Cheers.
Is there something you'd like to tell us "Mr. Montoya"? How can the post you are referring to be proprietary? Confidential, I can see. Please feel free to express your comments here. We're always happy to listen. :)
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
One solution to the MS antitrust trail that i'm surprised I haven't heard is forcing MS to port office to other OSs. Many people realize that Office is MS second big stick. MS can still force apple to do ANYTHING by simple saying that if apple doesn't comply MS will issue a statement saying the will no longer support office on the mac. Bang apple will drop like a stone.
I think a settlement should be that MS port Office to the two most successful rivals with no string attached. Thus free apple and makeing office availible to linux and perhaps Be.
Maybe someone in the justice department has had the same idea and MS is getting a head start on the porting.
Right now, Linux may be 3% of the business desktop market, but that is because MSOffice is not available for it. Were MS to release Office for Linux, that number would jump to about 25%, or much larger than the Mac.
The Mac market WRT business is saturated: you are unlikely to see a huge increase in the number of Macs being used in a business sense (by this I mean word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc., not graphics manipulation or page layout.) The Linux market is like a supersaturated solution: one disruption and the system will undergo a massive state change.
This is both why MS won't port Office in the near term (since it would "knife the baby") and why they must port it in the long run. Eventually, all that potential money just sitting there waiting for somebody else to grab it will be too much.
However, the day MS announces Office for Linux is the day MSWindows has a sheet pulled over its head and a toe-tag tied on.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Xenix may have been popular, but it was widely
regarded as being very very outdated...
SCO bought Xenix from Microsoft, and then later
renamed it.
WRT all the services you mention, many of them
already have parallels or implementations on
Unix. XPCOM is proably a suitable replacement for
COM.. unless they get a clue and go CORBA, in
which case there are lots of choices... Unicode
is already pretty much there.
There are plenty of database libraries you can use
... I don't really see how ODBC is really an
interesting technology...
It seems that most of the things you want to talk
about are OLE and friends....
While I wouldn't claim that it'd be an easy port,
I doubt it'd take nearly as much reinenting the
wheel as you describe.
OTOH, perhaps it's a good thing that there isn't
Office on Linux -- if staroffice becomes enough
of a standard, then when Linux crushes windows,
no parts of microsoft will manage to ride the
tide...
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
One poster mentioned this in passing, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a Linux distro come from MS one day. Why not? The market is fragmented, with many sources for the same basic thing. That is one of the strengths of Linux, but it would like like an opportunity to a company like MS. They might be able to package a distro with a swanky installer and support for MS networking by default. If a corporate buyer wanted to run Linux somewhere on their MS-dominated network, why wouldn't they at least consider using the MS distro? I'm not really an anonymous coward, just too lazy to create a login. arichardson@yourvisa.com
Honestly, let's consider some facts (admittedly, a few well known):
1.) Linux is becoming a reasonable threat in the server market, but will ALWAYS be a negligible threat in the home market. Given the reasonable expertise of the average Linux user, as an OS it can never hope to compete with the (now reasonably) intuitive Windows installation and inteface.
2.) One of the places I work runs a lot of Web servers on NT. While it is absolutely ridiculous how unstable NT 4.0 was as a platform (every web server of 13 would crash at least 4 times a day), under 2000 it is amazing. This leads onto:
3.) Microsoft is now doing things right, IMHO. I don't think it is fair to bash a company for their aggressive tactics, which might be unfair. Nevertheless, some of Microsoft's newer products are fantastic (relatively speaking). Anyone who has developed web pages has to admit IE 5.0 is far better than Netscape 4.x. And Win 2000 is a fairly substantial improvement on previous versions, although more could be done.
4.) Open source will never be as big as in-house production. It is a simple matter of resource allocation. While I am continually stunned by what open-source projects manage to achieve, a company like Microsoft can very easily bring to bear enough excellent coders and a large budget.
5.) The reason Microsoft is #1 is because they have never been slow to react. Compare this to Apple, IBM, DEC, Digital...
The fact that Microsoft does little about Linux indicates its insignificance. Linux will always be a toy, just as Unix is a toy -- here toy as in for home users. I use Linux & Win 98 together, simply because Linux does not do a quarter of the stuff I need done, and I do not have the time to develop it. I admire those out there who do make the time.
Simply recompile... wouldn't it be nice if application porting was that simple.
Loz
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
It is possible - however unlikely - that they would release a Linux version of Office for every architecture apart from Intel.
That would be..... interesting.
So how long until we see Gates release a microsoft distribution of linux so they have an excuse to port al their software and crush the open source competition? of course any MS distro would come with all the microsoft standard features, including crashes at least every 24 hours and 65,000 bugs so the producers can keep a job producing MS Linux Service Pack 2 :)
(and people would probably buy it too...)
"Oh, it has anti-piracy features. This means I won't have a chance to get a pirate copy, so I'll buy my own copy right now !"
Firstly, I've noticed how many people think MS will do this or that just because it's MS. Like refuse to port to linux, even when the market forces them to.
That is simply not true. MS is not run by Bill Gates, but by the stockholders. Whatever is good for the stock price will be done. So my guess is that they _will_ move to linux if the market tells them it's best to do that.
But remember, consumers != stock. So how many people beg for a linux Office, it won't be there until corporate america wants it.
And another thing.
I assume Office is being ported. Not to be released, but to have a version ready for release when they need it to. Assume they wouldn't do it, and suddenly they _have_ to have an Office for linux. The time it takes to port is something they can't handle then.
So what if it's a waste of resources to keep a ported version unreleased, it could save resources later on just by keeping it handy.
I mean look at VMWare, they managed to write VMWare for NT without any access to NT source code. It's extending the OS without source that windows is good at.
A nit: VMware is an Intel instruction set specific program that runs largely at the application level (ring 3). It requires very little at the OS level (ring 0). For Linux, it uses a module to handle some ring 0 calls, and under NT can do the same thing with either a device driver or even in the app itself.
The source for the Linux module ships with VMware, so you can see for yourself.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Check the UID of the poster... and then go check Signal 11's recently posted comments. Someone's been playing around a WEEEEEEE bit too much with the slash code, and figured out a way to AC post w/ people's names.
We see these posters in Europe, and find them odd... anti-piracy isn't usually a marketing angle that works. But the posters are everywhere in the airports.
:-)
In Boston last summer there were poster advertisements suggesting users report pirates (and a phone number to take the reports) by the BSA in almost every car on the Red Line (subway -- MBTA). I personally defaced over fifty of these posters by placing large stickers (about half the size of a 8"x11" sheet) right over the "drop a dime" phone number, promoting the use of Free Software instead of worrying about piracy. I pointed out that reporting office co-workers and friends were police state tactics and that Free Software (linux and BSD) was more stable, had a large share of similar applications and a quality development evironment which users were legally encouraged to copy.
The materials cost me about $30 bucks plus some laserprinter time, and I took about two rolls of film containing photographs of the modified posters to document my escapades. One of these days I'll post them on a geocities or yahoo page anonymously... I had a LOT of fun doing this, and frankly the risk was pretty low. Unfortunately, the T staff took the defaced posters down QUICK instead of letting my work be a real education for T riders.... (ohhhh) However, the BSA gave up and I haven't seen another of these advertisements since.
Anonymous for obvious reasons.
The best solution for everybody: Linux users will get drivers for all their hardware, Microsoft users will get Linux system stability for their applications.
Only the Wine developers will have to find another hobby. (I need Vax emulation in Linux)
Not to be a doubting Thomas, but I really doubt this will happen in the near future. There are really quite a number of reasons which would prevent this from happening:
- The port would difficult because there is almost certainly a lot of Windows and/or Mac specific code in Office.
- They would need to actually support Office on Linux and train their support people to use Linux. This would mean more people and more code to track.
- They would probably catch all kinds of flack if they didn't support Office on non-Intel processors.
- They would take a serious PR hit by formally recognizing a competitor in the desktop space.
- WordPerfect for Linux, Star Office, K-Office and a lot of other word processors are free (at least for home use). MS couldn't compete completely with this model unless they made Office for Linux free for home use. If they made Office for Linux free for home use, they would probably catch bad PR if they charged for Office for Windows. This is a lot of money to MS.
- The Linux port would almost certainly cost more than it's Windows counterpart to offset the porting & support cost. Would you spend 2x as much as a Windows version for the same thing? Especially since most people get Windows for "free" with their PC.
- They would actually face competition in this market from the existing install base. The existing distros tend to include competing products to Office.
Don't get me wrong, I think if MicroSoft is broken up that it could possibly happen, but I just think that by the time it does happen it won't matter any more.
I guess I'm a purist, but Office Suites are getting close to saturation with features. How many of the new features in Office does the average person use? I really don't use my word processor for anything more complex than I did 5 years ago. Eventually people will become tired of the forced upgrade and the useless features. When this happens the office suites will become more like a commodity than a product.
But then again, maybe I'm living in a dream world.
Why do you link to Fatbrain for books since they use ASP's? Why support someone who supports Microsoft? Seems a bit two-faced on your part.
Of course MS will never do this, since it is the main reason that:
Things will only get worse if UCITA passes, because then it may be illegal for any company to reverse-engineer the MS Office file formats. Then we'll see the true power of mindshare.
An example:
Warning in advance, this will get moderated down because it does not mindlessly follow the Slashdot Party Line. But oh well. Let's see some of the crap that they wrote in this "article":
.. taking their guns, censoring their speech, prohibiting their religion, and all of that.
Ironically, Linux, not Windows, is known in the industry as one of the most stable and robust operating systems. But Microsoft won't compliment Linux, because it doesn't sell Linux applications.
What total and utter FUD. Here, CNN is simply parroting the lies of the Linux zealot community. A properly-configured Windows machine is more stable than a Linux machine -- properly configured or not. There is no argument about this among informed technical circles. Yet the liberal media at CNN would have people believe that Windows crashes left and right while Linux runs uninterruped for years. WRONG. It really pisses me off that people can write stuff like this and get away with it. Apparently "journalistic integrity" is not something that Chairman Turner likes to preach to his People's Liberation Press Corps.
Clearly, if Microsoft loses its stronghold with consumer operating systems, porting its software to the newcomer is the way to stay afloat. But the same corporate Darwinism that helped Microsoft achieve an OS stronghold may also prevent it from acting in its own best interest.
All right, here you have CNN creating a fantasy scenario that is bad for Microsoft. It is ludicrous to even entertain the possibility that Microsoft will "lose its stronghold" with consumer operating systems at any time in the near or distant future. Yet, by discussing it in this manner, CNN makes it sound as if it is a potential outcome! They do the same thing with politics. By sucking up to John McCain and ignoring George Bush, these idiots give people the impression that McCain is a viable candidate that can win. Well, he's not. A couple of primary wins won't even come CLOSE to getting you the nomination! BUT YOU WOULDN'T KNOW THAT FROM WATCHING CNN! And along the same vein, Microsoft is not in any danger -- at all -- of losing its OS dominance. (I won't even mention the article's reference to Darwin or his flawed and universally rejected theory of evolution.)
It should come as no surprise that the Liberal media hates Microsoft and wants to undermine its power however possible. It should come as no surprise that the media is lining up behind Linux and all that it stands for. It does not surprise me in the least that the leftist media establishment is unleashing a full frontal assault on the very foundation of capitalism in this country. That foundation is important, innovative corporations such as Microsoft that are responsible for the booming economy that we now have. The Media establishment wants to destroy the economy and breed a whole new generation of Americans that are more receptive to the idea of the Government stepping in and controlling their lives
Real Americans have known for years that this is what the Media is all about. And here, CNN doesn't even attempt to disguise it's true colors. They are truly a foot soldier for their radical left and their battle to destroy decent society and usurp the authority of the Almighty. Don't listen to them.
It's proprietary fucken information, alright! You guys may be happy to work for nothing, or for magic beans, or something, but me, I got fucken bills to pay. I don't give a fuck what you think, that post was put up by someone who had no right to disclose what he fucken disclosed and it should fucken come down. Who the hell do you think youa re to tell me what the fucken difference is between "proprietary" and "confidential"? I'm a fucken black letter corporate lawyer with seven years in IP law and a degree from Hah-vard. Yeah, that's right. And I didn't fucken put the hours in for the last ten years so that some fucken website can publish information with no regard for my privacy or property.
I don't want to cause trouble. Just fucken take the post off. You've replied to me now, so don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.
--montoya
I'm not sure if I want to see MacroViruses in Linux... Maybe Microsoft just want to extinguish many Office Packages that has grown around because of their multi-platform capabilities. Anyway, If it's from Microsoft, I can only expect some trick to hurt competition. But that is only a feeling...
If past performance is anything to go by M$ can leverage their control over Office dependent consumers to influence the direction of development of linux. It is not inconceivable that they could release versions that work with certain features that are present in for example, kde but not gnome or some other variant. What is at the moment a reasonable free competitive arena for software apps could be severly distorted.
Of course maybe us amateur strategists have got it wrong and M$ just want to offer *nix users an opportunity they have been _desperately_ waiting for...or maybe not...
While a port of Office would be fine, there's much work to be done before the typical Linux environment is as comfortable as Windows. I have to admit that while I love the stability of Linux, it still makes me feel like I'm living in the 1970s. That's how I felt almost ten years ago when I used UNIX workstations during the day, and the general consensus was "UNIX is a dying dinosaur."
I'm still unable to get sound working on my Dell machine running RedHat 5.2. I still get "pixel trash" using the latest Bashee driver for X that I can find. And I've started tiring of having to spend hours grabbing constanst updates for this part of the system and that. I would much prefer using Linux all the time, but it isn't there yet. I'd run a web site on a Linux server in a minute, but I sheepishly have to admit that it's still a clunker as an alternative to Windows for most everyday tasks.
Mr. "Potty-mouth" Montoya,
The post you objected to contains hearsay evidence. "So-and-so told me about a document..." What's proprietary about hearsay?
Regarding the alleged document: If you're the "so-and-so" who spilled the beans about the alleged document--a document that's so bloody proprietary and confidential--then YOU should have gotten the spillee to sign an NDA before spilling.
Seems to me it's YOUR problem, not SlashDot's.
------ "Darn floor. Big bite." (Koko the gorilla's best attempt at explaining the experience of an earthquake.)
If Microsoft did port MS office to linux, would you use it? I certainly wouldn't. StarOffice is free (except for businesses), has all the capabilities of office, and you can save in the office 97 format! In order for the linux revolution to continue, we need to cast away our dependance on Microsoft rather than port their products to linux. BOYCOTT MICROSOFT!
the day Rush Limbaugh delivers the commencement speech at a liberal arts college....
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
D'oh! I better switch back to Windows!
I give up. You're not registered as an attorney in either New York or Washington. What do you do, anyway?
I apologise for my language -- but I am getting pretty tense about this. A few people who I thought I could trust (there's another one on this thread) decided to shoot their mouths off, just because some boob put up a story about "Microsoft and Linux". I probably over-reacted, but the facts are that this is just a really bad time for people to be making lazy comments like this. Now could you, as a personal favour to me, remove the comments, please? It's not like they're incredibly interesting content for your website. OK sue me (don't), I'm a "clueless newbie". Does that mean I deserve to get in trouble with my boss? Have a fucking heart, will you?
Do you have a problem with my name, by the way? "John" happens to be my given name, while "Saul Montoya" was the name of the man whose family adopted me. I thought it was customary to adopt a fake name. And God knows, I don't necessarily want this heap of crap to be traced back to me.
--should have stuck to calling myself streetlawyer, I guess.
Everybody knows that the big push for the Office team is to make a web-based client for the next version. This means that you will be able to access MS Office through any OS, not just Windows.
OF course, this will require that MS ports IE to Linux (quite similar to the UNIX Win32s port of IE4)-- but it makes sense in the long term if that is where they are going. If they can get everyone hooked on IE because you need it for Office -- they can charge for IE on non-MS platforms. This way, they can maintain their revenue stream even from non-Windows customers. They are businessmen, not stupid, folks.
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
"Microsoft could simply recompile its applications to run under other OSes. But this strategy goes against normal corporate instincts..."
.dll's and Active-X/OLE controls. As far as I know this doesn't exist on Linux or at least not how Microsoft needs it.
There is two main reason that Microsoft isn't porting their software right now:
1) They Can't - There is no way that they can port their software that easily. It's not a matter of recompiling the application. Microsoft is used to customizing the operating system to the application as much as the application to the OS. Most of their application are built up now with layers of
2) They don't want to yet - Microsoft has the upper hand right now. They OWN the software world. If you could run Office on Linux, many businesses would be able to switch to Linux easily. On the other hand, because there is no Office, and people have become so dependant of the Microsoft way to do things, they keep it how it is and you use Windows. I realize the Office clones are quite good (I use StarOffice) but they are not what the average user is used to. As long as they have the software market, their OS will still be used.
I'm usually a staunch MS hater.. but to be rational, they do make some good products.. they just go too far to corner the market.
LOTS of their products are both good and useful, their only drawback being an intnentional difficulty in using non-ms products with them.
So. why am I proud of them? With Windows 2000, MS decided NOT to ship a whole bunch of vendor drivers.
With windows, they would say 'we support lots of hwardware... more than our competitors. WIndows is great.' And from a marketing poitn of view, I guess this worked, but from a technical view, it's the manufacturers responsibility to make sure the drivers for their product exist. MS had them convinced that to make your product cool, windows had to support it, so you had to give your driver to MS.
Now they've backtracked. Win2k is great (I mean, it's still windows, and it sure doesn't replace unix, but it's the best thing MS has released yet.). Win2k by itself is very stable. Oops. I added the 3dfx drivers, and after a while, while watching some video, it crashed. From what I've seen, it really *IS* the third party drivers that are messing things up (and linux is no different).
If we had the full windows API, ported (OSS or not, though of course OSS is good) to Linux by MS, and the built the 'Lindows' or top of it, or whatever, and had all their apps recompiled... we'd get all the advantages of Windows as a desktop, and all the advantages of Linux as a backend. But this will only work if MS decides to use the power of linux, instead of trying to extend and extinguish it. The windows desktop has to be X compliant, and the control panel has to work on standard init scripts (at least, human readable ones)
You don't need source code for a linux product, just binaries for the right CPU and libc version... So for slackware x86, you would need 2 binaries to cover the last 2 versions alone. Getting back on topic, you're right that BeOS is a more likely candidate. The reason for this is that BeOS dosn't support nearly as many different platforms as Linux, and dosn't have a billion different distribs using different version of libc. To effectivly release a product for Slackware that covered the last few versions, you would need to release at least 2 binaries. Sad, but true.
Desperation is a stinky cologne
At the moment, micros~1 has the dominance in the office suite, and charges accordingly.
Even if they release a linux version (almost certainly a binary only distribution, targeting a few distros, perhaps even only their own *shudder*), this does not stop the need or the utility of a free office suite.
Even if micros~1 gave it away for free like IE, a truly free version with source would still make a lot more sense to many (especially if the user/developer base was significant).
It is interesting to see large companies, usually competitors, collaborating in their own ways with linux. Many of them are hacking the kernel, or hacking at apps, often at levels below managament. They are doing this BECAUSE THEY CAN, ie, because the source is available.
A truly free/open source office suite should attract similar collaboration if the functionality is there.
In the long run, micros~1 is doomed
"In the long run, we are all dead" - John Maynard Keynes
While folks may doubt that assertion, if you look at the release of Windows 95, the OS was done way way WAY before the MS office suite was ready. So they held up release of the OS until the suite was ready so that upon release, they would have the ONLY 32 bit applications natively compiled for the OS. (Lotus and everybody else had beta versions of the API, but not the final release Win 32 API). So early on, companies who needed 32 bit code with any kind of interoperability had no choice but to standardize on M$ Office.
Although I didn't upgrade, AFAICT they did the same thing with 98 and are planning the same strategy with the Win2K Desktop.
Only this time because of Linux, we have a stable choice for another well supported OS.
What I think this means in terms of the future of Microsoft is that if Win2K flies like a lead balloon because of Linux, the applications group(s) will have no choice except to port the suites to other OS's.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
But it is also known that 15% are dwarves. As the buring question, "are there no female dwarves, or do they have beards?" has yet to be answered, we still don't know whether the 7% are female, or whether they are follicularly challenged males while the 7% female are bearded dwarves . . .
Similarly, MS will never port office to Linux because ***businesses*** (the bulk of office buyers) will leap at the idea of Office running on a really stable platform with real security that the company can control. Right now, they only use MS and accept all its security risks because they have no choice. Office on Linux will mean businesses abandoning vast numbers of Windows machines. So MS will not do this... ever.
You need to contact Jeff Bates (aka Hemos) or Rob Malda (CmdrTaco). Right now, Malda is on vacation, so Jeff Bates would be your best bet, hemos@slashdot.org.
------ "Darn floor. Big bite." (Koko the gorilla's best attempt at explaining the experience of an earthquake.)
Queer.
Please be careful about the use of the word free in this context.
OSS is largely free, as in free speech (or better, freedom). What Microsoft and Sun are doing with IE and StarOffice are gratis, like free beer.
For a refresher on what "free software" means, see RMS's essay on the subject.
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
That depends on the distribution you use. Slakware does in fact cause severe erectile disfunction however RedHat doesn't. And Debian actually makes your penis grow! Why, in the first 3 weeks that I used Debian, my penis grew 4 inches! Do the words "Foot long hot dog" bring anything to mind? There you go, then...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If I were them I'd develop it in (mostly) secret and if the snowball becomes an avalanche, release it then. If the snowball peters out, just throw the code out. If Linux goes away, MS won't mind throwing out the work of an entire development team (It's not like they can't afford to) and if Linux gets big, MS can jump on the bandwagon then after having milked 'doze for all it was worth.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I agree with you. I thought the same thing about "what if MS ports Office". But then I was thinking, "what can we do if they did." Now, I also sure that MS thought this, and thought about what might go wrong (well maybe). Say they did port Office for Linux, but a broken Office. Now RedHat refuses to install it, since it is not under GPL. Corel has their own suite so they don't install it. But maybe Caldera? or are they in with Applixware? So you have SuSE, Slackware, Mandrake. But they decide not to. Whose left? LinuxOne! They install it, but it's broken. Then it is discovered that they are not apart of the Linux Community, and all the bad things associated with Office just goes on top of LinuxOne.
That's not too bad of a scenario. How about this. Office is installed on most of the distributions. But it is broken. Then an e-mail is leaked that has one of the top guys at MS writing to Balmer about how to break Office on Linux. Here we go back to the DOJ.
Or what if we have a last ditch effort by Corel or Star Office to save themselves from MS. They open source their product completely. Now we have people trying Linux with the option of going to a fully open sourced Office suite.
The problem Microsoft has with Linux is that it will never go away. It's not like Netscape or Apple where you can destroy a company. But Linux is an OS that is free to the public and as long as someone is tinkering with it, it will always be a threat. MS has lots of resources, but it may be hard to fight against the rest of the world. As long as someone uses Linux, Linux will constantly show up as a competitor.
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
1. This has all the markings of a typical M$ vaporware announcement designed to stave off any mindshare Corel might garner with Corel Office 2000. If CO2K gets established in the Linux market, it might generate enough momentum to start making inroads in the Windoze realm, and eventually compete head-to-head with WinOffice. M$ will do everything in their power to make sure that doesn't happen.
2. If M$ *does* decide to write stuff for Linux, it be with the intent to "pollute" the Linux platform with all sorts of new , proprietary and incompatible-with-everything-else APIs and services -- just as they tried to do with that "other" rival platform: Java.
Either way, they're up to no good. Don't trust 'em. Even if they release the source, don't trust 'em.
According to the article:
That's pretty badly worded, though. Does that mean that 4% of the computers in the workplace are running Linux? That 4% of users run Linux? That they run Linux exclusively?
.....really impressed with yourself, apparently. Your not in a position to "allow" posts.
F1r5t p05t 5uckazzz!!!!!!
If they *do* go ahead and start porting to Linux, every service (which will be closed source, naturally) will *have* to run as root.
... I know it....
They're up to no good.... I know it
-----
Your friendly neighborhood
Oliver Stone theorist
While you are a known pro-microsoft troll, along with that gimp zico, it should be pointed out to you that the rason MS Office (and IE explorer) take so little time to load is because large lumps of them are ALWAYS LOADED - Microsoft moved chunks of them into various system DLLs, that load at boot time ( ever noticed how long it takes windows to boot up compared to linux?) That's part of the reason why Windows is so bloated. If you ever try windows with the litestep shell instead of explorer, you'll see a lot less memory used...
Of course they'll try to crush Linux first.
But that is not possible, then they'll try to
exploit them.
MS-Office is a cash cow itslef.
How about this:
1) Create a binary-only kernel module that must be licensed from Microsoft.
2) Push UCITA so that your clause about not reverse engineering it or how it works will hold up in court. Also your clause about only running the module with MS Linux.
3) Have MS office for Linux do something in that module and have it refuse to run unless it has the module loaded. It'd probably be something cryptographic.
Voila. Instant proprietary distribution, no violation of the GPL and well with in the kernel rules according to Linus.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I liked the rebuttal by the MS rep to the statement that MS was getting ready to port Office to Linux. Not robust enough? Linux? This from a MS employee and presumably someone who uses the stuff? Sorry, gotta go dig out my dictionary. Hm, robust, robust...
And I can put out PDFs or HTML with LaTeX. I've got everyone covered as far as distributing my documents goes. HTML is the lowest common denominator, of course. PDF's are just a hair above it (Alladin GhostScript can view PDFs, so Acrobat isn't your only choice.)
* Well, LaTeX anyway. Nothing puts out a better looking document. Nothing.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
And these are:
The Windows Operating System
The office suite
They have alot of other products that have some marketshare, but no one can argue the OS/Suite dominance.
Given:
Price drives buying decisions
And, for $0, you can get OpenSource OSes (BSD for example) vs $319 for Windows 2000, *IF* BSD will do what you need to do, why buy Windows?
The products in the OpenSource OS market are mature and stable PLUS improving all the time.
So, there is a real threat to the OS market. And, at some point M$ will lose its dominant position, and become yet another OS choice. (in fact, why do you buy the M$ OS? To run Office and perhaps a few other apps like voice rec, OCR and games)
The Office Suite is another matter. At this time, no one has a credible office suite. Borland and Lotus are long gone. (for the clue-impaired Borland bought Word Perfect to make a suite out of Quattro and Paradox then sold it to Corel. Lotus was bought by IBM, and Samna's Ami Pro was the word processor. Ami Pro was thrown out in favor of some other thing.) M$ Office is the 'only' game in town, and there is NO SHIPPING OPENSOURCE MATURE alternative.
There are many OpenSource works in progress, but none at the maturity level the OpenSource OS side is at.
**IF** Microsoft waits until the OpenSource versions get to maturity, and then jumps in making X86 based binaries that run in a
Linux-compatibilty mode, it will be too late. And, they won't want to give up the Office suite ground without a fight.
And, look at this: If there WAS a viable office suite that ran in an OpenSource OS environment, would the demand be as strong for an OpenSoruce alternative?
A working $0 cost OS and a working $0 office suite tied in with a $0 email/browser is hard to beat with a $319-3,999 OS and $449 for a office suite. (Pricing from M$ web site)
The OpenSource world has the $0 OS and $0 browser. With the Office Suite at $0, Microsoft can become just another software company.
Microsoft won't fade away at this triple $0 point, but they will be a lesser force.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
--
JADBP
I'm sure your brother is just mad pleased at you for posting this on the freakin' Internet! Does this sound like the sort of thing he should have told you in the first place? Listen, kids, information doesn't "want to be free" when it's clearly key to someone else's business deal. If you find out a cool piece of computer information, tell the world. If someone breaks a confidence in your presence, have the human decency to keep your trap shut.
IMneverHO a Lotus suite port is the ideal one. AMIPRO was always superior to WORD. The Lotus 123 spreadsheet is just as good as excell, maybe better. I think SmartSuite could be a real option for businesses, much less home users. Where I am, we're microsoft office, but with Lotus Notes for email. My wife's shop is WordPerfect & Lotus 123.
IBM has no interest in helping windows, quite the contrary. Their support has always been one of their halmarks. Few would hesitate to reccomend an IBM product in the workplace. IBM would have every reason to make it work & work well on Linux. Policically, I think there are lots of folks at IBM & IBM/Lotus who would like nothing better than putting it to M$.
The well-documented vulneribily to virus attack of Windows/outlook express/Office aps is an opening that could be attacked successfully in selling other less risky solutions.
Myself, I hope IBM is busy at work porting to/rewriting for Linux as I type.
Of course you're not anonymous when you give out your company's marketing research (anyone in the same department would know). Or when you claim you own company's software and features are industy standards (MS). And then especially when you detail you education as you did in a reply. Just search the resumes in the marketing department looking for those qualifications (spelling?)! Finally that's pretty rude when you ask to have those messages removed, this is a public form. When you goto post there is specific text saying "Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to Rob 'CmdrTaco' Malda", which is malda@slashdot.org.
Billy Transue
bill-transue@NOcoolmailSPAM.net
Open Source, Open Standards, Open Minds
(They cannot port "Office", because Office aka StarOffice, ApplixOffice, WordPerfect Office,.. is already or will soon be available, and not by Microsoft.)
There will be one big binary setup chunk (no RPM or anything, because MS does not/cannot control the RPM format) called "MS Linux installer" that will scatter 1024 files around your /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/share, /var/lib, /home, and /etc directories, even if you select /usr/local/office as destination directory. The "MS Linux installer" will complain that it is incompatible with other package managers and that you might want to only download *.msl packages from linux.microsoft.com for optimum system performance.
There will be an uninstall option that needs a web connection to microsoft.com, and downloads an "uninstaller" (also binary only) that only runs as root. This uninstaller will not work on many systems until after the first "service pack".
Of course, Internet Explorer 5.5 will be included with MS Office 2000 for Linux. You will have to install it "to harvest the real power of Office and to experience all of the advanced features". Internet Explorer will automatically convert your KFM and Netscape bookmarks to IE format (which will be binary, i.e. not easily converted back) and unless you go after "Advanced Install" and uncheck "Options / Internet Explorer / Post-Install Options / Advanced / [x] Autoconvert older browser bookmarks", will delete the original bookmarks. (I witnessed this behaviour on some Netscape installations I've seen - so it's not entirely fiction...)
Internet Explorer will also complain on first start that it is running in an incompatible desktop environment/window manager and that you might want to download "MS Desktop for Linux" as a .msl package from microsoft.com. MS Desktop will (by default) automatically delete any other window manager executables it finds, converting the Gnome/KDE menus first (i.e. deleting the originals, of course).
By then, you will have three different uninstaller applications on your system (problably in /Program Files/Microsoft/Uninstall/), each of which requires that the other two are deinstalled first ... Of course, Microsoft realizes their mistake and announces a press release that they are already planning on thinking about starting to develop a concept for a possible upgrade.
If you actually try to run one of the office apps, it will crash the system hard the moment you start anything like strace, gdb, or anything. Of course, all MS Office applications need to run setuid root, because otherwise they would not be able to "offer all the advanced high-tech e-commerce network industry solution features" they provide. Oh yes, and because they run setuid root, you will have to purchase the "Office 2000 Network Install Update" if you want a network-capable installation, because otherwise everything MS Office saves will be in "/My Document" owned by root.root, no matter which user starts MS Office.
You will not be able to deactive active content in Internet Explorer for any Microsoft site (actually, that's how it is in Windows today, at least on some of the systems I saw), or rather, they will execute no matter what you configure. Internet Explorer will from time to time just forget your homepage and automatically load one of the Windows 2000, MS Office or Windows 98 homepages when you start it. Internet Explorer will also stop loading and crash hard if you start tcpdump or something in a terminal. You will notice frequent DNS requests to activex.microsoft.com, update.microsoft.com and such when running Word or Excel, if you configure your DNS server to log requests. Microsoft will tell people that Office is checking for new versions and upgrades that may be available, thus the DNS requests.
</black_future>
Actually, I myself don't think they will do it as obviously as that. But something in this direction is bound to happen, if Microsoft starts producing applications for Linux. They can only both "embrace and extend", they only start in markets where they can bully/cheat/kick the competition out.
Fortunately, Microsoft still does not seem to have realized the impact that Open Source software has worldwide. Two years ago, the EU would never have dreamed of requesting Windows 2000 source code to check for Diskeeper. Two years ago, France would never have dreamed of suggesting to BAN software in government where no source is available ("for security reasons").
The only way is forward. Choose the right path. Now please give me a good score on this one, I spend a lot of time for the satire and I don't post too often :)
Home Page
A Hardware platform competition. Look at IE. It was released for Mac, HP-UX, and Solaris. Not Solaris x86, but for the Sparc Architecture. As it stands now, Linux competes with Windows for the x86 architecture, and therefore, Microsoft won't even give linux one small advantage for the x86, because it realizes that the control of the OS is what gives them their advantage in the first place.
This might lead you to ask why office wasn't ported to HP-UX and Solaris. Well.. what company do you know that is going to buy an employee a Sparc or HP-UX workstation just so he or she can write some documents and fill out a spreadsheet? The Macintosh is a desktop computer, HP-UX and Solaris aren't. Linux still doesn't have a strong desktop market, so even besides the platform competition, there's another reason to not port Office. Might as well ask why they haven't ported to BeOS.
Hey, even more amusing is the fact that if you install Office 2000 onto Windows 2000 which has file protection running, Windows 2000 will complain that the install has modified critical system files and prompt you to insert your Windows 2000 CD to fix the error. Pretty funny, seems that the OS and APP divisions don't see eye to eye here. :)
Q.
I have had to _scan_ _paper_ to get a graphic out of a Publisher document. Thankfully, I was able to get hold of a nicer version of the graphic I was trying to extract- still, it's a rather damning indictment. MS File Formats: once they check in they _don't_ check out! ;)
It's what, 4 and a half inches long?
Bovine Sewage. In the four months I've had it installed on my system (Mandrake 6) Linux has not only crashed itself a dozen times, it has allowed me to crash it by making innocent, newbie-type mistakes. Half of these times, the only solution has been to reinstall it.
Straight out of the box with no tweaks whatsoever, it will not properly shut itself down if X-windows is loaded during a session, and therefore tells me it's safe to power down when in reality there are still open files, hence it must go through fsck the next time I reboot.
I'm not a computer newbie. As a profession, I work intimately with the hardware, software and various OS's, and have for over 15 years. I haven't had this much trouble with any Windows OS. It just doesn't lend itself to ease of use; it still revels in its cryptic command names, vague and incomplete documentation, forcing one to become an expert at Unix before one can effectively use it.
But that isn't what most people need nor want in an OS. Their computer is a tool to help them do useful, productive things. Most people do not count tweaking with and fixing their tools among the useful and productive things they need to do. I don't want to spend most of my morning tweaking and adjusting my car's engine, brakes and transmission; I just want to get in and drive it to work!
"Pojama people are boring me to pieces; they make me feel like I am wasting my time." F.Z.
Too fucking late mate... gotcha....
If Microsoft writes an OS X version of Office for Macintosh, wouldn't they have a pretty good start on a Linux version?. The API they use (Cocoa or Carbon) might not be very close though...
"Not everyone should own a computer. "
"...Internet Usage License"
Good thinking. Maybe we could restrict certain people from books too. Maybe we could even work it to keep a large segment of the population restricted from these things, you know, keep 'em real stupid...
You should be the first person on this list. This qausi-nazi plan of yours should be your own just dessert.
"Admittedly i am a geek and do not mind playing with my OS."
and by the sound of it, you is also a damn book burner at heart.
-=b
If this is these numbers that they are citing then not 4% of desktops are using Linux, but 4% of desktop sold last year where running Linux.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Cool! I wonder how they did it?
I had my doubts as to the authenticity of this whole thread, but the parent to this message just gave it all away...
Doesn't anyone think that $473/minute legal consultation fees are a tad high. Well, how about dropping the decimal places and text around his figures: $3133 7. Hmmm... looks like [hax0r|skript-kiddy]speak to me!
I will admit that this is one of the more clever trolls posted in quite a while. Kudos, dmg... whoever you are.
Eric
I bet you are runing in root all the time also. You must also remember that X is not linux so if you have a problem with X you shouldn't blame it on linux. An obvisoly you don't have to support a large number of end-users. The remote administration you get from linux and/or *nix make it very easy to manage a large user base, and by the way I work for a fortune 300 company and thats the way we can fix a computer thats in a different country even. I also bet that you are one of those people that don't even relize that their oil light has been on for weeks and that your car is ready to seize up. ===Running windows is like buying a car with the hood welded shut.===
Microsoft you do know that LINUX has something call a multi platform envirnoment....... SPARC, MAC, MIPS, ALPHA Etc. Oh and if you are gonna be gay and expect people to pay 1200 for your office for LINUX then fuck off. I will use COREL Suite 2000 or Star Office. Corel 2000 is way better then office 2000. There product dont crash when it wants to for starters!!
People do actually i know some people who run LINUX as a desktop and some offices are switching from Windows NT Workstation to LINUX. It is still a dumb idea, thou, Microsoft will never be able to get office on LINUX and if they do well there gonna charge 1200 for it so there fucked. Most people run LINUX for the lack of cost.
(I have my threshold set pretty high, so there's a chance I missed some comments.)
I don't see anyone talking about freedom. Why should we use an un-free product like MS Office (or Corel Office, or Applixware) when there are free alternatives like AbiWord, GNOME Office and KOffice?
Granted, the free products are not as mature as perhaps we would like them (although KOffice is coming along nicely). I think we should spend less time worrying about and campaigning for proprietary products, and instead work on free alternatives.
Unfortunately all 4 people who use BeOS would have to buy it and it STILL wouldn't be profitable for them...
He does not exist. A true hacker. I wonder how he does it?
There is no way anyone could get me to install office on a nice linux box. I'm sure it would wreck things and there are plenty of alternatives. It's been a while since I've had to write a paper that demanded anything more than a text editor, but Word Perfect 8 has been good on Linux. I'm trying to learn how to use Gnumeric and plot to make up the spreadsheet. As for presentations, I've seen people set up good ones as pure HTML's. These can be printed as slides or transparacies if the place where you present does not have a projector hooked to a browser. In general, I've heard good things about Star Office, but I'm too lazy to look into it.
Hopefully, the bussiness world will get a clue and stop asking for things in MS format. Resume in Word format? Dude, send me ASCII!
Those of us who don't wear Linux blinkers have noticed, for example, that Office 2000 supports XML as a native format.
F.Y.I. I use Windows 98 as my primary OS. I have Mandrake installed on a partition and do use it from time to time, but I can't seem to get my net connection to work right so am primarily stuck with Windoze. Microsoft is EVIL, but for now, I can't access /. without it. *weeps* If any of you merciful souls out there has an awesome Linux machine that you would like to send me out of pity, I would appreciate it. You could help to save me from them, the evil ones.
If you want my respect, give it first...
If you don't want my respect, expect mine before you give it.
Ahh, being microsoft means being a 'troll'. I now know your intelligence, but I'll bite anyway.
1) There's no reason why other vendors can't "preload DLLs" (most DLLs are shared in memory and most apps use those DLLs anyway, like mscomctl). And besides, there's no such thing as 'preloading' DLLs, you can have apps that loads a library, and another app that needs to use it won't take as long to load it cause it's already in memory. And what's this "system" dlls thing? To me system dlls are things like gdi32.dll etc.
2) Windows 2000 boots faster than Redhat Linux on the same machine here.
3) Windows bloated? Uh, what's netscape/staroffice?
So people who aren't ready for Linux aren't ready to have a computer heh? Why should non linux literate people not have computers, even linux based computers? With an OS this stable it should be possible to cover it well enough they don't need to be linux gurus to do their work. There are a lot of knowledge professionals out there who aren't computer gurus, have no time to be computer gurus but desperately need good office and professional applications NOW. This is a bit more than just an "interent appliance". It doesn't matter whether you want them using a computer or not. They have to if they are going to be competitive in their own fields.
Its not like we get much chance to actually get experienced with Women. And my computer works just as well upside down.
Except the CD's are kind of hard to get in.
One of the problems (or advantages on the M$ side) with Office is its lack of backward and forward compatibility. I was discussing with someone today about using, say, XML to build a meta-file which could encompass all versions of Word, and future version.
...
It would of course involve a bit of re-engineering, but surely not anywhere near the efforts of deCSS, LinuxPPC, connectix to name a few off the top of my head.
Anyway, this article has made me think - if the advantage of Office is its hold on the business market through format monopoly (for want of a better word) then OSS should just re-engineer all formats, keep up with the new ones, and provide a better offive suite!
The latter would be the hardest but im afraid its beyond the scope of this comment. At least thats my story any I'm stikin to it
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Sure, Linux boots take more time than Win boots. But, as Linux crash far less times than Windows, you don't have to boot Linux as often as you boot Windows. So, you spend fewer time waiting for Linux to boot than for Windows. Netscape & StarOffice are STATICALLY linked to graphics library. They are badly programmed, but this kind of bullshit also exist on Windows. If they were dynamically linked, their loading time won't be longer than their Windows equivalents. I just don't use them. Have KDE2 instead. Fast, clean and powerfull.
I'm arguing against the Linux zealots who want Linux to take over. I'm saying if only we all used common open formats, then we could all decide for ourselves what software WE prefer to use. If for you that's MS Office, then I respect your choice.
Microsoft doesn't HAVE to make their formats closed. They intentionally choose to do it this way because it FORCES everyone to use the LATEST version of THEIR software. I wouldn't complain if everyone in the world chose MS Office over the alternatives because they thought it was better software. What I protest is that I don't have the freedom to choose differently without giving up some part of my ability to share information with other people. Until the default formats are open, the problem will persist.