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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
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.
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.....)
--
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.
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".
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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)
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
LOL.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Office loaads slowly and never does what you want it to? And you're using Star Office too ROFL. Show me ANY machine that will load up StarOffice faster than Office and I'll be extremely suprised.
On the machines I have here, Star Office consistantly takes over 30 seconds to start, whereas on the same machines, Word takes 2 seconds, and usually less after the first try (usually less than a second).
Star Office like Netscape is SLOOOOW to load, and an excellent example of when Microsoft can make applications that aren't as 'bloated' as the competition.
You have NO idea what you're on about.
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.
doesn't everybody?
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*
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.
Typical marketeer. Whinges about having to work for their money while expecting others to contribute to their projects, career and company's marketing strategy for free.
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.
Well, the rest of your post seems to indicate that you're going to be deliberately covering your eyes this time. Just because you're in denial doesn't mean it wont happen.
Linux has no support for de-facto industry standards. DCOM, and DirectX are the main examples, but there are many others.
Sorry, directX is an evil Microsoft development. Not sure about dcom but be sure that if there were any real need for these things, Linux would have them.
Linux lacks the industry standard word processor - Microsoft Word, and spreadsheet - Microsoft Excel
I think most of us on here know why this is. But I don't think you're claiming it's the fault of Linux anyway. If companies want to be tied to MS, I guess that's there call but I really don't see this lasting forever. If and when Linux takes over the world, if these applications are still only available for windows, they will be forced out of the market an replaced with something else for better or worse.
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.
Did you ever consider the option that you just don't "get it"? Seriously? I suspect that for you, "failure is not an option" so when you can't work something out, it can't be your fault, it has to be the fault of the market right?
Our Marketing department was surprised to find that Linux, despite being written by a "communistic" process, actually had quite good security controls
And you wonder why you get labelled "troll"? Linux has some of the foremost people in the field working on it. Clearly your research is pretty shallow if you come up with statements like this.
even compared to the code some of our best (and by best I mean highest paid) hackers
And you guys wonder about being called "suits" when you refer to youe professional programming staff like that?
We spend $millions. Believe me, we would have found it if it existed.
Once again this comes back to the "suit" thing. If a geek can't grok something, he'll go back and readjust his perspective and try again and keep trying until he "gets it". A suit will just assume it's something wrong with the item in question and just dismiss it
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".
And they're part of the thing that drives the success of Linux as well. Their message may be wrong but they bring Linux to the attention of others. Have you ever really used Linux? I mean really and seriously? From the perspective of an admin who's had to put up with all the Microsoft crap moving to Linux with it's power and configurability is enough to put a fanatical gleam in nearly anyone's eye. It's no wonder there are zealots out there. And yes, "clueless newbie" is a standard insult but it's there for a reason. Most of us had to go through all the reading of HOWTOS, misconfigurations and other joys that build our skills, we are not paid to babysit someone who got their redhat CD off the front of a magazine and now wants to know if they can run Linux in a dos window. I repeat, we are not paid but these users demand to know the answers, now, and in full.
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.
MINDSHARE!
Therefore we have no plans to port our software to Linux now, or in the next two to three years.
Sure, close your eyes. That steam train is still going to hit you.
Alternatively, get someone on your team who "gets it". Not all of us Linux users out here are zealots. Most of us are too busy doing our jobs to answer your marketing questions. Of course you're going to mostly hear from the zealots. Go find one of your big marketing books and look up "self selection".
Rich
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
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.
Netscape isn't as bloated as MS shit either, it doesn't come with a complete OS ;-))
Grtz, Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
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.
That's crap. Word, IE etc all start in new processes, the DLL memory sharing is done on ALL applications, so it doesn't explain why netscape is so slow at loading (as well as star office). also there's NO reason why netscape can't do any preloading either (hey they go around installing AOL IM and change your default hompage in IE etc without asking).
Netscape is BLOATED. eg. it's HUGE, SLOW, UNMAINTANABLE and doesn't do what it's supposed to do properly.
Why do you think the source for netscape was quickly 'disposed' of.
Your statement is not the case. Most "geeks" do not "grok" CAPITALISM but they make absolutely no effort to adjust their perspective.
Well, my own data point is that most of the coders I know are just about the most capitalistic bastards in existence. The reason they don't like marketing is that most of what they see of it is about 60% bullshit and only about 5% of the capability of the product. Most of us are extremely clear thinkers and would rather just have a datasheet of the facts rather than some salesdroid telling us unmeasurable opinions about how their product is "fantastic" and "the best" (often at the bottom of an advert where 9/10 of the page is taken up with some anorexic model)
They do not understand that fundamentally, they owe their living to the hard working guys and girls in their marketing departments
And I'm sure that they feel it's the other way around. The fact is that in this world, marketeers are needed so it's more of a symbiotic or team relationship. Again, coders can visualise a world where they can produce their product and people would buy it on their merits without the need for marketeers. A utopian view perhaps but somewhat more realistic than the other way around where marketeers would sell stuff that never needs to be produced.
who slave daily to persuade the software-buying public that the bug-ridden mess they have developed is worth spending $$$s on.
Im sure many programmers feel they would like to produce bug free code but don't have time to. Well, who's fault is that? The marketeers who sold the product for a fixed price and to a deadline. The reality is that bug free software isn't currently financially viable for most applications at the moment (Except for Open Source which has no deadlines or budget of course). Now, that is capitalism for you.
And I would like to talk more on this subject, but events have overtaken me, as I seem to have upset someone in our legal department with my previous posting. If you don't hear from me for a while, it will be because I am dealing a rather large amount of that "corporate BS" that you open source guys are lucky to be free from.
Oh, I'm not an "open source" guy, I code distinctly commercial software for a living, as I suspect, do many people who contribute to open source. So we all get to see some of that corporate BS. I'm fortunate enough to work for a company where we don't see much of that and that I'm happy to say, goes for honesty in its marketing rather than BS (But we can afford to because we're damn good)
I'm still not sure that you're not a troll (I can't see that you'd have been still posting on here if your legal dept had jumped on you) but if you're not, I hope you get through all the legal stuff. Far as I could see, there wasn't anything too commercially sensitive in there and I don't have a clue which company you're working for. Also, IMO, posting to this kind of forum is exactly the kind of reasearch you should have been doing.
Rich
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
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.
Never heard of active desktop I suppose? Explorer is already started before you see icons on your desktop!
Every folder you open is in fact an explorer window.... And microsoft can use undocumented features in the windows dll's that netscape can't!
Grtz, Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
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 !"
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.
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.
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:
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); }
I give up. You're not registered as an attorney in either New York or Washington. What do you do, anyway?
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 . . .
Firstly, tithead, the original article was anonymous with no tracability. By following up with a with request with your name and address, you have provided tracability between "proprietary an confidential information" and your company. Nice one. The other guy may have loaded the gun but you pulled the trigger.
Secondly, that was my post you followed up to requesting removal rather than (presumably) the one you meant so while you may know the internet as much as the next man, you previously do not know it as much as the previous one.
Nextly, This is Slashdot, not your personal little sandbox. I dont see that you have the ability to "allow" or not "allow" posts to remain you arrogant fucker.
Finally, The original poster was participating in the community and getting potentially valuable feedback. With attitudes like yours, it's no wonder your company doesn't "get it" and won't be supporting Linux. I suspect the original poster is the most clueful person working there (or was)
Geeks and marketroids, we have our differences but everyone hates the scum-sucking layers
Rich
I still think I'm being trolled.
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.)
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?
The comments you may have read earlier on this electronic information system - attibuted to "dmg" were made by an individual. These comments are protected speech, but as such do not represent ex-post facto the opinion of any third party, corporatation or individual, living or dead, and were made without prejudice, and without malicious intent. No material facts (within the meaning of the law) are contained within any of these postings.
The comments remain the copyright of the original poster - dmg. Any reproduction of the aforementioned comments is protected by copyright law, and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent permitted, in all jurisdictions, national and international. Linking to this article may also constitute breach of contract and may also be prosecuted.
I am advised by my representative not to make any further contributions to this forum.
I would also like to personally warn those who hide behind anonymity, that they may not be as anonymous as they like to think, and that freedom of speech does not exist on the net in its current form. I am warning you, things can get very nasty and very expensive, very quickly. Please THINK before posting (to Slashdot, or anywhere else) You may not be aware who is reading your posts, and you are NOT as anonymous as you may believe. They also have some very powerful allies, some of whom are armed as a matter of routine.
thank you, and goodbye for the moment.
dmg
.....really impressed with yourself, apparently. Your not in a position to "allow" posts.
Sounds like fun.
I've been walking around looking at all the "Windows 2000: Comming Feb 17. As stable on the internet as off" posters, and now I think I'm going to sticker over "the internet" part of the poster. Then it will read more gramatically correct... of course who'd want a computer that acted like it was off when it was on anyway is beyond my comprehension.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
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
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 $0 point, but they will be a lesser force.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
--
JADBP
Apple didn't go with Linux because they purchased NeXT. They went with BSD purely because it's the underlying OS beneath the NeXT OS.
I like BSD a lot more than Linux, too, but I'm not delusional enough to think that they chose NeXT/BSD over Linux. Linux wasn't even on the list.
Oh well, time to go home.
Rich
IMneverHO a Lotus suite port is the ideal one. AMIPRO was always superior to WORD. The Lotus 123 spreadsheet is just as good as excell, maybe better. I think SmartSuite could be a real option for businesses, much less home users. Where I am, we're microsoft office, but with Lotus Notes for email. My wife's shop is WordPerfect & Lotus 123.
IBM has no interest in helping windows, quite the contrary. Their support has always been one of their halmarks. Few would hesitate to reccomend an IBM product in the workplace. IBM would have every reason to make it work & work well on Linux. Policically, I think there are lots of folks at IBM & IBM/Lotus who would like nothing better than putting it to M$.
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.
I don't know what ghetto build of Windows 2000 you're running. I'm running the latest MSDN version, with the windows update run on it, and it's stable as all get-out. I've rebooted it due to problems once. It hasn't bluescreened on me. I've been running with this level of stability since RC2.
I might also add that at home I have a P2-400 with a Creative TNT Ultra 2. The 3d works just fine. Hibernation is working just fine. Power saving isn't having any problems. These are the things that traditionally hose your system, but Win2k isn't having any problems for me.
If you're having problems, you are probably doing one of the following:
- Running an old build
- Running with old drivers
- Running some bad hardware
On the other hand, when I installed RedHat Linux 6.1.1 on my ALR Revolution 6x6, I had to pull the RAID controller (AMI Megaraid) during install, because during install the raid controller was detected at primary, but during boot it's secondary. I love redhat, but that kind of ghetto action doesn't tend to happen under windoze."You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Buddy Microsoft guy here is so completely corporate he's almost a cartoon.
This is the old, out-dated style of business thinking clashing with the new style of business-think. I have this argument with my father all the time (an IT executive at a big corp) and I think even he is beginning to grok it. Maybe a bit of topic, but what the hell.
Microsoft (and most of the large IT players right now) are old-style business thinkers. Their product strategy is simple: devise product, patent product, sell product, defend product.
These companies exist only for profit. They never seek opinions or approval from their industry peers - why would they - they are trying to drive their peers out of the marketplace. They act nice to the customer not because they respect him, but because they need his loyalty. They act nice their hackers not because they like them, but because they don't want their competitors to have them. They contribute to the common good only in return for taxation benefits. Their only contributions to education and knowledge are certification programs designed to perpetuate the product and generate even more profit.
The easiest road to profit is control. Control of the product, control of the marketplace, control of the consumer. Monopolies an excellent way of maintaining this control. Microsoft is almost the ultimate corporation this way -- they maintain absolute control over their product, develop their own standards, and sell to a clientle that is not educated enough to know any better. Microsoft has acheived what most companies can only dream of -- total control of their market.
Without competition there is no challenge to the product. If the money is rolling in why on Earth would you invest more money in making the product better? From Microsoft's point of view, Windows is already the perfect product -- it generates profit. Subsequent versions of Windows do not have to be better or more stable, they just have to sell.
Successful old-style business thinkers to nothing to advance knowledge, because they don't have to and it isn't profitable. Windows 2000 is really nothing more then a nicer looking NT4. A server operating system with plug and play, a server operating system with Direct X, a server operating system that went to market with 60000 possible bugs, but I'll bet the shadow under the mousepointer works great. Style over substance, because the product is already 'perfect'.
The problem Microsoft faces now, and what all of the old style business thinkers face, is the unsustainability of this style of thinking. Growth can't go on forever, and neither can intellectual stagnation. One day, a group of people are going to come along, who can't be bought, who can't be sued, and who make things, not for profit, but because they can. Because it needs to be made. Because it advances knowledge. Because it is cool. They don't need to amass multi-billion dollar fortunes to pay for their computer bits and beer. They make their money helping others to use their product, something that should be done anyway. In the OS world, these new-style business thinkers are those "Linux Zealots". And one day, without ever launching a lawsuit, or a hostile take-over, they will topple these greedy, arrogant companies. Microsoft will either change, or it will die.
Microsoft guys, if you are still reading this thread, this is your fate. Start thinking like people rather than corporations before it is too late. Get off your asses, and tell your boss that you want to port Office over Linux, that you want to give it away free, and that you want to open source it. Then the rest of us can hack it, make it faster, and get rid of that damn talking paperclip.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
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! ;)
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.
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,
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
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!!
Dumb ass were talking about Microsoft here. I love BSD and Versions of Linux like SuSE, Slackware and Debian, but this is Microsoft which means the dumb computer users. BSD is not an easy install and it is very complex for something of a desktop. Dumb people would use something Caldera (HATE), RedHat (HATE), Mandrake (Okay), or Corel (Okay)
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.
"It's variety, not varity"
I think you're wrong, it's vanity. He referred to the "communistic" OS vanity.
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!
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.
I take it you don't know ANYTHING about the Active desktop. That has nothing to do with it, Explorer starts whether or not you have an Active Desktop. But like I said, it's irrelevant, IE starts in a new process. And there's no reason why Netscape can't do any 'magical preloading'.
Please show me any undocumented features in windows dlls netscape can't. you mean MSHTML.DLL? oh wait, that _is_ IE and anyone can use it.
And that doesn't explain why other browsers (mozilla5 and opera are also many times faster than netscape at starting and rendering).
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?
Stop me if I'm wrong, I think this (the original post) was written completely tounge-in-cheek. Look at it again. If it seems rediculous and trollish, that's because it was meant to be. It was written in parody of what a naive M$ marketroid might write on this subject. From my perspective, there seems to be no other interpretation. Don't take the views seriously, because they are probably not the actual views of the author.
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"Safety is necessary for the protection and preservation of our valuable war-fighting assets."
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.
So you are saying that a 2cv is better than a BMW because a Porsche or Ferrari is faster than the BMW????
I must be missing something......
Grtz, Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
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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So you are saying that a 2cv is better than a BMW because a Porsche or Ferrari is faster than the BMW???? I must be missing something......
Yes you are, we aren't talking about cars.
I'm saying IE is better than Netscape because it's faster, more stable and supports much more standards. Examples of mozilla and opera were not to say they were 'better', it was an example of how fast non microsoft applications can be if written properly, an example of how poorly netscape engineers did their stuff back in the pre mozilla days. Follow the thread.
This isn't a matter of just SPEED, it's a matter being slow with absolutely no reason for it except for poor software engineering. Hell, I prefer to use Hotjava on unix machines over netscape.
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.