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States Filing Alternate Remedy Proposal for MS Anti-Trust Case

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the on-hemmed-in-ground-resort-to-stratagem dept.

cbull writes: "News.com reports that 9 states and the District of Columbia will be filing an alternate remedy proposal in the Microsoft case later today. This would close some of the loopholes, better define middleware, require Microsoft to continue Office development for Macintosh and to develop a version of Office for Linux, among other things." There's also a Cringely column about the case. Somehow the phrase "Microsoft Office for Linux" has gotten people all fired up. Do you really want a version of Office for Linux? Really?

5 of 420 comments (clear)

  1. open file formats by BigGar' · · Score: 2, Redundant

    What we really want is M$ to open their Office file formats so other programs can read and write MS files with ease. Fully publishing their OS API's would help a lot also. These two things available as a free download to anyone that wants them would go a long way to helping out.

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  2. Honestly... by PlaysWithMatches · · Score: 1, Redundant
    ... Office for Linux isn't the solution. Opening the specifications for the file formats would be a much more effective remedy, if you ask me.

    Porting Office to Linux would just be helping to enforce the MS Office monopoly on even more systems (assuming anybody on Linux would buy/use it, anyway). The remedy should encourage competition, and not necessarily more widespread use of a monopolistic piece of software. Open up the .doc, .xls, etc. formats and that will allow more fair competition. That's what this is supposed to be about, isn't it?

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  3. File Type Definition by lysurgon · · Score: 2, Redundant

    What would be really nice would be if they could force M$ to release their file type definitions (or *cough* adopt some open standard). This would allow existing office/productivity software (e.g. Abiword, GNUmbers) to easily interoperate with Word, Excel, et al.

    This would let me work with clients who are M$ based much easier than I do now.

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  4. What I don't understand... by Chas · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Why they don't specify opening of various file formats (like MS Office documents) for cross-platform compatibility.

    This would be much more beneficial to competition and probably more desireable to all involved than MS Office for Linux.

    This way, MS could go their own way and do whatever the hell they like with their OS, and other platforms would be able to interoperate with fewer problems.

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    Chas - The one, the only.
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  5. Re:No thanks on Office for Linux by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 2, Redundant
    What would be a good thing is porting it to Solaris and HP-UX. Those are 2 OSes that are used as a desktop a lot by businesses
    That's why I said I wanted "Office for UNIX" not "Office for Linux".

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