Israeli Government Suspends Microsoft Contracts

MartinB writes "According to The Register, in a double blow to Redmond, the Israeli government has both suspended all government contracts with Microsoft until at least the end of 2004, and Israeli Antitrust Authority director general Dror Strum has ruled that Microsoft is subject to US court limitations. At issue in part is Microsoft's refusal to support Hebrew in Mac versions of Office."

Comments

More than just convenience

[the man with the pla]

I am an Isreali citizen living in the United States. It's true that I as a professional do almost all of my work in English. But I am writing to say that being able to use my native hebrew means an awful lot to me and my family. It's not a matter of convenience, it touches on our religous and cultural beliefs. I am very glad to see the government take this action.

Re:More than just convenience

[BlueGecko]

On the one hand, I'm glad that packages such as OpenOffice are available, but you have got to realize that, if you really need to exchange a large number of Office documents, there is no real alternative except Office. I wish that weren't true, I try to minimize how much Office I use by using alternative products, and I wish OpenOffice the best of luck in the world and look forward to when I can use it in place of Office. However, for the moment, there are times--many of them--when I absolutely have no choice except to use Office, and the simple matter is that Microsoft has steadfastly refused not only to support Hebrew, but also Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese--really, any non-Latin language--in the Macintosh version of Word. That is wholly and entirely unacceptable, and I think that the Israeli government probably has a perfect valid point. Their reaction is perhaps a tad bit overkill, but I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment.

Disclaimer: I am a US citizen whose native languages are American English and Southern and I am happy that way. :)

Re:More than just convenience

[Mark Gordon]

1) Israel is intended as a Jewish state, not an Ashkenazic state. Knowledge of Yiddish was never as universal among Jews as was Hebrew. Sephardim and Mizrachim typically don't know Yiddish beyond cognate Hebrew and Aramaic loan words. Hence, Israel standardized on Hebrew. Granted, most of the early Zionists were in the habit of ignoring rabbinical opinion.

2) Not all text editing is mundane. Prayer books and the like are typically printed, and someone has to write such things. Furthermore, Hebrew never completely died out as a language of biblical scholarship.

3) Aramaic, Yiddish, Ladino: the major non-Hebrew vernacular languages used by Jews throughout history have traditionally been written from right to left and would necessitate the same bidirectional support that makes Hebrew so hard to support. It's only within the last hundred years or so that most Jews learned to read from left to right before learning to read from right to left.

4) Any rejection of Hebrew as a mundane language is post-biblical, and there doesn't seem to have been an especially strong rabbinical consensus on the matter, even if some rabbis held that opinion. Even independent of biblical scholarship, there was plenty of secular Hebrew literature in the middle ages, long after Hebrew ceased to be a vernacular, and long before modern Zionism revived vernacular Hebrew.

5) Yiddish was initially popular (at least among Askhenazim) because it was comprehensible (at least the spoken version) to the local gentile population. The vocabulary is mostly from Middle High German. Ladino is similarly derived from Spanish. Aramaic isn't an exclusively Jewish language at all, being originally a gentile vernacular (Syriac, an Aramaic dialect, still survives as a gentile vernacular in some villages), though it is used in some prayers, a few later parts of the Bible, and the Talmud, and it's still used in some rabbinical contexts. So non-Hebrew languages aren't necessarily embraced because they offer less sacred alternatives to Hebrew, nor are religious writings (even liturgy!) exclusively in Hebrew.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[soft_guy]

The parent post is misleading. Apple does have Hebrew support in MacOS X and has been supporting Hebrew for many years. (And Arabic, too.)

Heck, they even demoed a Klingon version os MacOS X to really drive home how well they nailed international support in MacOS X.

The issue is Microsoft Office for Mac which is not an Apple product.