Slashdot Mirror
IBM Wants to Port Office to Linux
shfted! writes "OSNews reports: As part of its initiative to put Linux on the desktop, IBM Corp. wants to migrate Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite to Linux. Microsoft said it's not involved and suggests that IBM might do it by emulation."
Because the only software that will be 100% compatible with Microsoft Office is Microsoft Office.
The only problem is that 90% of the office users Think that they need MS Office to be productive. About 2% of those users actually use any of the 'features' or even much more than Word. Most people don't know how to set up a macro or even what a macro is or does. THe only thing that is keeping 100% interoperability from happening is the fact that Visual Basic is proprietary and can not be ported to linux at all. now if someone could develope a wrapper that would have the speed and functionality to be able to use Windows macros then Open Office would stand a chance.
Because Sun (behind openoffice) and IBM don't like each other. Also because Microsoft and IBM are huge commercial partners and also because PHB trully believe they need Microsoft Office.
If MS office runs on linux, there'll be nothing else closing the road for linux on the corporate desktop.
Ah, but not even Microsoft Office is 100% compatible with Microsoft Office!
the ONLY reason to port MSOffice instead of just use openoffice is because you have already written office macros or extensions in VB and don't wanna rewrite em. other than that, its a total waste of time, since OO.o is more stable anyway. i CAN see the attraction in this for some businesses, because they dont wanna re-do their stuff, but what we REALLY want, is a open source port of VB, and then integrate it into OO.o
-ted
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
In small businesses, many internal databases are in fact simple, single-user databases. Does OpenOffice.org come with a tool for building and accessing such databases that beginners can learn as easily as they manage to learn Microsoft Access?
Mabye IBM ( & others ) thinks Open Office is to S--L--O--W, big, unweildy etc etc.
It could be a good thing for OO as it might convince them to clean up their code( get the lead out ).
Steve
OS/2 was too late, too expensive, by IBM and didn't offer any significant advantage.
So compared to OS/2, Linux has very good cards.
To go back on-topic: Emulation is a big advantage because it offers a way to do a smooth upgrade. According to your logic all software on Windows would be DOS-software because Windows offers DOS-emulation. Of course that's nonsense, without DOS-emulation, Windows wouldn't have been accepted by the masses so fast, without Windows-emulation, Linux won't be accepted by the masses very fast.
We need Win32 emulation, the sooner, the better.
Right now we can tell our governments not to use MS Word doc format because it's only available to certain systems. If IBM port MS Office, governments will find it harder to understand the issues involved.
The argument shouldn't be that isn't not available, it should be that it's not right for a government to require you to give money to Microsoft in order to read official documents.
In business, its all about money. (More on this later).
Can MS-Office be ported to Linux technically? I would say yes, because they were able to make a Mac OS X port, which has BSD-Unix underpinnings. Pretty much anything than can be done on BSD can be done on Linux. So no great feat of technology would be involved on getting MS-Office ported to Linux.
Now lets talk about why MS would or would not want to do this. If enough of a market existed (read: Corporate customers clamoring for a native Linux port), MS might have an opportunity to retain those customers (and maybe get a few new customers) and make some money doing it. So there is an opportunity for them there in the office suite market. The danger is this: MS-Office & MS-Windows are mutually supporting monopolies in the corporate world. . As long as Office effectively requires Windows, every corporate desktop sold with Office almost guarantees an accompanying windows license. So double the revenue for M$. A native Linux version of MS-Office would undermine Windows. Once Windows is undermined, then Office itself might be jeopardized because they are mutually supporting.
A native Linux port of MS-Office is just too much of a threat to the MS monopoly structure. MS knows this, so such a port will never see the light of day.
Why are you assuming that it would be any simpler to port the Mac port of Office? It's not a Unix app, it's a MaxOS X app, and there is no reason to assume it uses standard Unix API's for anything.
So the choice of a small business person is:
1) No database, just dont track any important information.
2) Use Access and make a kludge that works, although any real DBA would have a heart attack at the design.
3) Hire a DBA and pay thousands (or tens of thousands) for an over engineered database.
2 doesnt look so bad anymore.
Oh don't be such an arrogant condescending snob. My dad is one of those uneducated people. He has used Access on a couple of occasions to do some pretty simple things like manage member information for some society he helps run. Sure it's an ugly implementation, but so what? He enjoyed himself figuring it out and learning, and getting the feeling of accomplishment it brought him. Furthermore, his implementation /works/ and suits his needs just fine. So why are we to judge him for not using a solution and and implementing in a way that we've been *trained* to do, and what we're experienced in doing for a living?
Sure thing. Now... where do I find a cut-rate DBA if I only have 25 employees? 10 employees? 5 employees? What if I have 100 employees, all of whom earn close to minimum wage, and hiring a DBA would be enough of an expense that it might make the difference between staying in business and closing up shop? What if I don't have any employees, because I'm putting together a DB for personal use (logging scores for the bowling team, keeping track of info about my gardening efforts, etc.)
There's a reason that Access exists, and a reason that it serves a decent niche market. It lets someone aside from a professional DBA put together a database, and have a good chance of it working. There are a lot of little apps out there that are based on access, require some bit of knowledge and/or experience to set up, and simply don't require the type of maintenance that calls for a DBA.
I've got one FoxPro app I put together over 10 years ago that's still in use, handling a few dozen additions/edits a month. There's not a whole lot of flash and glitter, but it does the job. This is the target market for Access and related applications, simple DB-based application generation. I suspect that there are far more Access-based applications quietly working in the background than people want to admit.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
If I were a normal company with a product and some company came along and offered to port my application to other platforms for free, I would most likely jump at the idea. However, if you had a monopoly on the desktop OS market and willing to use illegal tactics to guard your share, how would you behave?
MS may have stated in the past that the reason they don't port Office to Linux is that there is 'no demand'. Now with the Linux desktop share challenging the Mac share, thos arguments are being diluted. If IBM were to offer to port it for free, gee... seems like a great deal for any company... unless you are trying ot illegally maintain your monopoly of course.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley