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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."
Why use Microsoft Office when Open Office is getting so good?
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I'm seriously questioning the validity of this article. It says an IBM spokesman said they got access to parts of Microsoft code. Something I believe is very unlikely given the IBM's purpose. And on the contrary Microsoft denies any involvement.
Not that I don't hope it would be true...
Will Microsoft try to sabotage this by "upgrading" Office in future versions to things that are difficult to "emulate" or include a clause in the EULA that says "You may not run this with a compatibility wrapper" or Linux or anything else? I could see this happening.
IBM tried to emulate Win16 application compatibility with its OS/2. As a result, nobody cared developing application of OS/2 as such. IMHO, emulation is a dead-end branch of development in this case.
For some reason (probably licensing issues with Sun) or compatibility with the rest of MS office document base, IBM does not want to develop OpenOffice or Corel WordPerfect Suit. I am just wondering - have they given up on their Lotus completely then?
IBM sells Maiframes, but really, Mainframe only refers to the operating system, not the size of the computer. You can get "mainframes" that fit under your desk.
If they can port Office without help from Microsoft, maybe they could also implement compatibility with open standards.
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How about Crossover Office by CodeWeavers. You can run the full Office suite including Outlook and Access. It works VERY VERY well. Better than running on Windows actually.
I'll agree with that--there are already emulators out there. IBM would just be repeating the work done by others.
On the other hand, what are the chances IBM has access to Office source code? And if they have access to it, what are the chances they have contractual permission to take Office and port it to Linux? Well, maybe they do, since M$ isn't threatening to sue.....yet.
And another question--I can't imagine they'll distribute it under GPL once it's ported. M$ will get no additional sales because of it. The people who will use it are people who are locked into Office, but want to switch from Windows to Linux. I imagine they'll be able to use it for free, but how will the distribution be handled? For some reason, I have a hard time imagining "MS Office for Linux" on CompUSA's shelves.
No, wait, I realized how dumb the 'free' comment was--M$ office 'upgrade' to Linux for free? HA!
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"It suits us fine the Microsoft and Sun fight about office application suites. We stay away from that. The reason we don't collaborate with Sun is that they're too small," said Pettersson.
Without that, the whole Office software couldn't be properly integrated.
To make Linux inferior and totally broken we need it! Port it to Linux! Finish your work, IBM, buy SCO and be friends again with Microsoft!
In the original swedish article it's written that Microsoft believes that IBM probably is working on a Terminal Emulation solution, not a emulation solution.
There has to be more to it than IBM just getting 100% file format compatibility. Think of these alternatives:
You would have to think the last one is the easiest, and probably by a wide margin. If IBM isn't taking the easiest route, there has to be other factors (e.g., fights with Sun, wants it to be proprietary).
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To expand on what the others have mentioned: OpenOffice.org not only will handle documents from different versions of M$ Word better than the current version of M$ Word but also will often read corrupted M$ Word documents that make M$ Word crash. Seriously, people have reported here on Slashdot that they use OO.o as a recovery tool for .doc files.
Ironically, except in a few situations, IBM is a very anti-MS Office shop. Those people who work for IBM have had to live with the Lotus Suite of tools for everything they do.
As a former IBMer, I find it hard to believe they would give any support at all to MS Office. Then again, it's a big corporation. This could be a case of some department breaking with company normality.
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Let me ask you this. If IBM and the rest of the rebels stole the plans to the incomplete Microsoft battlestation and Linus Torvalds managed to score that one-in-a-million shot at the exhaust port, do you think the galaxy would live happily ever after? No. To keep this in terms you can understand, IBM would probably proceed to corner the galaxy with their own software and things would be just as bad as they were before.
You people need to drop this romanticized view you have of this whole situation. Why do you think IBM would rather see an IT world without Microsoft? So that all software would be free and live happily ever after? Or perhaps becausre they're in business of making money and Microsoft is direct competition. You don't have to be Yoda to realise heir last attempt at a competing OS failed to make a dent and now they're jumping on a bandwagon running the closest behind Microsoft's.
Don't for one minute think that IBM has any moral interest in your cause, because they don't. Only your wallet.
What will never happen, but would be awesome, would be for IBM or somebody to pump a load of money into increasing the performace/memory footprint of wxPython. Bring it up to the level of C#. It's Free and doesn't have all that Java baggage.
The next step to Utopia would of course be a wxQt port...
I think parent is right in the sense that it will use WINE one way or another. Maybe they can pay CrossWeavers enough to make the release CrossOver Office under LGPL. I can see why IBM could believe this will work out financially for them in the long run, because they are quickly becoming established as THE Linux provider for big businesses.
Besides one can argue, that running things trough wine is not really emulation in the sense of CPU emulation. It's almost like when WinXP are keeping around old Win 95 API just to be backward compatible. Wine applications usually work pretty damn fast, once they do actually work.
On the other hand, for most of us running MS Office on Linux defeats the point of not having our data locked in by a proprietary software vendor.
Even when I switched to Linux 6 years ago it wasn't in spite of MS Office, it was because MS Office in the sense that after Word made lots of my work dissapear completely one too many times, I started thinking that there must be some other way of creating formatted text.
I looked into LyX and later LaTeX (after trying to do it all in HTML for a while) and I figured out that using these is actually easier on Linux than on Windows. Then again, that's just me.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to imply that Office on Linux won't be great for mass adoption of Linux, I'm just saying that you still have the disadvantage of having to buy MS Office, just to _read_ things _you_ have written.
It's worth noting that the Lotus source code could be compared to a 200 line "Hello World" in GW-BASIC. From what I've heard it's a mess, and maintaining it would be more difficult than scrapping it (The reason it was "ported" with WINE).
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There are reasons I use LaTeX.
That the programs do not make idiotic design changes while trying to "help" me is a big part of that.
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MS Office is allready running in a UNIX environement (MacOS X). So IBM could also port not the win32 version but well the MacOS X version. I m not sure that Apple would be extra happy but the Macintosh business Unit in Redmond could be interressed.
What is the best solution:
I think the second solution could have some advantage for IBM but It will not allow an transition from MS Windows to linux for 95 % of the population who runs on x86
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Maybe I'm missing something tearingly obvious here... but everyone seems to be assuming either an emulation layer or totally rewriting the Windows version of Office.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to start from the version written for OSX?
I disagree with this... I use Codeweavers' Crossover Wine every day to run Lotus Notes (used exclusively by my company) and the Microsoft Office suite under Linux. There are some cases where OOo just doesn't quite get it right so I have to use MS Office in those cases. I have no problems with the day to day use of Crossover and I find that it is extremely stable.
This is some guy that's trying to make an impression for a pet project of his, not global IBM strategy. I bet he's in for some angry phone calls from various people, including his boss who'll likely be pestered as to why one of his subordinates is talking to the press about things that isn't his business.
The reason Microsoft hasn't heard anything is probably because he's been talking to people at his level in Microsoft, who has no authority to make any real decisions, just as this guy is unlikely to have.
IBM wants to port MS Office to Linux because IBM wants to sell Linux desktops. Bingo! Sun is selling their "java" desktop. IBM can include in their desktop everything that Sun has on theirs plus the MS Office port. Many people like MS Office; many people think they need it. IBM wants to make money. MS makes a lot of money on their MAC Office port. If you had to use one which would be, a desktop with Office port or one without?
I know, the one without, blah blah blah....
It might not be as crazy as it sounds.
Let's assume IBM gets Office running 100% perfect on Linux. Doing so removes a HUGE barrier to Linux acceptance in business. Lots of organizations are actually married to Office more than they are to Windows. Let them keep their Office installations, but move them to Linux, and you end up decimating a huge piece of Microsoft's business.
I think this can be a very good thing.
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It could be proof of ongoing antitrust violations. Lets say IBM releases a special version of WINE that lets you run Microsoft Office on Linux. Then let's say Microsoft goes to the EU and says "it's all open standards, we don't have any unfair advantages or hidden APIs!". The EU can then go, bullshit, look at all of the extra crap that Wine had to do to make Office run on Wine. If Office were using the open standards, Office would work on vanilla wine. ...
Whoa.. wait.. now I'm kind of getting stuck on this thought. Vanilla wine. What would that *taste* like? Vanilla vodka is pretty good but vanilla wine sounds questionable.
I have been an employee at IBM for three years. When I started, all the machines for employees came preloaded with Lotus SmartSuite. It was also preloaded with viewers for various Microsoft Office file formats. If you had a business need for writing Microsoft Office documents yourself, your department could buy a licence for you.
One year ago this changed. Now Office XP is part of the standard platform and is available for download for all employees (via an IBM intranet web-site where you can download all the software that is part of the standard platform) without additional charges for your department.
At least this is the situation for IBM in Europe (EMEA).
I think it's all about delivering software freedom. Chasing software freedom has served our community very well in the past 20 years. I think it will continue to serve us well into the future. If people want a free software alternative to Microsoft Office, they can try OpenOffice.org. If people wanted to run Microsoft Office on a free software system, WINE could probably do the job today. But I don't see people asking for that. I think IBM's money is better spent enhancing OpenOffice.org rather than being a part of Microsoft's sales team and making their non-free software available to a slightly wider audience.
I don't think many people know about OpenOffice.org (or Abiword, GNUmeric, and a host of other free software programs), hence they don't run these programs. I also think that as Microsoft Office becomes harder to justify, more people will look to alternatives.
If people become used to running Microsoft Office on a free OS at work and follow suit at home, they have taken a step toward software freedom (which is genuinely worth celebrating) but not as big a step as they could have taken. Adding the features people need to a free software alternative will help them justify the move to freedom.
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