Microsoft Advised To Learn To Love Linux

mikael writes "ZDnet is reporting that the management guru Clayton Christensen (author of "The Innovator's Dilemma") has advised Microsoft to learn to love Linux. In particular he advises Microsoft to purchase "Research in Motion", otherwise they will see their applications sucked off from the desktop and onto handheld devices such as the Blackberry."

Comments

Many would use MS Office in Linux.

[Devi0s]

MS Office is the only tool that can correctly render *ALL* Microsoft Word .doc documents. Anyone who collaborates with clients by passing Microsoft Word .doc files around needs to use Office, with the exception of those who do not use custom templates or other Word features.

In a recent thread about OpenOffice, (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/13/13392 21&tid=185) I tried to summarize some of the major points that were repeatedly mentioned, and a major point was:

OpenOffice's storage format is not .doc. Just like MS Word saves documents by defualt in it's (proprietary, closed-source) native format, .doc, to leverage all of Word's features (instead of .rtf or .xml or .sxw), OpenOffice needs to store documents in it's native (non-proprietary, open-source) format, .sxw, to leverage all of it's features.

However, OpenOffice is a great tool to give to developers, IT staff, and anyone else that does not have to collaborate with clients, executives, and managers by passing around Word .doc files. A simple PDF of their sxw document will do and it's a hell of a lot cheaper (free).

The lack of full .doc support in OpenOffice is one of about three remaining things that keeps me from moving to Linux in the workplace.

2) Assonine developers that insist on perpetuating Microsoft's browser monopoly and closed standards that use Internet Explorer only technologies to deliver their content. (ActiveX tops my list here). Unfortunately, to do my business, I am unable to boycott all of these sites.

3) The MS Exchange connector tools for Linux email clients are not yet capable of dealing with some of the features of Exchange / BackOffice that are leveraged by my employer.