No Office For Linux, MS Patents Rejected

Bays Fil wrote to mention a ZDNet piece discussing the U.S. Patent Office's rejection of two Microsoft patents on the FAT file system. "There has been concern that if the FAT patents are upheld, Microsoft may claim that Linux infringes on Microsoft technology and will seek a royalty. Any monetary compensation could threaten the operating system, which under General Public License (GPL) terms may not be distributed if it contains patented technology that requires royalty payments." Relatedly, Dayrl writes "Microsoft reiterates its firm decision not to offer its Office Suite on Linux anytime soon. From the article: 'Microsoft is 100 percent focused on Windows: We have invested billions of dollars in it. We have created Office for the Mac but--and I thought I had been clear on this already when I said 'No'--we have no plans at this time to build Office on Linux,' Nick McGrath, Microsoft's head of platform strategy said.'

Comments

More media inaccuracies

[operagost]

It would be nice if a mass-media publication would just ONCE publish a 100% accurate article.

Though developed for Windows, the FAT format has become a common means of storing files on all manner of computers

FAT was developed for DOS 2.0. I suppose you could say it even existed in 1.0, but I know that filesystem lacked a hierarchy so it may not apply.

Re:More media inaccuracies

[Waffle Iron]

Well, the VFAT with long filenames, which is the subject of these patents, was developed for Windows95.

Re:why feed the competition?

[Catbeller]

I've a longer memory than most here.

Microsoft extended its contract with Apple to keep Office current on Macs NOT for the unit sales, but because, at the time, they were litigating the monolopy case in court. They needed Apple to stay alive to keep up the pretense that they were engaging an open market without recourse to any monopoly (which was nonsense - they lost). Bill also invested a bunch of cash in Apple at the same time for the same reason: Bill needed Apple alive, not crushed, so that Microsoft could make a case against a finding of monopoly.

Now that Linus is around, Office's days on the Mac may be numbered. They aren't needed any more. But, I think Bill prefers the devil he knows to the devil which is free and open sourced. He'll keep Apple alive as long as he can, even though he lost the monopoly ruling, because the alternative is all Linux and OpenOffice.

Fat(32) is useful in linux

[bigtrouble77]

There's only one reason I use fat32, and that's to format my 300gb ub2 hd. If I want cross compatibility between windows and linux, fat32 is the only way to do that. If I format to NTFS I cannot write to the drive and all my files are labeled read-only (which is really annoying when you have to copy over many files). If I format to Ext2, Ext3, microsoft will not read those partitions.

Interesting thing is that micrsoft PURPOSELY BREAKS FAT32 in windows!!! I forget the exact size, but you can only format a fat32 partition up to 30gb in windows. Microsoft really wants you using their proprietary ntfs file system. As a result I have to format fat32 from linux to utilize the whole capacity of the drive.

This is simply another case of microsoft trying to force proprietary software onto people that want nothing to do with their product.

Apps Define the OS?

[chronicon]

MS Office + IE are the desktop to many people in Corporate America. If you could run those on Linux, there would be almost no reason to run windows. Windows just acts as a carrier horse for that suite and "the internet"

According to Frank's Corner you can run both MS Office and Internet Explorer on the Linux desktop. And...he shows you how.

Implementing it corporate wide would be the real trick...