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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.'
From the story - "Microsoft is 100 percent focused on Windows: We have invested billions of dollars in it. We have created Office for the Mac"
Ummmm...how can you be 100 percent focused on Windows and still develop Office for the Mac?
Maybe he meant "Microsoft is 99 percent focused on Windows". Or, more likely, he meant to say "Microsoft is focused 100 percent against developing Office for Linux."
The future is open.
Meh.
no MS office, really?... well who in the hell cares? afterall we already have OOo etc.
If MS Office did get a linux release, where would that leave the development of OOo etc?
Accept the 80/20 rule (80% of users only use 20% of functionality), and the difference's between them are neglibile, while encouring people to use linux (sometimes without a LART too), it is a very rare occasion when an average home user can not sit down and user OOo with no problem.
Personally, they can keep it, and as long as they do im happy to see more F/OSS alternative's in development
Um, they already make Microsoft Office for Mac OS X, arguably a competing operating system with more users than Linux.
Unless your definition of "competing operating system" is somehow different from mine.
So, that's why.
Stiny! Get me a danish!
According to the attorney, a patent application must be submitted within 1 year after the first public disclosure of the invention, which can include:
I spent a good portion of my vacation dealing with some of the last minute paperwork, because it happened to coincide with the 1-year deadline.
So, I don't understand how Microsoft can be attempting to patent FAT now. Unless they started much earlier, or are trying to patent recent modifications to FAT, I don't think there is really anything to fear.
It predates the appearance of Windows itself, back when Microsoft was a small company, and not a small nation. Excel was a direct competitor to Lotus 1-2-3, and Word competed with Word Perfect. At the time, Microsoft was actually smaller and less influential than either of those two companies. I remember when Excel use to come with a "Windows Run-Time", which ran from a DOS command line, and gave you (more or less) the Excel we've come to know. When you exited, you were looking at that "C:>" prompt again.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Actually I think that Linux users are legit because of the nature of the OS. It's free and legal.
We do DVD-css because there isn't a legitimate DVD software app on the market.
We use P2P and torrents for ISO files and nightly builds of source material.
We do mplayer because for some reason, there isn't Media Player or Quicktime for Linux.
Linux users would be the first to make public if there is a pirated version of software on some P2P channel.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Because "Office for Linux" probably would have prevented "OpenOffice for Linux" from happening, or at least staved it off for another few years. Honestly, do you think Sun would've put much effort into StarOffice way back when if "Office for Solaris" had existed and been compatible with the Windows version?
But no, they got short-term greedy and catalyzed the development of what I think is their single biggest threat. Now that OpenOffice has gotten good enough to allow Unix folk to interact with their Windows-using counterparts, those same Windows users are starting to show interest.
If you migrate 95% of your company from IE/Office to Firefox/OpenOffice, how much incentive is their to stick with Windows? I hope Microsoft is satisfied with the money they've already made, because it seems to me like they're doing everything they can to ruin their future.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The only reason we are on windows workstations here at the moment is because we don't have linux support for most of stuff we use. We will be moving them to linux early next year because our main application runs alot smoother on linux, at which time we will use open office rather than MS office. Microsoft could have retained us as a MS office customer, but they choose not to support Linux. Oh well. :)
Can all fish swim?
"Microsoft's head of platform strategy"? Sounds like a marketing position doesn't is. Well I guess you could never say M$ was run by engineers, run by weenies is more like it. How hard would it be to port Office for OSX to linux? You see this is where marketing knowledge comes in handy, they know few would buy it and those that did would be using it to reduce or eliminate windows desktops. Too bad the DOJ did not force them to do it.
btw, Without OpenDocument who wants it?
"So I think Microsoft is about as likely to create MS Office for Linux as the USA is likely to sell F-16 fighters to Iran."
Well, it almost happened, it was just a matter of months. They were the only country to got F14 before that.
#include "coucou.h"
I wonder...
If Apple released their OS for commodity x86 PCs, would Microsoft continue to support Office for Mac?
That may be part of it, but the other part was because Apple caught Microsoft with their hand in the cookie jar (the settlement was on top of the stock investment).
Now that Linus is around, Office's days on the Mac may be numbered.Keep in mind, Mac Office makes money for MS - to drop it just to spite Apple might make a shareholder or two upset.
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.If I were Mr. Jobs, I would have had this conversation with Mr. Gates or Mr. Baller at some point:
"Look guys, it's in your interest to keep Mac Office around. You see, because of the dominance of MS Office, the lack of Office for the Mac might result in a drop in Mac sales. If Mac sales drop off enough, Apple could be in serious trouble, and perhaps go out of business. If Apple were to go out of business, my last act as CEO would be to release all (non-3rd-party-licensed) Mac OS X kernel and GUI code under the GPL. I'm betting you really don't want that to happen."
:)
Someone help this poor ole country boy understand something.
Why would anybody in the open source community give two shits about putting Office on linux when theres such a push by the open source community to extend the office apps on windows?
Granted, I did not RTFA, but who is the person who is asking Ballmer to make Office for linux? Does that just not fly in the face of the entire mindset of the open source movement?
Um that isn't capitalism. Capitalism [or free market] would say you can use the tool with the product of choice. E.g. you can use that gasoline in your Ford, GM, Toyota or whatever car.
/rant
Imagine if we had instead of Shell, BP, Petro, Esso, etc distributors tied directly to your car make and series. E.g. this is a "ford taurus" gas station. Now imagine Ford got greedy and bought up 1000s upon 1000s of prime locations to put theses stations in. Sure that's capitalism right? They got a surge of investment dollars, spent them ALL and now they own more than their share of spots to put gas stations.
So far so good.
Now you're in your Toyota Echo [or whatever] because it's the car of choice. You like the car because it meets your needs, fits with your ideals, etc, except now you can't fill it up anywhere. You have a choice of dealing with a hardship of finding stations for your car, or give in and buy the "acceptable" car. Now replace car with computer manufacturer and gas station with OS.
Now suppose the tool of choice *is* Office. You can only use Office though with Windows. Meaning to use your tool you have to buy something you don't want. You can put up with the replacements [good or bad, no comment there] but in the end you're likely to just give in and use Windows.
That isn't capitalism because you're not creating a free market for the OS. By making all your tools for one OS you're effectively locking the public into using it. By leveraging that against manufacturers [e.g. Dell, if you sell Linux desktop boxes the price per license will go up 30%] they effectively prevent change on that front as well. And if you think you're better off with this form of "capitalism" you better make sure you're locked into "the right choices". Because you have nowhere to go from there.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
You totally missed the point. The Esso gasoline works in ANY gasoline car. You have a choice between vendors.
... well dead.
...
If I'm a working professional I have a choice between an improving but often buggy openoffice, using Office, or nothing. I remember the days of Framemaker, ClarisWorks, etc. They were all fairly competent products that are now
You can't sit there and tell me that by having msft bundle windows with EVERY PC made on earth and throwing in free trial copies of Office, Money, etc tools they're not trying to hook more people into using THEIR tools. Put it another way, if Microsoft were a real software company and not trying to ruin the world through de-innovation they'd write their tools for every platform they think they see a sustaining market.
Writing tools to prop up an OS is bit a backwards don't you think? I mean the OS is supposed to support the programs you have to run, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
In the grand scheme of things if the only reason people use Windows is because that's where Office runs that's not exactly a sound market is it not? I mean there is no technical reason why Office can't exist for Linux, BSD, whatever else.
And Office itself is a good form of evil. I mean you buy Office, *you* write the documents but then MSFT has the audacity to claim the file format is proprietary and doesn't document it? Who are they to tell you what you can do with your own files? Of course by time people realized this [e.g. early 2000s] it was far too late. And everyone does the msft-centric thing and blame the newcomer. OpenOffice sucks because it can't open my word documents!
And in your mind you see MSFT as totally innocent. Well let's put this in context. Travel back in time 10 years. Now convince every major PC manufacturer to stop bundling Windows with their new PCs and give the customer the choice. Linux was alive and kicking then, so were some of the BSDs. I imagine had Linux had more users pre-2000 they would have had more developers and more content, etc.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Open Office is not really "free" even though you are not "forced" to pay anything for it. Supporting those involved would be a way of showing your gratitude for their efforts.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
hmmm ...
1) person A invests 25 million $$$ into research to find out if smth really works, makes an investment to produce the stuff and hopes he gets his money back in 10 years, since he is concerned for the brand, he makes sure he hires loyal and qualified staff.
2) person B copies his work, adds a blue border to it, sells it for a lower price (because he doesnt have to cover the research costs), uses chinese illegal workers to make things even cheaper. gets profit.
3) person A goes bankrupt, his investment backfires and backfires on the reason that he was the "stupid" one that covered the research costs.
4) nobody wants to do any real research anymore cause there is no chance it will pay off.
we have no inventions, society get screwd.
imho patents should protect profit making stuff from other profit makers, whereas the free stuff producers could ignore the patents. (meaning linux dudes could play around with patented stuff as long as the linux people dont charge for the patented stuff, whereas microsoft cant steal from ibm to make profit).
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
Just removed Windows from my next to last machine running it, and the last machine running Windows is no longer on the network. Very soon that machine will be running Linux only.
.DOC is fine.
Windows right now is an unacceptable risk to run. The only way I'd run it on the network is in a virtual machine under Linux or Mac OS X.
I run a legitimately licensed copy of Office v.X on my iBook. However, that's almost getting redundant because it seems anytime I submit a paper done in OpenOffice.Org it's 100% readable in MS Office. Gonna have to do some experimentation with OO.o Impress, but anything done in Writer and saved as
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Oh i dont see MS as inocent at all. On the contrary i despise them and their practices. I loathe their proprietary undocumented formats, loathe their DRM laced media format, and i utterly despise their shoddy incomplete crippling of OpenGL implemented through DirectX on Vista that will further eliminate the already low desire for programers to use OpenGL for their games on windows that make linux ports much more likely if their successful, if not utterly eliminate it completely.
But your hypothetical one soloution fits all doesnt exist, if it did then it would be the easiest possible soloution in enough aspects to make it the one to do, but it doesnt exist, yet.
To start with. The GUI APIs for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are all completely different, time and effort is required to maintain code, then beyond that, there are the underlying APIs, the entire MS version probably doesnt make a single POSIX call, the Mac OS X version can probably be ported to BSD fairly easily, but i bet MS used adapter code to float the Office Boat on OSX since the BSD licence lets em just do it and not let anyone know. but the Linux version would need work to switch the enviroment over again, to another set of code that it would have to be maintained ( much better i might add, requiring more effort ) by even more time after its ported. There are commercial reasons behind their choise, Not just monopolistic ones.
But if i remember correctly, i do belive there is progress. MS are killing USFW (unix services for windows, the full posix implementation and toolkits such as an X server and other things) in Vista. To make these Core components. anyone familar with the USFW components is likely very curious what impact this will have on portability or even how it may relate to the dramatic redesign of the codebase for Vista.
XML - A clever joke would be here if
Here's a clue for ya... The most fundamental improvements in everything were when everyone wasn't patent-happy. In fact, Patents as we have them are a recent thing- only about 250 years old. The current thinking on Patents is actually only about 20 or so old. It doesn't help things. In some cases, it actually HURTS things.
Patents do not guarantee protection on your IP - You've got to have the money in hand to successfully mount a legal offensive to defend the IP, be it Copyright or Patent.
Patents do not guarantee that you have every angle solidly held. It takes a good attorney (more cash...) and care to not make the initial filings on something overbroad. If it's overbroad, it'll get overturned if there's a request to review- almost every time.
Patents only work within the confines of countries that honor them. If they don't, they protect nothing. If you don't file them in various places, even the ones that honor them may not protect you because you've not filed in all the right places (more money yet again...).
Basically, a Patent is a mixed bag- it all depends on what you're talking about. In the case of the stuff I've got pending, it's relevent, but we're still going to have to have the money to defend the Patent. Some of the stuff that people like Bill and Co., and Bezos are filing are BOGUS and are part of the problem. They don't do anything but put Patent Attorneys on payroll.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
From article:
This doesn't sound like a out-and-out rejection of the patent, which the headline led me to believe. It looks like Microsoft will be able to keep this patent with a little more work...