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

Billions?

[ackthpt]

Microsoft is 100 percent focused on Windows: We have invested billions of dollars in it.

Could fool me. I'm seen crap like that come out of much smaller companies. Maybe that figure includes all their marketing? That could add up to that figure quick enough.

Re:why feed the competition?

[tha_mink]

I imagine they wouldn't give away office for Linux so you could target both sides of the camp... that is if they weren't in the business of monopolizing their shit OS.

Of course, even if they did offer it at their regular price ($340 something now-a-days), everyone would be running it but somehow they would only have sold sell ONE copy. It'd be torrent city.

Re:Fat(32) is useful in linux

[Blakey Rat]

Same issues occur with OS X. How would you exchange a USB2 disk between Linux and OS X without formatting it as FAT32 first? And that could happen to a non-Windows-using person.

I have the same issue. I have to keep my external USB2 250 GB drive formatted as FAT32, otherwise I can't use it with the Windows machines at work.