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Stuart Cohen Predicts Office for Linux
wysiwia writes "Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL, said during an interview with vnunet.com at the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco that it's 'inevitable' that Microsoft will release a version of Office to run on Linux within the 'next couple of years'. But when one reads the OSDL survey about the 'Top inhibitors of Linux desktop adoption' this 'next couple of years' might mean quite a long time. This leads to the question, has Stuart Cohen read his own survey and how does he overcome these inhibitors so MS really will think about MSOffice for Linux." I think the bigger question is 'In reality, how likely is Office for Linux?' I'm not sure that I agree with his assumption.
Office will become irrelevant. ODF is going to become the digital equivalent of paper. Universally readable, that'll remove the requirement for Office in a single stroke.
which is good btw, we'll see some real competition in that segment again.
Deleted
"Microsoft will fight the total cost of ownership [issue] with a very inexpensive office solution," he said. "I do not think that they will open source Office, but they will make it available to run on Linux desktops."
Who will use this? Sure, I can see Microsoft doing this, as the article says, in order to take a pre-emptive strike against Open Office. But who will use Office for Linux? The current Linux users defintely won't for several reasons: 1.) They hate Micrsoft 2.) They don't want to have to pay for anything, especially something that runs on Linux 3.) They don't want to introduce new vulnerabilities to their system 4.) They already have a solid alternative in Open Office
And, there honestly aren't enough general users using Linux yet, so Microsoft would be lucky to get even a small percentage of Linux users to use Office on Linux. I don't see a user base right now. If Linux were widely accepted (like Apple) on the desktop, then that's another story. But right now it isn't, and therefore there is no user base for this product.
http://www.codeweavers.com/
'Nuff said.
I have a buddy at works who takes pride in the fact that no-one ever notices he's running OpenOffice, not "the real deal".
Admittedy he's a developer and Office is only a smallish fraction of his work, but file compatible software and "workalikes" in general decrease the need for a proper port to Linux. Microsoft will try to push the envelope with new UI bits, which will either be duplicated, or might even be a drawback to the "conservative" Office audience.
A similar process has happened browser-wise. With the web being a larger and larger percentage of what people Do With Computers, having Firefox on any given platform makes it very easy to switch OSes without thinking about it nearly as much.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
...and you'll know how serious any Microsoft announcement about software for Linux is.
/. had the announcement of WMP for Linux (which I, correctly I believe, posited that it was both vaporware and a strategic announcement to get content providers away from RealPlayer, then the only DRM system that officially supported Linux).
3 or 4 years ago,
This one makes even less sense, as there's no target, no commercial enterprise that has a potential market for office for Linux (OO is free and if OO didn't come out, the Gnome office suite would probably have gotten more development and attention). Nobody has the potential in the Office suite to use Linux as a means of saying "we're better than Microsoft" to any content providers providing proprietary material.
So unless its going to be part of a larger "patent scare" program Microsoft might pull (they've been holding THAT trump card on Office apps for years), I don't see the point.
And if there's no point, there's no truth to it. Nothing Microsoft does it does without a specific competitor in mind, and there really is no competitor here.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Even were Microsoft to try this, they wouldn't do a native port. The amount of dependencies that would need to be ported before porting office itself would be prohibitive. Crossover office already exists - Microsoft would most likely just squeeze them out of the market by using WINE, or buy 'em out.
Given the current market penetration for linux on the desktop, there is no incentive for MS to give their competitors a bullet point. And without more reasons to switch ( like Office on linux, which would be a big one ), linux desktops aren't going to get that critical mass.
Which isn't a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. While I would like an alternative to windows, I think linux shines in server land, and that's where we should be focusing our efforts.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Why would you first install a free OS to later add a paying Office application ? my answer would be : only in a very small number of cases. So potential sales for this MSOffice4Linux are small ... not attractive for MS.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Here is a cut and paste from my comment then:
This stupid idea gets predicted every few years. Check this one out from early 2000, and I remember earlier ones. It makes sense to Linux-Heads, but from Microsoft's standpoint it's a 100% loser, and it would require a great deal of effort for probably trivial revenues.
I like to ask folks who are rigid about sticking with MS Office what features they use and/or in their minds really make MS Office stand out. Normally there's not much of a response beyond things along the lines of "it's what I'm used to", "I can open documents other people send me", etc. Personally, I think a majority of non-technical people really don't care what Office-style product they use, and are much more concerned about whether they are using the software that "everyone else is using". And granted, there are people that actually use and utilize specific features in MS Office, but if those were the only ones who actively purchased MS Office, I don't think it'd be considered the de facto standard of Office applications.
Just my 2c.
RFC2119
This will never happen for the same reason it hasn't been done up to now - If there was M$ Office available for Linux, why would anyone need to buy M$ Windows... - M$ knows this and won't enable a competing operating system to impeed their operating system market share. The only reason they make a version for the Mac is because of legal arrangements between the two companies, and that agreement is most likely to be ended within 5 years as Apple develops their new productivity applications to replace the current M$ Office applications that continue to stagnate on the Mac platform. ODF is a contributing factor, but it'll be awhile before that takes hold in corporate America and thus becomes the new defacto standard.
Micro$oft's Office for Linux? Please don't take me wrong, I would never use it, I have OpenOffice.org and many other fine Open Source Application. But imagine all that companies spending money for MS Office _AND_ MS Windows licenses. Now they finally can switch their OS from Windows to Linux because Office is the most important application for them. As a result, I don't think that MS will develop a native Version of MS Office for Linux.
As long as the lack of MS Office is an inhibitor to the use of Linux, MS will not release it. If the war is lost and Linux is being installed on desktops everywhere regardless of Office (don't hold your breath) then MS will cut their losses and try to get a revenue stream by selling software for it, including Office. Until then, the more barriers to entry Gates can put up the happier he will be.
With some companies switching to Linux and others already using it there is a big incentive to use OpenOffice throughout their business if they are using it on Linux systems already. Not only is it free but you can be certain that things will display, edit, and be more assured that training is consistent across all desktops. There are documents I open daily in openoffice that do not display properly(usually half of them). I end up having to boot up vmware to get Office to view them. If Office were avilable for Linux I would probably end up using it because the company I work for would end up buying it. For internal office documents it doesn't really matter that outsiders would need to download OpenOffice to view them.
If Office were available for Linux most shops would just buy that rather than convert people over because transitioning usually is done in spurts anyway so the cost would not be that big. Escpecially if their licenses could transition from one OS to another.
So by not having Office cross platform they are openning themselves up for conversions to OpenOffice and other office type software. In that respect I am very glad Microsoft has not clued in to this yet and they are keeping Office away from Linux.
"Cohen compared the expected Linux Microsoft Office version to Oracle's Database 10g Express Edition application launched in November."
Didn't he just say that it would be F/OSS? It would be a closed/binary app? I'd compare it to a flash player, or Acrobat, or something...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
In my opinion I doubt that the development effort to bring Office to Linux desktops is worth it for Microsoft.
Costs:
Programmer effort including learning/using libraries that I doubt MS programmers have lots of experience with.
Potentially making Linux a more viable-looking desktop OS alternative to Windows
Potential added complexity to the codebase
Benefits:
Miniscule amount of sales to a small market
Improve their image of working with non-MS technologies
It just doesn't seem like they have a lot to gain from doing this...
Way back in the day, MS promised (directly, not someone else saying they would) Office for OS2 when it hit a certain number of users.
It blew by that number, and was Office forthcoming? Nope.
Of course Microsoft are not a stupid company. They'll produce software where they think they will make money. As Windows gets more and more of a pain in the ass for people (I'm thinking governments etc. proposing and actually doing the dance of moving to a Linux desktop or an Open Document Format) and they move away from those, they still want Office, some Microsoft products, some migration or keepsake Microsoft functionality. They may even begrudge the fact that they have to leave a perfectly good solution behind.
MS will notice (they already have..) and then they will pounce with something like they did with IE for Solaris. Something to keep the MS Office wanters happy. I doubt we will see mass migration of Windows users to Linux just because we will eventually have the "real" MS Office there. But it will make some corporate environments a little less tense when it comes to document swapping time..
In order for this to become reality, there needs to be a clear business benefit to Microsoft.
If Office is about the only thing keeping people on Windows (and you can bet Microsoft won't willingly give up that monopoly), then a port has no benefit.
Let's look at this from the reverse perspective: benefit to Microsoft customers.
You can get Microsoft site licensing for just Office (on the assumption that you'll be buying every PC with an OS license anyway and you pay for any upgrades individually as and when).
Where is the business benefit in me shifting all desktops to Linux if I intend to maintain a Microsoft site license? Because I bet you anything you like a Microsoft site license which includes "Office (Linux Edition)" would be more expensive than the "Office for Windows" equivalent. And I'm still stuck with all my data in a proprietary format.
Most organisations following a desktop Linux migration have been either to save money or (more commonly) to avoid having to store data in a proprietary format. Licensing Microsoft "Office for Linux" would eliminate both of those benefits.
With MS Office, the format changes on a regular basis. There are already doc format files which are almost impossible to read, even on Windows. Governments, multinationals may want data to remain readable for the forseeable future, you don't get that unless you are using a standardised document format.
Mmmm, also switch platforms. With doc, you are locked into a monopoly, which is frankly a dumb place to put yourself given an easy alternative.
Deleted
MS does anything for Linux, it means its marketshare has been already depleted and such a move is largely irrevelent. But we are not there yet.
I think Linux uptake will come slower at first, the first 5% is hardest, and then suddenly accelerate (we are on the left side of the bell-curve). It's only a matter of time until those who have to pay MS money (computer vendors) will dare to preinstall a Linux (hopefully Ubuntu) on some of their systems and it will be a slow downhill slide for MS there as more and more institution ask what they are getting in exchange for paying for exorbitant site licenses/etcetera.
At least, that is my hope. Why the market does what it does is a mystery sometimes.....
I mean all that money microsoft invested it would be nice if Darls thank you letter to Steve 'chair throwing' Balmer was written in word rather than vi.
>>> Who will use this?
One of the primary arguments by the PHB's in my company against Linux on the desktop is Microsoft Office. Do not pretend it isn't a big deal.
I've heard much the same myself. Now, on the one hand,
1) If there was MSOffice on Linux, more people would migrate to Linux, while paying for MSOffice, causing revenue gains for MS.
2) Yet, currently, those people are paying for BOTH Windows AND MSOffice licenses.
So this would be a net loss for MS. However, on the other hand,
3) People presently migrating to Linux use either Crossover Office - thus paying for an MSOffice license - or use Openoffice.
4) Now, the ones that would buy MSOffice were it available on Linux are, I conjecture, mostly in the camp of those using Crossover Office - i.e., ALREADY paying for an MSOffice license.
So, assuming my conjecture is mostly right, there seems to be no upside for MS to release MSOffice for Linux. There is one other possibility, however:
5) As TFA states, releasing MSOffice for Linux may cause development of OpenOffice to stall (before it gets good enough to steal market share on Windows).
Besides lowering prices of MSOffice, this seems to be the only way to fight back at OpenOffice. Perhaps for that reason alone, it actually might be a smart move on MS's part.
The standard is open, published and free for everybody to implement. There are just no good free tools, that's all.
His logic is that because MS created an Office for Macintosh, therefore it will create a port for Linux. But Linux operates in a different space with a different user base than Macintosh. Further, Microsoft's relationship with Linux would have to be more similar to Microsoft's relationship to Apple for this to be a valid analogy.
I think a better analogy would be to compare SQL Server Express to MySQL and PostgreSQL. SQL Server was and is an expensive technology but Express is free. Why did MS do that? To compete with Open Source DBs. I believe it is more likely that when Open Office acquires a sufficient fan base to worry Microsoft they will either slash the price of Office or else release Office Express or some such version that is meant to compete ON WINDOWS with the Open Office space.
IOW, it is just as valid to assume that MS will create a WINDOWS variant of Office to compete with Open Office than it is to assume that they will create a LINUX version to do so. And, I think, more likely.
You have never seen how Office is used in a corporate environment. You haven't seen how extensively VBA is used and how people have built mission critical apps in Excel and Access. I'm not saying its a good thing, but replacing these apps is going to take over a decade.
But it could be useful for companies who actually don't have much use for a PC except for reading emails and writing .docs and .xls', and I do believe that this should be the case for a huge number of companies out there. Which is why it will never happen, not until Microsoft starts losing cash in droves and get desperate (which, coincidentally, is also highly unlikely :)
Its not a secret that Microsoft "knows" about linux, and its not a secret that Microsoft uses Linux when their corporate customers need/want/requires. So, why would that be different with SMB/Home customers? I mean, if there's money advantage on porting Office to Linux, why not? I won't be surprised if we read tomorrow that Microsoft has ported Office to Linux, if Linux have a good market share on desktop, either SMB/Home or corporate.
ilex paraguariensis for all
-b.
MS did this in the mid to late 90's, even though it sucked and no one used it.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
While it would be very helpful to have a Microsoft-supported version of Office on Linux boxes, I find little importance as to whether this happens or not for several reasons.
The most important reason why this is just a non-issue is simply because OpenOffice.org does the job "good enough" or better for Linux users. As a new Linux user, why would I be convinced to buy a Linux-compiled binary of Microsoft Office when I have a legally free version of OpenOffice.org that can do everything that Word, Excel, and Powerpoint can do? Let's not even mention Outlook, since there are several e-mail clients that handle that job significantly better.
Furthermore, even if a Linux user had a burning desire for the interface of Word, CrossOver Office handles that job very well under Linux. There will be no need for a Linux-binary when CrossOver can emulate all of the APIs and libraries well enough for Office to function well. Also, can you imagine the wonderful support (or lack thereof) that Microsoft will provide for this product? If you can't, think about receiving an e-mail reply weeks later or paying $20 for useless phone support.
I would go on about what Word lacks and Writer champions (Equation editing, PDF support (which Office 2007 still won't get right), formatting issues, etc), but it doesn't matter since in the end this probably will not happen. The only way I can see a possibility of this happening is if Linux gains significant market share, which I don't see happening in the near future.
What about SharePoint?
Any good collaborative, real-time tools out there being developed on the Open Source front?
You might want to mod me as troll, mods, but that's because I'm right and it angers you.
SharePoint's only serious competitor, Groove, was acuired by MicroSoft and Lotus Notes doesn't want to create 'real' clients for Linux or Mac. Sure, you can install them, but they suck.
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
that keeps a Windows machine on the KVM switch under my desk. Wine and Crossover Office don't work with the current version of QB last time I checked and I've yet to see an Open Source alternative that is comparable. Intuit is right up there with MS in regard to the suckiness of their business plan with forced upgrades to software that was doing everything I wanted from it. At least I've got OO as a good alternative to Office.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Given that a)Microsoft has the largest market share for the office suite type product (though, most people primarly use Word and Excel) and b) that Microsoft's domination in that market is a factor that drives corporate purchase of Windows and c) corporate purchase of Microsoft's products (including MS Windows OSes) is where, regardless what protestations to the contrary MS may exhibit, MS makes the largest portion of its profits, I don't really see where MS has any real incentive to create a version of Office for Linux.
Linux may have made inroads in certain areas for servers, but I forsee, if for no other reason than Microsoft will indemnify it's OS and Office products, most large corporate players sticking with Windows for the desktop. There aren't really any companies that I'm aware of that will indemnify Linux (not even IBM, at this point), and really large corporations want their software vendors to pay for business interuption if the purchased software causes any sort of extended business outage.
MS is too busy getting their core Windows products (Vista) out late. And their introduction of a new product (they never just "port" a Windows product to a new architecture, even on Intel) is always a nearly useless trial balloon for their most insatiable addicts.
I'd love to see MS introduce a Linux MS Office. The competition would be good for OpenOffice. And an LMO would probably be quickly wrapped in Wine and an OO.o plugin. So we could buy MS doc compatibility for Linux by buying a LMO then wrapping it. Maybe even embedding LMO GUIs for zero retraining.
The resulting Linux "Office environment" would be so much better than the MS offering that we could see the MS plan backfire. Breaking the the OO.o/LMO barrier would make it easier for a Windows OO.o port to succeed, once the ignorance and taboo were gone.
But I think MS is just too busy. Certainly too busy to compete with OO.o. But I hope they aren't too busy to try.
--
make install -not war
does any one remeber IE (AFAIK IE 4) for unix ? it never worked propperly (buggy) was slow as hell and even incompatible with windows and mac version (read no activex, no VB, different front sizes, etc.). Microsoft didn't support it fro long ...
... aehm ... old windows you have there). And I read that crossover office (altough not on the latest and greates version) shall work well on linx and OSX.
MS Office is another beast, it is not "just" a web browser (ok, ok, IE is also not just a web browser but still, office does a lot more and is tightly integrated in their OS).
OTOH, wine IE6/5.5/5 works well from my own experience (altough it's a bit slower than native on w32 it is compatible with the windows equivalent as long as you rip the font files from your
so from my own experience, eighter hell freezes over or some other company will provide a usable ms office support on linux but certainly not microsoft.
Cheers,
-S
Lots of companies have spent serious money fielding highly integrated applications based on the ability to use Visual Basic with Office. If might be an Office only app with VBA, or a third party app with VB that calls the various office components to build spreadsheets in Excel or forms in Word. Linux very possibly could break that.
.Net? Could all of those VB apps be ported to Mono?
Here is a question for the Office 2007 Beta users: As of Office 2003, VBA was based on VB6. Does Office 2007 have a VBA based on
Yes, sometimes I'll be reading a document and I'll just want to rip it up and set it on fire. Can I do THAT in Office or OpenOffice.org?
Several others have mentioned the very real problem of distro choice. Because each are different, is Microsoft going to support every one? If not, which ones? Certainly Red Hat and Novell's SUSE make sense, but although that addresses part of the problem it still doesn't resolve the greater concern of providing "MS Office for Linux".
:-)
In my opinion, while I fully support the wide range of distro's, they do nothing but hinder the real viability of Linux in a business environment.
Here's a prognostication:
Microsoft Linux: A "standardized" (yeah... I know... I'm laughing too) distribution that commercial software vendor can "count on" when converting apps to the Linux platform. Sure, it will be bastardized some, but if Microsoft handles this correctly they could end up competing very nicely. For example: (1) directly running Windows binaries, making the Wine compatibility layer unnecessary, (2) certifying applications and support, and (3) recognized branding. After all... "no one get's fired for buying Microsoft".
It would take some of the revenue away from XP, but thefirst item, though, would kill many of the questions surrounding Windows versus Linux in the workplace. Both OS's could run the same binaries. Heck... Microsoft could even port the Vista interface to Linux. User's wouldn't necessarily be able to tell the difference. The ability to run Windows *and* Linux-based open-source apps on the same box would be a win for everyone.
Thoughts?
I don't think many people "get" how MS is built as a company.
Rarely have I seen another company whose products are so heavily interlocked and relying on each other. MS doesn't sell individual products, it sells building blocks of a "microsoft world". I still think Gates' dream is to run everything in your house, office, etc.
MS Office is built heavily on MS Windos. There's even a whole secret API especially so that MS Office can beat competing products. Windos, in turn, sells mostly (in the corporate environment) because of Office. Exchange/Outlook are so common because they "fit into" the landscape, and are integrated heavily with both.
The Xbox is boosted by the fact that it uses largely the same APIs (DirectX) as the Windos PC.
Even the other MS hardware - keyboards, mice, etc. - have special support in the OS. There's hardly any product in the MS portfolio that is not supported, helped along or built upon by half a dozen others.
So will MS ever take one of their products out of its natural environment and move it somewhere else? They've tried here and there - IE and Office on the Mac, for example - and none of that works so very well. IE for Mac is dead. Office on Mac is still around because a trial version ships with every new Mac and due to its dominance in the corporate environment. But on the Mac it's just another application.
Office on Linux? Don't think so. They're not going to give corporations any reason to switch away from Windos, because who knows what's next? These hippies might think about replacing Exchange with something much better and cheapter next!
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The only business strategy Microsoft ever have had is a borg-like 'embrace and extend' attack.
Now they're starting on Linux.
Microsoft will make Office available for Linux, when it decides that it will make more money selling Office to a new market than it will lose in the Windows OS space. MS sells new versions of Office because 1) it has new features that users want and 2) they've changed formats and users must upgrade to be compatible with external Office users. My opinion is that MS hit a wall years ago on item #1 (i.e. they've been adding obscure features most users don't use or care about). On item #2, they're slowly being driven (kicking and screaming) to support a standard XML format. If this truly comes to pass, then they need to look for new untapped markets for Office. The biggest one being Linux users. At that point it'll be an internal battle between the Office product managers vs. the Windows product managers. I would not hazard a guess as to how that'll turn out.
[Insert pithy quote here]
This ODF-Viewer doesn't let you edit the ODF: http://www.totalcmd.net/plugring/OOSimpleViewer.ht ml
VIEWERS don't let you edit the files, EDITORS do allow that.
Interestingly enough, i found several free (as in beer) PDF-Editors.
They might port Office to Linux, but like apple, they'll forego creating or supporting a decent VBscript parser. And that's what all these businesses want. Never mind that it's impossible anyway, since all of these scripts will be full of hardcoded paths like 'C:\Program Files\myapp\some path I thought was cute.ini' that no UNIX will eat.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I predict that MS Office will be just like IE for Unix: it will exist, and it will be unusable. Perhaps just to make people want to use Windows.
"Office for Linux" will no doubt be released immediately following Microsoft's long anticipated version of "Wings for Pigs."
If MS releases their office suite for GNU/Linux systems, that means we have won.
However, we have only reigned victorious on one of two levels. We have won in the sense that the product is available for GNU/Linux, but we have lost because the product is not Free.
It's been my experience that Open Office tends to do a better job parsing older DOC files than the latest and greatest Word.
For example, I was working at a company that did a massive upgrade from Office 95 to Office 2000. Most the documents were Insurance and Securities courses, some close to 700 pages in length, complete with complex formatting and layout.
The process of reformatting the documents was long and painful, until I started using the then Beta Open Office to convert the documents to the newest Office format.
While some fiddling was still necessary, most of the tables and floating text boxes came through just fine. The first sample course I did required an hour of reformatting after my conversion, where it has needed over six hours of editing if Word 2000 was used straight from the Word 95 document.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
...would probably be some kind of "Windows for Linux" which will run inside a VM in a running instance of Linux. That way MS will still be able to sell you the "Windows for Linux" plus the "Office for Windows for Linux". They'll likely give the VM layer away for free, however, since that precedent for free VMs has already been established.
For three years I've already run MS Office 2002 on Fedora Core. It works perfectly, insert CD-ROM, launch "Setup," click "Next" all the way through, then the first time you run it complete the product activation, etc. It starts faster than OpenOffice.org, is more stable, and it's absolutely transparently like any other Linux application.
I've also run Photoshop, Internet Explorer, and FrameMaker for the same period of time.
Wine really is that good now, people, if you configure it well, *or* if you go to Codeweavers.com and buy Crossover Office for well under $100. No, I don't work for them, nor do I work for the Wine project, I'm just still shocked at how people treat Windows compatibility like it's such an issue here--the posts that talk about it as if Microsoft loses the farm the moment Office runs on Linux... well, it has now for years. I wrote two books and my thesis on it, in Linux.
Same thing with Photoshop, I'm always seeing all these posts about how Linux desperately Lacks a Photoshop and GIMP isn't there yet... Well, install @#($* Photoshop in Linux and be done with it.
I was a nonbeliever when I used to try to configure Wine myself (though I did get Office 97 to run under it, after lots of self-configuration), but once I finally broke down and gave Crossover Office a start, I'm recommended it to all my family and friends. I know it sounds like a commercial, but Office for Linux is such a solved problem. And I know people don't like commercial software, but Codeweavers is an OSS service company in most ways: their product is simply a reworked version of an OSS project, and they contribute code back regularly.
But if Office for Linux came out tomorrow, I wouldn't buy it. I already have Office 2002 for Windows running flawlessly on my FC5 desktop. Why would I shell out again?
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
why does everyone call it Office, rather than Microsoft Office - there are other office software out there - OpenOffice, Corel Office, AbiOffice, ...
'In reality, how likely is Office for Linux?'
No chance. As noted, the lack of Office is a key factor in limiting desktop migration to Linux. Microsoft will never voluntarily act against its own interests. Any gain it would reap from Office for Linux would be at the loss of desktops and associated OS sales and related profits. Office for Linux has been predicted many times. Microsoft itself claimed it was forthcoming during the anti-trust trial. But it never has and never will actually arrive. Unfortunately.
In the past, I've joked about MS releasing its own Linux distribution, and this could still happen in the future, but I only see this if Vista comes out and fails spectacularly. By the same token, if MS Office were to come to Linux, I think that would be in conjunction with the MS Linux release, again, in the aftermath of a Vista implosion. Much is made of the dominance of MS Windows on the desktop, but the thing that really keeps millions of business users on Windows is MS Office. Most businesses think it is too much of a hassle to retrain to switch to some other office suite and then deal with document sharing issues with other businesses.
The question is, how much of a failure does Vista have to be in order to force this kind of shakeup? Perhaps not much, because Windows XP is already good enough for many of its users. So they really aren't going to be in a hurry to upgrade both hardware and software. This is especially true if they are primarily using Windows to run MS Office. But that also means that they may be reluctant to upgrade to the latest version of Office, especially if MS tries to entice them to upgrade to Vista by sprinkling Office with a bunch of Vista exclusive features. If Office is where Microsoft really makes its money, then this is big big trouble. Only if Vista fails to keep those Office upgrades coming will they be desperate enough to look to Linux to eek out more sales. And I still think this would have to be coupled with really slow Vista sales or even major technical difficulties. And by difficulties, I mean the kind of stuff that led Apple, in part, to abandon Copeland and build what eventually became OS X. (I know the Apple story involves more than that with the Jobs return and coup, but you get the point...)
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There is no doubt in my mind they would sell a few copies. I think they might be able to sell enough right now to cover their development/marketing costs. So why don't they do it? Oppertunity cost. For every copy of Office they sell on Linux they lose a sale on the Windows platform + the lisencing cost of windows. This would be a net loss.
The argument that "They did it for Mac" doesn't hold water for me either. The reason they did it for Mac was to fight the anti-trust argument. That has always been the interest in keeping Apple breathing for MS. I don't think MS ever saw Apple as a direct threat...or at least not one they couldn't control. However, I think they do look at Linux this way. And I doubt you'll see them do anything to further the acceptance of Linux platform. Ever.
MS uses two central tactics. Monopolize and squeeze out. Embrace and destroy. Monopolize and squeeze out works great for the Mac office because they are takeing viable revenu streams away from other office competitors. They aren't going to take one nickel from anyone with MS office on Linux. Nor will they succeed in stopping one line of Open Source code for Open Office....
Now, they might use the embrace and destroy method for the ODF. Implement it, badly, and talk about the weakness of the ODF for supporting features that a REAL word processor need. Poof. There goes ODF. Personally, every time I see MS makeing a desicion not to support ODF I cheer...Open Office certianly won't have problems reading Word documents. Why would I care that Word won't do ODF?
-Todd
-Todd
Put down the sig, and step away from the computer.
Yup, 2007 is definitely gonna be the year of the linux desktop.
They're scaling-back Office for Mac. I highly doubt they're seriously planning a Linux version. This is FUD to scare away OpenOffice development.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Ok, I'm going to qualify that a bit - no Office for Linux within the next three years. Let's revisit this topic in three years and see who's the better prognosticator - Stuart Cohen or me.
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
I'll believe it when I see microsoft office for linux for sale at the local best buy, and not a minute before.
Microsoft wouldn't port MS-Office to Linux just because it's profitable. Microsoft attempts to destroy anything that might be a threat to their MS-Windows / MS-Office hegemony, their only real source of income. MS-Exchange sells mostly because MS-Outlook is bundled with their other products, and because it fits into the MS-Windows world.
Microsoft doesn't cooperate with anything or anybody that might harm their desktop dominance, because that's the only thing keeping them alive right now. There's nothing profitable about Microsoft that isn't tied directly to MS-Windows. With Vista so long delayed, they haven't had a recent upgrade cycle to pump a lot of money out of other corporations. They certainly won't release a version of MS-Office for Linux until Vista is as widely deployed as XP is now.
Make no mistake. Microsoft is not interested in anything that doesn't push MS-Windows on the desktop. Even MS-Office for the Mac is a very low priority, there mostly because of past deals with Apple, and because they don't see Apple as a threat on the desktop yet.
Linux is a different matter. Linux isn't a threat yet, either, but Microsoft sees how it might be. All it takes is a few high-profile deployments of Linux / Open Office / Firefox on the desktop, and Linux might suddenly displace MS-Windows during Microsoft's next forced-march upgrade cycle, when OEMs no longer bundle XP, and suddenly everyone has to upgrade because the new version of MS-Office doesn't work properly on XP.
It's likely this won't happen. But it might. And so Microsoft is probably more frightened of Linux than they are of Mac OS X.
At least, that's how I understand the situation, based on years of watching Microsoft deal with potential threats to their OS stanglehold.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Wait... if Microsoft released Office for Linux, would'nt they then add the cost of an Office license to the per-seat total cost of ownership for linux? Would that then not increase Microsoft's bullshift TCO statistics for linux by $200?
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
I would love to move to Office on Linux. I know I could go with Open Office for Word, Excel and Power Point alternatives. But for something like Outlook (Which is truly the Overlord of every large company I have ever worked at.) makes it so freaking hard. I would love to be able to: 1) Develop on a 'Nix of some sort, because that is what I know I will be deploying to in production. 2) Not have to context switch between environments. There are so many alternatives. But each is just enough of a pain in the ass that it makes it harder to switch to Linux as my main development platform. There was a time when I had a Solaris box on my desk. It was my work station, it was my development platform, and my email was pop3/SMTP. Life was simple. Now... Outlook, exchange, windows productivity have caused life to be some much more difficult than it has to be.
When a man lies he murders a part of the world.
... port it using Mono. Not only would their developers to be able to make use of C#, a language they developed themselves (/me activates fireshield), but they would minimise dependencies between Linux distros.
Actually it would be interesting to see just how flexible their .NET platform really is...
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Can you name something that you wanted to do to a document that you couldn't do in Office Or OpenOffice.org?
Sure! Set it up to print out on a commercial printing press. I need 250,000 copies to hit a targeted mailing to every consumer in a specific list of area codes in my county, and I need at least a 12.5% eyeball rate (meaning that at least 1 out of 8 people in the area codes I'm targeting will actually look at the piece).
By the way, let's see you do that on the Web...just to dispell those "you don't need a printing press any more" arguments. Not that you can get decent HTML out of an office suite, for that matter.
And no, neither Office nor OO.o have professional color management capabilities nor handle vector and raster images correctly in the same document. A Big Nope on Corel WordPerfect Office as well, although I like the product for other reasons.
So, for now, no "office suite" type product is suitable for professional document creation. The only thing they are truly useful for are raw keystroke capture and spell check.
OH...I almost forgot something ELSE you can't do in an office suite: create a document which actually looks nice. You know, with professional-looking typography (kerning, tracking, points-based leading) and complete positional control over how text blocks interact with each other and with graphic objects. In other words, the kind of stuff that would give your document enough eyeball appeal that another human being might actually want to pick it up and read it.
Microsoft tried to address the situation with the addition of Publisher to Office but so far it's been a complete failure (see my earliest blog on this site).
Last year approximately 25% of my income (I own an advertising agency) came from people paying me to take their Office documents and convert them to something that the print shop/newspaper/magazine/advertising medium could actually use. Usually that meant stripping the text out and rebuilding from scratch in a page layout or a vector drawing program. It would have been far more useful had they given me their stuff in Windows Wordpad format.
I get it; self supporting monopoly etc. etc., hegemony requires both office and Windows. But what about all this MS Live stuff they're doing. They could port the .NET framework (or something like it) to Linux, thereby embracing and extending Linux itself. Binaries only, evade the GPL, and then release "Office Live" for the .NET Framework, which of course comes with IE. Discount it even a little bit. Now change your pricing structure a tiny bit: i.e. Windows includes the .NET framework free, but the one for Linux costs $100 at BestBuy + $15/year for updates.
.NET framework on Linux. Its W0L: Windows on Linux.
.NET framework only works well with some odd kernel revision, and after a year or so, ship a MS drop in replacement kernel that works wonderfully with .NET, but breaks Samba, Apache, NetFilter, Firefox and OO something fierce; but includes a Windows Server CAL and an Exchange CAL for $150 more. Voila: Linux problem solved.
Now: include AOL (profit sharing with Time Warner of course), WMP, MSN Toolbar, MSN sign up links, ads for Microsoft Mice and keyboards... all only for the
Now: ensure that the Linux
(Of course there would be considerable challenges in all of this, but they're well funded, and smarter than we usually give them credit for.)
Kyle Hodgson Systems Geek
I doubt that Microsoft would port Office to Linux. Why would Microsoft want to help eliminate a roadblock to Linux desktop adoption?
Of course, stranger things have happened.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
If you've had the pleasure of sitting in on one of their demonstrations, you'll realize that Office2007 is going to be a large shift in their office software.
/flamesuit_activate
DOCX is their wonderful new filetype, and it's just a large XML file. Not only is Microsoft opening up the documents to the developers (according to our sales guy), but they're going to be doing it in a way that might make a few OSS people smirk.
A lot of these comments have it right, I've used OOo for years, and it is still light-years behind Office when it comes to small business utility. Maybe with Office adopting DOCX in the next couple years, OOo can pull of a come-from-behind win, but at the moment they're a far cry from it.
And Microsoft actually changed a bit of their Office software for this release! They have a cool new toolbar. And some formatting stuff. That's about it.
I was rather impressed with 2007. They seem like they're taking steps in the right direction. Having said that, I need a shower.
I have to question how portable MS software really is. I mean it took them longer to ship WIndows 64 bit version than it took a bunch of students, amatuers and part-timers to port Linux. Apple appears to have ported from PPC to Intel much faster than MS ported Windows to AMD 64.
From my readings, reading between the lines and various other sources I have to draw the conclusion that MS software is so tightly bound to the OS (and hardware) that portability would be *very* expensive. THey will not port unless it threatens thier very existense (as the lack of a 64 bit x86 OS would eventually have eroded their relevenace in server class hardware space). Note too Linux runs on more than just x86 and so if they have written to bare metal, which I suspect they have, then that makes things even worse.
I see no major MS software on Linux at this time. Unless they decided to use Wine (or some other such software). Which could work actually, with a little bit of innovation. But MS really isn't that good at innovation either. So no, I would say technically difficult without a good business advantage. So not likely.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Adobe said this about PDF.
ODF will more likely be a good ride for 10 years.
OpenOffice has made real progress. As a long-time user, I've watched it go from "totally sucks" to "almost works" to "works, but is irritating at times". Right now, it works mechanically, but has more sharp edges than Office. Compare, say, OpenOffice word completion with Microsoft Word. OpenOffice will try to do the same dumb thing twice. Microsoft Word will stop fighting you after the first time.
And, let's face it, OpenOffice help information needs help. If you ask for help on something, you often either can't find it, get info about the wrong thing, or get info which doesn't tell you exactly where to find something in the menu system. It's little stuff like that which affects user likability.
All these things are fixable, but they're not the kind of problems that get fixed via Bugzilla complaints. The open source process isn't good at fixing usability issues. It takes things like videotaping users struggling with a program to get these kinds of problems fixed.
Usability testing is simple enough. You make up some tasks, like "Write a letter on company letterhead, then print it and its envelope". You videotape a few people doing this, with a system that records both the screen and the user's face and voice. You watch the videos (this is the time-consuming part) and note all the places where the user got stuck, had to undo something, or lost time. Those are your usability bugs. The goal is a seamless user experience, or "flow".
It would be useful to have video like that on SourceForge or YouTube. It's boring, but it would give more developers a sense of what usability is really about.
This seems to pop up on our beloved /. every couple of years or so. Personally, I would LOVE to see Office on Linux, and I think it's in Microsoft's best interest to put it out there, but I doubt it will happen. It appears they've developed a myopic, RIAA-like fixation on propping up their current market without preparing adequately for the next one. Sure they have a 90%+ marketshare of the desktop, and finding a computer without Word is almost as hard as finding a TV without satellite or cable, but that's now. OpenOffice is making inroads into that market. Google is doing an end-run around the whole market by releasing Writely and Spreadsheets. Apple has their own office products. Adobe wants to make Powerpoint irrelevant by using flash for presentations. All it would really take is for one or two of those ideas to catch on to see Microsoft lose a fair amount of money.
Eventually, someone at Microsoft will realize that Linux / *BSD / *NIX WILL cut into their server market, and to a lesser extend the desktop market, and there is NOTHING they can do to prevent that. So long as Microsoft exists, there will be people on Slashdot bashing it, and they will hook a wi-fi card to an abacus before booting a windows box. The dumb thing to do, which what Redmond is doing now, woul be to ignore them, or worse villify them in some way as being communist or anti-American for not wanting to shell out large amounts of cash for an OS and software. The smart thing to do would be to finding markets where they can reach them. Office on *NIX would be one way to do that.
We know Office will run on *BSD. It's already running on Mac OS X. One would hope that it would not be impossible to run Office on Linux. I would like to think that there are at least a few geeks on the Office team that got loaded on half-caf double decaf expresso lattes with a twist of lemon and have ported it just to see if it could be done. Only time will tell.
but it does is break the network effect. Customers and suppliers of Bank of America no longer have to have MS Office in order to communicate with them. It's the network effect which has made MS Office the monopoly product it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
Deleted
In Soviet Russia, Linux run you!
Given the amount of time it takes for MS to produce a new version of their OS, I think its unlikely that they will have a Linux/Office version in two years. They would have to be demonstrating "beta" versions now to make that deadline. I imagine it would take a company of that size about 5-10 years. Not to say that the dev task is all that difficult, just a comment on the innovative paralisys that grips large organizations.
News for you: You don't have to recompile for every distro (although it may help with library dependencies). All you need to do is to repackage in the distro's preferred package format and maybe tweak the pre- and post-installation scripts.
As for Office showing bugs on Linux, well MS might be tempted to blame them on Linux so that users will return to Windows. Remember how MS "handled" DR-DOS?
If I were at Micro$oft, I'd look at it like this...
2 options. Either A) port office, or B) don't port office. If office were ported, then they'd likely make quite a bit of cash on sales from it. However, file format support is, to my understanding, one of the major reasons businesses don't leave windoze platform. Office on linux could cause more users to make the big switch. Microsoft wouldn't like that. They'd still be making money from office sales, but why lose the income from the OS itself as well? (Though it's still rarely an option to buy a given model of computer without xp installed if it comes from any of the major OEMs). Worse yet (for M$ at least), users who switchover would be exposed to a buffet of FOSS equivilents to countless proprietary software products. A good number of users would probably decide to save themselves more money by using openoffice instead, after having been exposed to it (as it seems to come standard on most the major distro's now, or at least is easy to get).
If they follow option B, and don't port it, they miss out only on the market share currently held by the *nix variants. From the business point of view, in the long run, option B seems safer.
Fortunately, WINE and its variants are already very compatible with the staple software most people rely on, and are progressing at an impressive rate. So if M$ doesn't port it themselves, in the end anyone with an x86 can still likely run it virtually flawlessly. At this rate, in a year or two if M$ ported it, it wouldn't matter anymore. Sure, it'd be 'officially' supported, but unless they also ported to different processor architectures, I don't see it having much of an effect. (And I'm sure the last thing M$ wants is people to start buying pc's with anything but x86's or x86_64's in them).
It isn't important which office suite you use to type up that all important letter, spreadsheet and what not. The thing that matters is the exchange of information; which is linked to the file type. The F/OSS community is on the right track and this should be pursued to the Nth degree.
Lets ask: Does it matter that Outlook isn't part of the *nix desktop? Does it matter that MS has their own TCP suite? What matters is the ability to communicate, period.
Hah, that comment only serves to remind me of my love for LaTeX.
However, doing tables in LaTeX is a PITA.
But for math... Nothing can beat (La)TeX.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
you can be sure that per unit sales will always increase.
If you don't believe product-shipment-at-any-cost, see Frys ad today and grab
the $33/license Office franchise for students.
Just one instance of the included Outlook or PowerPoint is more than that $99.
And the TOS for Office XP product activation allows for 1 desktop and 1 laptop.
It's definitely a numbers game for where the real money is -- maintaining the
price of their stock and all those Microsoft stock options.
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[tagging beta] insightful +1
[tagging beta] interesting -1
[tagging beta] informative +2
I said when reading this article that it's 'inevitable' that I will never install a version of office to run on Linux ... ever.
The networking engineer killer app. And, outlook of course, but that goes away if exchange does. And the data to columns feature in excel is sometimes better than an hours worth of | cut -d
Well, I don't really know how many of you remember the big Windows 2000 API source code leak that occurred not that long ago, but it was eventually concluded that a company called Mainsoft had leaked it in the first place.
.NET that it should be possible to build a port of Office in a relatively short period of time. Then using some additional time, it should be possible to integrate the KDE and Gnome skin managers into the product. In reality what you get is a program that is actually built natively for Linux.
.dll instead of .so. Also there would need to be a new installer or package model implemented. But really, if you're not happy with OpenOffice like many of us, then a Microsoft Word and Excel port done in house by Microsoft would be a great thing.
Well what does that have to do with this? Well Mainsoft possessed the Windows source code since for years they have been providing a full implementation of the Win32 API for UNIX systems. That's right, Wine isn't the only product out there that implements the Win32 API for UNIX systems, just like Samba isn't the only SMB/CIFS implementation for UNIX.
See Mainsoft has a really neat product that was used by Microsoft in the past. By porting the actual source code of Windows to the UNIX platforms, they had a very easy to use version of the Win32 SDK. In fact, Microsoft Internet Explorer for UNIX was built on this technology. It's a bit of a shame Microsoft stopped making Visual C++ for Mac since it also did the same thing.
Well, here's the deal about the Mainsoft product these days. They've actually integrated into Visual Studio.NET and have make it so that using technologies such as rexec and sexec, you can press compile in Visual Studio.net and it will in fact compile your Windows applications remotely on a target OS such as Linux or Solaris. You don't even need to write much new code since they have a preprocessor that converts type related problems. In the build pane, you see build errors and can fix them locally on your Windows system. Using X Windows, you can execute the target and debug it from within Visual Studio as well.
So where does this get us... obviously it must be hard to port a project like Microsoft Office to another platform... right? Well, not really, there's enough of Windows implemented, including
Well, here's the drawback, it's still a Windows program. It still looks and feels like one. But hey, who really cares? I would be able to run a natively compiled version of Microsoft Office on Linux. Oh.. there would be some issues with things like files that are called
Now on the other hand, it's a real shame that IBM has not open sourced the Lotus Office Suite since it appears they won't support it for that much longer. 1-2-3 and Amipro (think it was called) are still some of the best products I've ever seen. Much better than Open Office. If the code went open, I don't think it would take that long before someone at least had a Wine port of it running on Linux.
We're talking about a large course library full of complex graphics, charts and equations, not to mention a convoluted outline structure. You're recommending it be maintained it in a system designed to handle documents far more complex, that's been refined and optimized over the course of decades???
But, but, if we did THAT we'd be using something other than the commonly known Microsoft product!
All sarcasm aside, I did bring up the prospect of using something other than MS Word to maintain the courses. The response I got from the company owner was that "If it was better than Word, no one would use Word."
Basically, he was a Microsoft fanboy, and as far as he was concerned, if there was a Microsoft product that could conceivably be used to do something, then it HAD to be the BEST solution for the task.
One of the sales guys convinced him to let the sales staff try using Microsoft Publisher. That experiment ended as soon as they tried to take the document to the company that the owner ALWAYS used for large production jobs. They found out that the EPS documents Publisher produced were NOT actual EPS documents, and the firm in question didn't take Publisher files.
I never did convince the company owner that Frontpage wasn't the best web design package on the planet. He would always criticize me for using Homesite, vi or Dreamweaver, because, in his logic, "If it comes from Microsoft, it's the best in the market."
Of course this same the same guy who referred to programmers as "Glorified typists" so you can tell what he though of the tech staff.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
"The evidence that Microsoft does this and uses that information... Is?"
Clippy. For the 98% of people out there who aren't computer-literate uberhackers, Clippy is help and succour personified when the damn computer doesn't do what they want. Once they're up to speed they can dispense with Clippy's assistance, or switch it back on when they try something new. It's like training wheels -- once you're a Kool Kid you look down on the dorks still cycling around in circles on four wheels and carefully forget you were ever the same as them.
MS made a careful and calculated decision to put Clippy and co. into their premier software package and they made it after talking to a lot of potential customers, studying them carefully and figuring out what they needed and how to make it available in a way they would want to use. Blind guesses and stabs in the dark are how GPL UIs are created (I was going to say "designed" but there's little evidence of rational thought behind most OSS UI design decisions) which is why nearly all of it is a pain to use, even if the functional code underneath is competent.
"The way to be safe is never to be secure" --Benjamin Franklin
Wow, I will remember that one.