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.

Comments

Who will use it?

[neonprimetime]

"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.

Re:Who will use it?

[JBHarris]

I think you may be missing the point. Companies are switching to Linux because it is a viable OS alternative. However, OOo is NOT a viable Office alternative. I have used both OpenOffice and MS-Office each for SEVERAL years, and I have yet to find many features in OOo that I use regularly in MS-Office. Microsoft is loosing ground in the desktop OS category. They want to make sure they at least make SOME money from this explosion of Linux adoption.

Simply, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Brad

less and less relevant

[kisrael]

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.

Re:More likely

[Aladrin]

(I'm gonna be modded troll for this, I can just feel it.)

Maybe there's no 'real competition' in 'that segment' because the need is pretty much filled? Can you name something that you wanted to do to a document that you couldn't do in Office Or OpenOffice.org?

Re:Endangers Mutually Supporting Monopolies

[NihilEst]

Overall there is too much danger to Microsoft in this because the Office and Windows monopolies are mutually supporting.

This was what the original DoJ anti-trust effort against MSFT, if you'll recall, attempted to accomplish: a divestiture of MSFT's OS and applications divisions. It failed. We still have the three-headed Hydra whose left hand (Windows OS) supports it's right hand (Office and similar apps).

We are now seeing the oligopoly behaving like an oligopoly does: less choice, fewer options. Once upon a time, MSFT did release a Word for Mac and a Word for OS/2; but that was before Windows had its death grip on the desktop market. Now MSFT sees no need -- until ODF, there was no competition. Now there is. This ought to be interesting :)

SharePoint

[Sqwubbsy]

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.

OO does a better job with older DOC files

[doublem]

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.

Catch 22

[Arceliar]

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).