MS Issues Word Patch To Comply With Court Order

bennyboy64 writes "iTnews reports that Microsoft has begun offering what appears to be a patch for its popular Word software, allowing it to comply with a recent court ruling which has banned the software giant from selling patent-infringing versions of the word processing product. The workaround should put an end to a long-running dispute between Canadian i4i and Redmond, although it has hinted that the legal battle might yet take another turn."

Comments

Open Office is there

[sopssa]

Since Open Office is there, why would anyone go for this?

Re:Open Office is there

[__aardcx5948]

Because OO isn't compatible enough. If it doesn't look 100% the same, and I mean 100%, it's not good enough.

Re:Open Office is there

[samurphy21]

That's utopian thinking. For home use, I more or less agree with you. Business users have a lot of finely detailed and rigidly laid out documents, sometimes with proprietary macro or VBA coding in them. This stuff would be a huge pain to translate to an open standard, and there's no guarantee that OOo will display them faithfully and with fidelity.

Plus, with a MS Office contract, you have a software vendor to fall back to when things go wrong. You don't get this to the same extent with OSS, which is why business is often slow to adopt it.

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple: some people are extremely risk-avoidant, and they'll pay money even when something else that does pretty much the same thing is free.

I have tried many times to encourage an acquaintance who runs a small business to switch from MS Office to OpenOffice.org so she could save money on upgrades. Her response is typically: 'I have to be sure that my documents are compatible with other MS Office users. Can you absolutely, positively guarantee that they will be if I use OpenOffice?'

And of course, my answer is no. But then, I can't absolutely, positively guarantee that two copies of MS Office won't have compatibility issues either. No matter: MS Office is perceived as the 'safe' route, and don't think Microsoft doesn't pay big bucks to keep that thought in the zeitgeist of MS Office users.

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

Because OO.org is a piece of shit?

Re:Open Office is there

[Low Ranked Craig]

I'm not a huge Microsoft fan (just as I'm not a huge Adobe fan either) but the fact is that for all its flaws, Office is a superior product to Open Office, and can't even be compared with Google docs (with a straight face). I suppose if you are a casual user them OO is fine. But as a heavy user of Office, I tried to replace it with OO last year, and it just didn't do all the things I rely on Word and Excel to do for me, or at least not as easily, so I gave up on it. (BTW I'm running Office 2008 on a Mac) Likewise Photoshop and Gimp - I'd love not to have to pay Adobe hundreds of dollars for Photoshop, but Gimp doesn't even come close in terms of functionality and work flow, but again, like Office, I use Photoshop heavily and rely on it for my business.

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

There used to be a saying: "no one ever got fired for buying big blue"
-The reference was to buying IBM hardware.

In business, making a choice that costs a bit more, but you know will work is the generally accepted right answer vs making the cheaper choice that should work. Its called risk avoidance.

Re:Open Office is there

[wizardforce]

Plus, with a MS Office contract, you have a software vendor to fall back to when things go wrong. You don't get this to the same extent with OSS, which is why business is often slow to adopt it.

That sounds very odd to me considering that to my knowledge, a large majority of the income for OSS projects come from support contracts. Is it that businesses at large don't know about them or is this one more case of using MS Office because everyone else is?

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

The same exact reason why people still pirate Windows when Linux is free.

Re:Open Office is there

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Chocolate exists, why would anyone go for vanilla?

Re:Open Office is there

[nhytefall]

Honestly, the compatibility, scalability, and overall functionality is why I pushed my open source shop to implement an Outlook server.

Before I get flamed, the reason was project/meeting scheduling. Until the new, in-house OSS solution is live, work *still* has to get done, and having to check 5 different calendars to schedule a fucking field install is completely unacceptable to me.

Re:Open Office is there

[chill]

This isn't totally honest.

The transition from Office 97 to Office 2000 caused major headaches because of the lack of proper support for .doc format. People got thru that by recreating many documents, or just doing without them, or waiting until a service pack came out many months later.

Ditto with the transition from Office 2003 to 2007. I've dealt with numerous cases, especially with Powerpoint, where opening and saving in Office 2007 totally fucked up a document. Stuff disappeared, or was rearranged. One case, where the boss got a new laptop 2 days before a conference. His old one died and his new one came with Office 2007. He edited his presentation, saved it as an Office 2003 .ppt and sent it to his assistant to finish. It was totally fubar, but she only edited a few slides in the beginning and didn't see the mess later on. When she sent it to him, her edits looked like crap to him and his earlier edits were gone. It was a nightmare that saw the assistant recreate the entire thing from a printout the day before the conference -- and a total office ban on Office 2007 the day after.

Shit happens, even when exclusively in the MS world. People would redo the documents that didn't translate properly. They'd bitch, but they'd do it. I've seen it time and time again over the last 20+ years. Wordstar (dot commands FTW!) to Wordperfect to Word; Lotus 1-2-3 to Excel; god-knows-what to Visio; and don't even get me started on CAD!

And SuSE, Red Hat, TRW or IBM would be happy to take your money for a support contract.

Re:Open Office is there

[Ephemeriis]

Since Open Office is there, why would anyone go for this?

Open Office, while good, just isn't an option for a lot of business users.

I've got business clients who can't handle the minuscule UI changes from Office 2000 to XP to 2003... They've actually avoided 2007 like the plague... There's no way in hell they'll go to a whole new program.

And then there's the issue of things opening and rendering correctly. I don't know how good OO.o is these days... It may be nearly perfect... But the first time someone opens a document that looks wrong, or the first time someone sends a document that nobody else can open, will be the last time they use OO.o

Plus, when things go really wrong you can always call Microsoft and complain... Pay for some technical support or something... Does OO.o offer support contracts?

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why they shouldn't have locked themselves into a proprietary solution. But that's an excuse for documents that were made years ago. There is no reason to write new documents using MS Office.

Re:Open Office is there

[swb]

A lot of OSS projects don't sell support contracts; you might be able to hire a key contributor to an OSS project on some kind of consulting basis, but they aren't really on call for support.

There may be third parties good at implementing and possibly troubleshooting some OSS software or components, but if you need some fix implemented due to a bug you're back to being at mercy of the OSS developers unless your third party has developers on staff who can fix OSS products.

None of this is to say the existing commercial market is perfect -- its not, we know that -- but it is a mature market and my experience has been that a lot of commercial applications, including MS, have pretty decent support available when you need it.

Re:Open Office is there

[_Sprocket_]

I'm curious. I use OO at work all the time (today, in fact). The only time I've ever felt inclined to turn to Google Docs was to toy with shared access (and limited syncing to my Droid). And the only time I've had to turn to MS Word was when someone generated a MS Word doc that OO couldn't handle properly (or rather - once OO saved it, Word couldn't handle the formatting). Maybe I'm missing something very important about Google Docs? And likewise, I've never hit the need for complexity with Word docs that seem to drive some folks.

Re:Open Office is there

[westlake]

Since Open Office is there, why would anyone go for this?

The legit copy of MS Office for home use is free to many who use MS Office at work. Microsoft Software Assurance Home Use Program

The MS Office "Ultimate Steal" for a full or part time student with an .edu e-mail address is $60. Win 7 Pro $30. the ultimate steal

Since Word 97 or theabouts Microsoft has offered a Home office bundle for around $100-$150 list. Currently with a three-seat license. That's the price of a serviceable multifunction printer or four ink jet cartridges.

MS Office skills are marketable at any age.

The senior volunteer, the disabled, the kid just out of school knows this. It beats flipping burgers, pays better than Wal-Mart, and there is always someone who needs you.

Re:Open Office is there

[0100010001010011]

I work for a fortune 50 company that sadly still uses some shoestringed Excel VBA for production stuff. (It started as a engineering test, and just migrated with everything else).

We're still running Office 2000 and I don't see us changing anytime soon.

Re:Open Office is there

[benjamindees]

It's not complexity. No sane person actually uses most of that crap included in Word. If you're at the point that you're considering adding macros to a text document, it's time to learn real programming and a real markup language.

You've already mentioned the major reason for using Word over OO.o: interoperability. OO.o is great for reading random Word documents that someone sends you. It's also good at creating documents from scratch, to send to Word users. And if you can get your entire office to switch to OpenOffice, more power to you.

But what it doesn't do well enough to compensate for the $200 price of Word, is handle the typical exchange of documents between business users, all of whom add or remove mark-up and editing. In fact, Word didn't really even support this very well itself for a long time. And the result is usually a complete mess of course, but it's passable and it facilitates collaboration among several workers.

Re:Open Office is there

[d4nowar]

Then why does every new version of Microsoft Office look 100% different than the previous version?

Re:Open Office is there

[couchslug]

Semi-OT, but a handy way to use different versions of Office on the same PC, and portably on a USB key, is to modify their installation via VMWare ThinApp:

http://www.vmware.com/products/thinapp/

I found out about Thinstals/Thinapps/"portable" versions when I accidentally browsed a torrent site where they are popular for various reasons, but the concept works well and it's easier to copy/paste a folder than do a conventional install.

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell kind of bullshit is that? Oh, we have someone to choke, we can blah blah blah. What is that, some kind of joke? Really, are you a village idiot or something? I've seen that piece of crap spewed so many times and still I see morons spewing it "oh, I have a contract blah blah, you know, for restitution'. NO ONE CAN GET IT FROM THEM! What world are you living in? SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, NOT EVEN THE WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY!!! Its been in their license boiler plate for years! Someone to CHOKE???? Thats just a JOKE!!!

Re:Open Office is there

[__aardcx5948]

I should have clarified; what I meant was that if the document doesn't look and behave exactly the same when opened in OO (including macros, VBA etc etc which are in use everyday at every corporation) then it's not an option.

Re:Open Office is there

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Lame mod. But maybe shame on me for lack of detail. Let me rephrase it in better terms.

Nissan versa's exist, why do people buy the more expensive mini cooper?

Re:Open Office is there

[Antique Geekmeister]

There is even _less_ guarantee that MS format documents will be correctly displayed or formatted by _any_ tool. Microsoft has repeatedly been shown, in court, to publish documentation of their formats so bad that it is useless to other developers. And the changes between MS Word versions are frequently terribly mishandled by even the best of Microsoft's tools.

In general, the few documents that do not display correctly in OpenOffice which I've not encountered were prey to time-wasting layout micromanagers, who specified every single character's position for esthetic effects that have nothing to do with actual content, and the mishandling is a good indicator that the document itself is written by a paper-work pusher collecting their management salary for picking fonts.

And have you ever _tried_ to get MS Office support, as opposed to commercial OpenOffice support or even open source support for OpenOffice? Go ahead: try to get help with Hebrew printing, or Microsoft mishandling of Unicode.

Re:Open Office is there

[samurphy21]

So angry.

Have you ever had a support contract before? At the university where I'm the backup software license officer, we've got a Microsoft Campus Agreement, as well as software site license for SPSS, and multiple other statistical and mathematical software packages. If a widespread problem occurs due to a software fault, such as the calendar issues we were having on the 2003-2007 Office switch, they had someone on the problem and the problem resolved in less than a day.

When a similar glitch occurred in our Evolution users, we had to submit a bug report, then wait for a new version to be released to repository, as we couldn't expect our users to compile from CVS, as the majority of them don't even have a build toolkit.

There's anecdotal evidence for both sides of the argument, but I stand by what's been said.

Re:Open Office is there

[benjamindees]

backup software license officer

Is that really your title? No one in a university IT department could manage to patch and compile Evolution from CVS if necessary?

Re:Open Office is there

[maxume]

Oof!:

http://store.vmware.com/store/vmware/en_US/DisplayProductDetailsPage/productID.105855000

Not a big deal for lots of groups, but a show stopper for lots of others.

Re:Open Office is there

[Hurricane78]

Business users have a lot of finely detailed and rigidly laid out documents

And then they use Word... of all programs... to do that?
That’s like drawing pictures in MS Paint. ^^

For that task, the area is not “word processing”, but “DTP”.
InDesign, QuarkXPress, Scribus and (La)TeX would be the tools for that.

The “quality” of layout that you can do in MS programs, you can do in OOo too.
There is no guarantee that MS documents look right in OOo, true. But on top of there also being no guarantee that MS documents will display right in other versions from MS, there is a guarantee that open documents will not display right in MS at all.

For sending around documents, with a guaranteed layout, you use PDF anyway. Anything else would look ridicoulous and pointy-haired.*

Plus, with a MS Office contract, you have a software vendor to fall back to when things go wrong. You don't get this to the same extent with OSS, which is why business is often slow to adopt it.

Stop spreading that lie. There are many companies out there who gladly sell you professional support.
I wonder if MS will ever change the application and add new code for you... Because they can, and you can afford it too. :)

* Yes, I laughed at my ex-boss for sending me stuff in MS formats. Then I founded my own company, telling them I’d come back when I could buy them for some peanuts. Now they were sold for a single peanut. I was there. I laughed. ^^
In the end you control your own value, what you accept, and what not.

Re:Open Office is there

[Brett Buck]

Plus, with a MS Office contract, you have a software vendor to fall back to when things go wrong.

          That's not worth the electrons you used to type that sentence. Through work, I have had a "platinum" trouble ticket open with these idiots for about 6 years now. It's a pretty serious issue - documents that become corrupted either while they are being edited, or when opened and then closed. Not trivial stuff - characters just change from one thing to another. They haven't even made a decent effort to resolve it. Their solution to document corruption is to get a correct printed copy, somehow, then scan it in as a TIFF file. This from a senior tech at MS. Not only that, they have consistently been unable to get a simple NDA signed and ITAR certification so that I can give them some of the examples. The sticking point is that they seemingly can't ensure that all the people working it are US citizens. That's not asking a lot for the kind of money that my very large aerospace company pays them in support costs, for this serious an issue.

        Brett

Re:Open Office is there

[ghjm]

Outlook, group policy, VBA macros, Active Directory deployment, Sharepoint integration, widespread compatibility with third party software.

I'm not a Microsoft troll. But you asked and that is the answer.

-Graham

Re:Open Office is there

[Blakey Rat]

I'd just like to point out that there's no guarantee, or reason to believe, that open source office software is any better in this regard.

And, hell, OpenOffice's presentation software is so weak, even a completely corrupted Office 2007 file probably looked better.

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously haven't spent a lot of time with "users". Must be nice.

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

Business users have a lot of finely detailed and rigidly laid out documents, sometimes with proprietary macro or VBA coding in them. This stuff would be a huge pain to translate to an open standard, and there's no guarantee that OOo will display them faithfully and with fidelity.

I take it you haven't tried to upgrade to the most recent version. Good luck with that proprietary macro support and having things not lose fidelity and work the same.

You don't get this to the same extent with OSS, which is why business is often slow to adopt it.

The majority of what prevents adoption of OO is FUD, plain & simple. Software vendor contract with MS Office? Are you kidding? Most businesses don't HAVE a vendor contract they just have a pack of licenses, and any issues with it working your "support" is to report a bug on their forums.

People are afraid to move to something new, and they've "heard" of issues with other products. Sure, I agree that OOo isn't totally acceptable for many companies, but many companies simply have themselves locked into a proprietary solution and are going to have issues no matter WHAT they try to migrate to. The better long-term approach is to free your company from such things, but managers rarely are able to "justify" real (or imaginary) migration issues.

Re:Open Office is there

[blai]

We didn't have so many computer users a decade ago, nor did we have technology so advanced.

People could just change whatever they liked and others would imagine they were just "another printing problem". With paranoid antiphishers out there, you can't do that today.

Re:Open Office is there

[YrWrstNtmr]

There is no reason to write new documents using MS Office.

Except that those old docs still exist in the corporate library. Do they now support two office suites?
hmm....what do I use to open this document?

Re:Open Office is there

[pwizard2]

But what it doesn't do well enough to compensate for the $200 price of Word, is handle the typical exchange of documents between business users, all of whom add or remove mark-up and editing. In fact, Word didn't really even support this very well itself for a long time. And the result is usually a complete mess of course, but it's passable and it facilitates collaboration among several workers.

I've used the markup feature in OpenOffice Writer several times (I moonlight as a technical writer sometimes and I have to deal with documents that have inline corrections originating in Word) and it passes muster. The color coding does not always work right (I sometimes set it, send the document to the client, and then have to reset it when I get it back) but the record of who made each edit is still intact even after several revisions, so it is no big deal. Granted, there's room for improvement, but the feature generally works as of OO.o v3. It used to be terrible in previous versions, so what is there is already a huge improvement.

Re:Open Office is there

[MightyMartian]

When is the last time you ever heard of anybody going back on MS because of some issue with Word, in particular with Word not rendering earlier documents correctly? As to Word 2007 compatibility, I did a number of tests on custom macros for Word 2003 that did indeed break on running on Word 2007, so I wouldn't go around lauding interoperability between versions that much.

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

In business, making a choice that costs a bit more, but which management or the stockholders perceive will work is the generally accepted right answer vs making the cheaper choice that should, and chances are will, work. Its called risk avoidance.

There, fixed that for ya.

Re:Open Office is there

[fermion]

Anyone who has gone through the pre late 90's upgrades of MS Office products have no faith in MS ability to maintain integrity between versions. The transition from .doc to .docx just reinforces their inability to maintain compatibility.

It was the inability of 2000+ versions of office to read my 97 version of office that finally drove me to OO.org. The transition from Macros to VBA in Excel almost did it, but there was nothing like Excel until the recent updates of OO.org.

In all honestly I understand why people stay with MS products. There is often some little thing that they need. It could be a font, or just a way of creating content. I might still have a copy of Office around if I were running on a Windows machine. The presentation creator in OO.org is just not all that great. Fortunately I have a mac, and Keynote, which is way better than anything else out there, at least for me.

Re:Open Office is there

[ZosX]

That is amazing. I never knew that existed until now. Are they claiming they can make any application portable and you can just throw all of your apps on a drive and access them forever and retain their settings? Do you need their software to run the apps after they have been virtualized? Interesting stuff....for as bad as most of Mac OS used to be, that was one thing they got right. You had a file called preferences that referred to your application. I know unix has this concept as well (and fairly elegantly too), and I wish that windows would follow suit somehow. I don't see why every application under the sun has to write a million keys to the registry that half the time are completely useless and then just hang around after you have uninstalled the application.

Re:Open Office is there

[MightyMartian]

I forgot to add that, at the end of it, the problems with the macros we were using were substantial enough that I pretty much abandoned any plans for an Office 2007 rollout (we have the licenses via Software Assurance) and stuck with 2003. If I'm going to rewrite those macros for anything, it will be for OpenOffice, where licensing won't be a concern at all.

Re:Open Office is there

[Arancaytar]

there's no guarantee that OOo will display them faithfully and with fidelity.

At least there's also no guarantee that future versions won't, which is more than can be said for MS Word.

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's not actual Stealing, how is it Ultimate? :P

Re:Open Office is there

[benjamindees]

I'm glad to know that this has improved. It's been a few years since I have supported OpenOffice.

I guess my argument is, though, that in a business environment when you're passing around important documents such as contracts or technical specifications, it's vital that software be 100% interoperable and that the additions made by all parties are accessible to everyone, and not lost due to incompatibilities.

Of course interoperability has historically been a problem even between different versions of Word, so it's not an ideal situation. And we all know this is due to the fact that there is no real Word file format standard. And we all know the reason for this is to stifle competition and prevent interoperability with 3rd party software. And the result of all of this is that there is little choice for many users but to standardize on the Word brand, jump on the upgrade treadmill and upgrade to every new version that comes out, lest interoperability be threatened and features missing. This is all by design.

So the consensus, based on a corporate culture of outsourcing accountability and a lack of incentive for IT investment in most companies, seems to be that standardizing on the most recent version of a single program from a single provider provides the most reliable interoperability. This is the basic outcome of the powerful monopoly force provided to software providers. And while it's good to see that monopoly being cracked open, the nature of the beast means that Microsoft can move the goalposts almost at any time it suits their interests.

Re:Open Office is there

[samurphy21]

We have a very unique structure at the university. Our clients are our 4000+ staff, faculty and students, all of whom have standalone laptop systems, not part of our managed systems. We are currently looking into putting our own ubuntu repository online for custom packages and updated revisions, but the headaches of this breaking mainline repository updates is daunting.

The bulk of the systems (again, 4000+ laptops) never pass through our hands, so we can't configure them ourselves, and would have to provide documentation on this to the masses, 80% of whom would have no issues, and 20% of whom we'd end up having to handhold through the process of adding custom respositories, 5% of whom we'd have to see in person.

We have a not insignificant amount of users, primarily library staff and long time faculty who are on the far side of 60 years old, and are resentful and afraid of the picture box with the typewriter.

All in all, not insurmountable, just daunting, and it will be tackled some day, but the 2008-2009 school year marked the first year of official adoption by the faculty of OSS packages. We're still hammering out the wrinkles.

And no, my official title is "Technology Services Consultant", but I act as backup to the software license officer when he is otherwise indisposed.

Re:Open Office is there

[JohnBailey]

MS Office skills are marketable at any age.

What exactly are MS Office skills?

Re:Open Office is there

[harlows_monkeys]

I'm using Open Office on my gaming PC to track my Warhammer Online auctions.

I've actually considered buying whatever the cheapest version of Microsoft Office for Windows is, just to make that less painful. That's how bad Open Office is.

Re:Open Office is there

[fluffy99]

Because OO isn't compatible enough. If it doesn't look 100% the same, and I mean 100%, it's not good enough.

It's not that it isn't 100% the same. Its that OO tried so hard to make a clone of MS Office and only got it about 80% the same. If you're going to be a blatant rip-off of an existing product, at least try to implement the same features in the same manner. Nothing like having almost identical menus, except the shortcut keys are slightly different.

Re:Open Office is there

[stoborrobots]

MS Office skills are marketable at any age.

What exactly are MS Office skills?

Typing, and bold.

"Advanced skills" include italics and

• bullets

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

One case, where the boss got a new laptop 2 days before a conference. His old one died and his new one came with Office 2007.

It sounds like there are some dumb sysadmins where you work. How would they let Office 2007 get to the boss' computer without him knowing? Sounds like they either got the laptop from the manufacturer and handed it to boss, or they have a standard image with Office 2007 and it wasn't tested properly or communicated to boss that he was getting the new version of Office.

Re:Open Office is there

[westlake]

What exactly are MS Office skills?

Your first full-time job after a year on unemployment and welfare:

Newport Training Facility Helps Unemployed Find Work

The baseline clerical skills needed for advancement in any trade or profession you could name:

Administrative Assistant : Hyderabad India

Re:Open Office is there

[Anpheus]

Users with a support contract (read: volume license) are under no obligation to use the most current version, and can in fact install any previous versions.

As Windows 2000 has not yet fallen out of support, our Windows Server 2008 R2 licenses may be used to acquire and install Windows 2000. I don't know if we can get Office 2000 still, but definitely 2003.

Re:Open Office is there

[Anpheus]

APP-V for Windows does the same thing at, I want to say $20/client/year. Virtualizes apps, lets you manage them from group policy, etc.

Re:Open Office is there

[JakartaDean]

Of course what you say is generally true, but my personal experience has been different. I now regularly use open office (linux) at home to edit documents prepared on MS Office under windows from work. I have no problems any more with translation.

The number one problem I used to have was in style codes with built-in numbers, which is a very useful thing for the documents I write. They used to get f*cked from time to time, with the font of the number ending up different from the rest of the line. Then, one day, I had the same problem with a document that had never seen OO. The problem seems to be an inconsistency in MS Word over how it stores style codes internally.

Now, I just leave the number out of the codes til the end, and no problems converting anything.

Re:Open Office is there

[Peter Nikolic]

What the hell kind of bullshit is that? Oh, we have someone to choke, we can blah blah blah. What is that, some kind of joke? Really, are you a village idiot or something? I've seen that piece of crap spewed so many times and still I see morons spewing it "oh, I have a contract blah blah, you know, for restitution'. NO ONE CAN GET IT FROM THEM! What world are you living in? SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, NOT EVEN THE WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY!!! Its been in their license boiler plate for years! Someone to CHOKE???? Thats just a JOKE!!!

And this piece of detritus gets an Informative tag say what! someone is pulling their plonker a lot too much

Re:Open Office is there

[ozmanjusri]

OpenOffice's presentation software is so weak

That's a pretty broad statement. Would you be a little more specific please?

OOo presentation works fine for me, and imports Powerpoint presentations at least as well as different versions of Office do.

Re:Open Office is there

[ozmanjusri]

hmm....what do I use to open this document?

OpenOffice. It imports older formats as well or better than MS Office does.

You could even use the batch convert mode to make a copy of your old library in an open format.

Re:Open Office is there

[ozmanjusri]

Then why do documents opened in every new version of Microsoft Office look different than in the previous versions?

Re:Open Office is there

[JohnBailey]

Pretty much what I thought then.

Re:Open Office is there

[ozmanjusri]

Its that OO tried so hard to make a clone of MS Office and only got it about 80% the same.

It doesn't try to be a clone.

OpenOffice.org includes interface and workflow design to make switching between MS Office and OOo easier. The developers are very well aware of the tradeoff between duplicating MS Office's rather haphazard menu/button layout and replacing it with something more logical but unfamiliar.

Re:Open Office is there

[ozmanjusri]

We are currently looking into putting our own ubuntu repository online for custom packages and updated revisions, but the headaches of this breaking mainline repository updates is daunting.

Making your own repository is ridiculously easy.

20% of whom we'd end up having to handhold through the process of adding custom respositories,

That only takes a few mouse clicks or a very simple script.

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

I pushed my open source shop to implement an Outlook server.

An Outlook server hey?

I believe you man. There's now way this'd be astroturf, no matter how much it looks like it.

And don't worry, the MS Mod Squad'll be along soon and have you at +5 in no time.

Re:Open Office is there

[Inda]

I got a temporary office job once because I knew how to do a mail merge. I kid you not.

Re:Open Office is there

[xaxa]

But the first time someone opens a document that looks wrong, or the first time someone sends a document that nobody else can open, will be the last time they use OO.o

Would you like me to send you a DOCX document? ;-)
I think after the third time my dad phoned me and said other people were having trouble opening his documents he installed OO.o. (He's retired, but does some charity work -- which means people opening the documents have a huge range of old to new software, and often very little technical ability.)

Plus, when things go really wrong you can always call Microsoft and complain... Pay for some technical support or something... Does OO.o offer support contracts?

Paid OO.o support (e.g. from Sun)

Re:Open Office is there

[t0p]

Plus, with a MS Office contract, you have a software vendor to fall back to when things go wrong. You don't get this to the same extent with OSS, which is why business is often slow to adopt it.

What precisely does an "MS Office contract" get you, other than software updates? Perhaps Microsoft send someone round to type your letters for you?

Re:Open Office is there

[johnsie]

What exactly are MS Office skills?

Depends how technical you want to get. Most people only know the basics, but power users can do alot more using formulas, mail-merges, macros, VBA etc. Then there's SQL which can be used alongside Access, not to mention database normalisation etc. Office can be quite technical if you look at some of the deeper parts of it. It's not just bold, italics and paragraphs, it's actually quite a powerful system if you do your research.

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

And why does document formatting change when you use a different printer driver?

Re:Open Office is there

[David Gerard]

Correct. We actually have OOo on our *server* and use it to batch-convert MS Word files to PDFs.

Re:Open Office is there

[z_gringo]

Novell maintains its own version of OO.

It also supports it via contracts with third parties such as this one

There is plenty of support out there for OO and other Open Source Projects. Digium will sell support for the Open Source Version of Asterisk. The OS is will supported also. I think that the support for OO is at or near the level that MS can provide for MS Office if you know where to look.

Re:Open Office is there

[BlackBloq]

WTF is a Microsoft platinum ticket... shows NO hit results on searches!

Re:Open Office is there

[Skater]

For that task, the area is not “word processing”, but “DTP”. InDesign, QuarkXPress, Scribus and (La)TeX would be the tools for that.

Years ago, I was working with a contractor to write some user manuals. I assumed it'd be done in some desktop publishing software package like you listed - these people are pros, right? (I didn't write the contract or have much control over it.) I was stunned - and scared - when the manuals came back in Word format. The files have held up reasonably well through several cycles of edits, so perhaps it's not as insane as I first thought, but I'm damn glad I'm not the one that has to edit them. And I'm sure sooner or later we'll upgrade to a Word version that will bork them.

Re:Open Office is there

[esarjeant]

I agree -- more significantly, Microsoft has no ability to maintain parity between platform versions of MS Office. While I tried running MS Office on my Mac, the lack of support for VBA Macros made it almost impossible to use with documents my colleagues were sending me. Fortunately, OpenOffice has excellent support in this regard and after navigating the security settings I was able to run the same macros my Windows counterparts are running.

Microsoft is seriously missing the boat here, I gather they are going to "fix" this in a subsequent release of Office but the damage is already done. I've got OO installed now and don't really see any reason to go back.

With all that said, my observation on the parent story is the same as before - these patent infringement cases in regards to software are bogus. Computer programs should be treated according to copyright law, it is simply too easy for more than one person to dream up the same idea and create a computer application for that.

Re:Open Office is there

[ShakaUVM]

Yeah, I thought about doing something similar to this back when I was in grad school for a thesis or paper.

Essentially you can just hook into an application writing or reading from the registry and redirect it to a local file in its folder instead.

Too much work, though.

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you fail to grasp how good some people are at drawing stuff in MS Word.

My sister in law works for a marketing firm and I've seen her sketch out some very professional looking advertisements all straight in front of a customer in Word. She can use photoshop to be more precise (and all the designs eventually go to an actual photoshop/illustrator pro), but opening up a word document and slapping it together with the customer in their office generally is faster and leads to less 'I like it, but maybe we can put my dog in here somewhere'. Also the managers she's working with don't know photoshop, but they do know Word like the back of their hand, so she can let them get their hands wet in the process and help them feel important.

Preventing design feature creep is something that can save some serious money in the long haul and skills at drawing in Word are an incredible tool.

Re:Open Office is there

[marcosdumay]

He (his company, anyway) is a platinun buyer of Microsoft. That gives him access to some (large volume) discounts and gives him support tickets on every aquisition, that he hardly spend at all*, so he always have some to spare.

It is no wonder that you can't find platinun contracts on the internet, Microsoft makes sure it is nearly impossible to any buyer to discover what are the licensing options, so they can price target everybody.

* They won't work, so why subjecting yourself to the hassle of calling Microsoft support?

Re:Open Office is there

[a2wflc]

People don't like when a new version of Microsoft Office looks different. People at my company, my wife's company, and many neighbors refused to use 2007 for a long time and even removed it on new computers to install an older version.

But when you finally learn the new version of Microsoft office you know you'll be able to use that learning at the office and friends' houses and other places. If you take the time to learn OO, there's a good chance you won't see it anywhere except your house.

When my wife had to learn to mail-merge on MS 2007 a year ago she just had to learn the sequence of menu/keys, but she knew the general process. I got her a new computer a couple of months ago and put OO on it. When she tried to mail-merge our Christmas cards she got very frustrated:

"I have an excel file. Why do I need to create a database from it?" (not a big deal once you learn, but I agree - why have to?)

"How do you remove duplicate rows in excel" (it's ugly if the help I found is correct, so she did it manually)

"Why is it printing 2 addresses on one envelope then none on the next?" (??? envelope size was right, everything else looked right. we started over and same thing. she printed them 1 at a time)

My kids and I have used OO for years on documents an simple spreadsheets without problems. This was my wife's first encounter with OO and probably her last.

Re:Open Office is there

[selven]

Open source has support contracts too. I'm pretty sure that's how the big open source companies make most of their money.

Re:Open Office is there

[Blakey Rat]

Well, it's been awhile, but last time I used it:
1) It wasn't able to import an outline from a document and automatically convert it into slides
2) It totally didn't have the concept of "master slides", where you can change the appearance/behavior of a slide, then apply that new appearance to all the other slides automatically
3) Related to that, if you changed a slide's template, it lost the content of the slide. (Actually, IIRC, it kept the title but deleted everything else.)
4) The fonts and drawing tools weren't anti-aliased, so they looked like shit

I mean, I'm not saying Powerpoint is good, either... Microsoft has clearly been neglecting Powerpoint for years. But compared to Impress, it's a gem. Probably the best presentation software out there right now is Apple's Keynote... but nothing will read the file format, so.

Re:Open Office is there

[Ephemeriis]

Would you like me to send you a DOCX document? ;-)
I think after the third time my dad phoned me and said other people were having trouble opening his documents he installed OO.o. (He's retired, but does some charity work -- which means people opening the documents have a huge range of old to new software, and often very little technical ability.)

There's the converter available from Microsoft, that allows older versions of Word to open .docx documents... And you can always save as the older formats in the first place... Most of my clients still use 97-2003 .doc format documents... Very few are actually using .docx format documents.

My comment was less about random issues because you forgot to save as the right filetype, and more about how good of a job OO.o does (or doesn't) do in opening the filetypes it claims to support. It has been a while since I last used OO.o - so, to be honest, I don't know how big a problem this is anymore. But it used to be fairly common to see differences in the same document when it was opened in OO.o instead of Word. Sometimes truly minor differences that absolutely nobody cared about... Sometimes differences big enough that they had to be corrected... Which then looked weird when you opened it in Word again...

Re:Open Office is there

[nhytefall]

We had the server in our development side of the house, just sitting there idle on a dedicated piece of hardware.

It was literally a switch in cabling, and folks adding Lightning to Thunderbird, and bam, scheduling became *much* easier.

Since the new integrated solution (email, calendar, knowledge management, service management, and project management) is at most 3 months away, and will require folks to use a different client to interface the system anyway, this was an acceptable temporary solution.

But hey, AC, keep on trollin', instead of discussin'.

Re:Open Office is there

[Chas]

Have you ever had a support contract before?

This is not the same thing as he is talking about.

He's talking about the whole "well if the software eats our data we get a reimbursed by XYZ company" mentality.

Even with a support contract, you don't. PERIOD. They'll work to make sure that your problems are repaired so it doesn't happen again. But if data is lost, it's gone. They're not required in any way, shape or form to make monetary, product, or technical restitution for it.

If you don't believe me, take a read through the boilerplate for your support contract.

Re:Open Office is there

[ozmanjusri]

1) It wasn't able to import an outline from a document and automatically convert it into slides

I'm not sure I understand this. I copy and paste documents into Impress's Outline view all the time, same as I do with Powerpoint. Can you please explain the sequence you follow in Powerpoint?

2) It totally didn't have the concept of "master slides", where you can change the appearance/behavior of a slide, then apply that new appearance to all the other slides automatically

I just click View/Master/Slide Master. There's a selection of Master Pages, clicking on them gives the option of applying to selected or all pages. How do you do this in Powerpoint? I thought it was the same?

3) Related to that, if you changed a slide's template, it lost the content of the slide. (Actually, IIRC, it kept the title but deleted everything else.)

I can't make that happen. Can you tell me how you did it?

4) The fonts and drawing tools weren't anti-aliased, so they looked like shit

They are by default. Somebody's probably gone to "Tools /Options/OpenOffice.org/View" and unchecked the "Screen font antialiasing" check box.

I'm not sure how you managed to have such a hard time with Impress. It (and Powerpoint) aren't particularly difficult apps to explore. Have you spent much time with it?

Re:Open Office is there

[Blakey Rat]

Dude, I told you it was a few years back. Maybe all the issues I had were fixed-- I don't fucking know, and I'm not going to take half my goddamned day going over every single point and trying to remember the exact sequence of keystrokes I used 3 fucking years ago to make a presentation. Seriously, WTF is up with your reply.

I'm not sure how you managed to have such a hard time with Impress. It (and Powerpoint) aren't particularly difficult apps to explore. Have you spent much time with it?

No I haven't, because I tried it and it sucked. Impress had its chance, and wasted it. Now that I've given it a chance, I'm not going to give it another one because my time's too valuable for that.

Re:Open Office is there

[fluffy99]

I'd be surprised if they weren't aware of it. Still it's those annoying differences that make OO a poor drop-in replacement for anyone who is used to the Office products. As someone who uses both (and OO on nix and windows), I constantly struggle with silly things that I normally don't have to think about, like control-a doing something completely different. Despite claims to the contrary, moving files between OO and Office is not seamless and my files frequently get "tweaked" or rearranged.

Re:Open Office is there

[ozmanjusri]

I'm not going to give it another one because my time's too valuable for that.

If you haven't used it recently, why are you calling it weak in public forums?

Thousands of people read Slashdot and are misled by comments like yours. How valuable is their time and money to you?

You've been around long enough to know how quickly FOSS software fixes faults. If you don't know the current state of the software, don't post crap about it.

Re:Open Office is there

[Blakey Rat]

You've been around long enough to know how quickly FOSS software fixes faults. If you don't know the current state of the software, don't post crap about it.

Tell you what, I'll do that as soon as everybody who hasn't used Windows 7 stops posting about flaws in Windows XP.

Besides, in my fucking post, I already SAID it had been a few years. What do you want next time? Should I surround that by asterisks? Or maybe bold and italicize it? Here: ***** I HAVE NOT USED OPEN OFFICE IN A FEW YEARS ***** . Happy?

Re:Open Office is there

[mabhatter654]

Not really, most full versions of Office only include INSTALL support and maybe one phone call (only if you find a bug, not user error) Student and bundled version include NO support other than what's online. Your school or OEM is supposed to answer your help calls in exchange for lower price.

The same applies to Windows. OEM (the cheap one from newegg) versions mean you get support from your builder, not Microsoft. Upgrade versions include only INSTALL support, other support is expected from your computer builder. Again, only Full Retail includes support for install, and maybe one other support call.. all calls to Microsoft require $75-$100 bucks up front on a credit card for consumer stuff and they don't charge if it's "their" problem.

For regular folks, Open Source and Microsoft have about the same level of support... People that repair problems with Office or Windows are easier to find, that's about all.

Re:Open Office is there

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought MS Office skills referred to the ability to produce a document in an MS Office format which was identical to the original intent, and was fully distributable to the target audience without loss of content, style or clarity.

I have seen people who have these skills -- their work usually involves custom crafting the original intent to the limitations of MS Office and limiting the target audience to as few people/machines as possible (with a monolithic system configuration).

Re:Open Office is there

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

If there is one thing I don't know, its when to quit. Here's another:

If Ford's exist, why does anyone buy a Mercury?

Re:Open Office is there

[ozmanjusri]

Besides, in my fucking post, I already SAID it had been a few years. What do you want next time? Should I surround that by asterisks? Or maybe bold and italicize it? Here: ***** I HAVE NOT USED OPEN OFFICE IN A FEW YEARS ***** . Happy?

This is your original post.

I'd just like to point out that there's no guarantee, or reason to believe, that open source office software is any better in this regard.
And, hell, OpenOffice's presentation software is so weak, even a completely corrupted Office 2007 file probably looked better.

There's no such disclaimer there.

Re:Open Office is there

[Blakey Rat]

OMG I was thinking of the wrong post.

WRONG? ON THE INTERNETS!?? You better crucify me POST-HASTE!

I guess this alters reality itself, making OpenOffice Impress BY DEFINITION the best presentation software evar.

Re:Open Office is there

[JohnBailey]

Depends how technical you want to get. Most people only know the basics,

Exactly! And lets be honest here.. The basics translate pretty well from one app to another.

but power users can do alot more using formulas, mail-merges, macros, VBA etc. Then there's SQL which can be used alongside Access, not to mention database normalisation etc. Office can be quite technical if you look at some of the deeper parts of it. It's not just bold, italics and paragraphs, it's actually quite a powerful system if you do your research.

Irrelevant. My question was not about power users, or the scope and functionality of a modern office suite. We both know exactly what I meant by "Office skills". And you answered my question in your second sentence.

Re:Open Office is there

[Atrox666]

Actually Microsoft will be happy to tell you what their licensing options are. There's a course on it. That's right they make hideously complicated licensing schemes and then make you PAY to be told what they are. The fucking thieves should have been shut down and all assets seized years ago.

Re:Open Office is there

[marcosdumay]

I've made a one day free course on Microsoft licensing (from their oficial represntatives here at Brazil - free for some customers). It does clarify a lot, but I still have lots of surprizes whith it. Your experience may vary (even more because that course you are talking about is probably from Microsoft itself).

"Wrist slap"?

[John Hasler]

This is a civil lawsuit. The point is to make the plaintiff whole and cause the infringement to cease. It is not about any sort of punishment.

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[Dachannien]

Well, willful patent infringement can result in treble damages being awarded, which is about punishment even though it's a civil suit.

In this particular case, though, damages weren't trebled, but the district court judge awarded i4i an additional $40 million as sanctions against Microsoft for courtroom shenanigans (which is also about punishment).

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I smell a 1L....

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[OnlineAlias]

I would like to know where my damages are. How can Microsoft sell a product with a feature, lose an intellectual property case, then take the feature out of my copy by way of "patch". Didn't I pay for that feature? Microsoft has done this before, and I didn't get a refund. How can they keep doing this without eventually even acknowledging that they are removing features from *my* product, not *their* product?

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[mysidia]

One way to make the plaintiff whole is to force Microsoft to stop distributing word, in addition to forcing them to pay the royalties they should have paid to license the technology legally.

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[Dachannien]

Strangely, my understanding of the injunction was that it wasn't supposed to interfere with Microsoft's contractual obligations to its present customers, only that it was supposed to enjoin Microsoft from continuing to sell the unpatched product to new customers. Maybe they figure that new customers buying software already on the shelves would get an unpatched version in violation of the injunction, so they're patching everyone.

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not your product, you're paying them for the privilege of using it, peon. Welcome to closed source software land.

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[jbengt]

I would like to know where my damages are.

Fortunately, i4i is not asking you to pay damages.
(Strictly speaking, they could. In turn you might be able to recover those damage payments from MS)
IANAL, YMMV, etc.

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[Angst Badger]

This is a civil lawsuit. The point is to make the plaintiff whole and cause the infringement to cease. It is not about any sort of punishment.

Civil suits sometimes involve punishment, hence punitive damages, which are awarded in order to discourage infringing behavior when the actual compensatory damages are insufficient to do so.

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[Achromatic1978]

Fortunately, i4i is not asking you to pay damages.

I didn't infringe upon i4i's patent. i4i was made whole by the damages awarded to them by the court against Microsoft.

i4i has no grounds to seek restitution from me, even if I continue to use an unpatched Word.

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[mevets]

I can license you to use any rancid lump of shit that may or may not do anything you want it to do. I can grant or take away any interoperability at any point in time, as you own nothing but the license to standby while it does whatever it pleases.

FZ, in "I am the slime" summed it all up pretty well:
You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help . . . no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[Rogerborg]

They called Shenanigans? What was going on? Egregious Skylarking?

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[Anonymous Coward]

technically, it's not yours, since it was only licenced to you.

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[Plunky]

Frankly they could withdraw the stock on the shelves and restock the shelves for virtually nothing. The thing that is on the shelf does not cost $$$ to make.

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[jbengt]

i4i has no grounds to seek restitution from me, even if I continue to use an unpatched Word.

Actually, if you use features covered by their patents, they do have grounds to sue you. Proving damages would be a different story.
IANAL, YMMV, etc.

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[Shagg]

True, but punitive damages are very rare in civil cases.

Re:"Wrist slap"?

[S.O.B.]

Maybe intentional lollygagging or inciting to persnickediness.

Copyright?

[benjamindees]

It's patent-infringing, not copyright.

Re:Copyright?

[harlows_monkeys]

That's the problem with sites like Digg and Slashdot, where people submit things and they show up without any editorial review.

What? Slashdot is edited? That's a joke, right? Nice try, but I'm not falling for something that far out of whack with empirical evidence.

Re:Copyright?

[edjs]

The "chief reporter" the submitter is quoting did not recognize the difference between patent and copyright.

Copyright?

[roguegramma]

Don't submit something if you can't tell the difference between patent and copyright.

The appeal decision is worth reading in full

[toby]

Groklaw has it.

It's very hard not to agree with the court that Microsoft wilfully infringed. Furthermore, it seems they expected to be caught, and to lose the inevitable suit - and didn't care either. Not hard to see why: The damages awarded are equivalent to just two days' revenue for Microsoft (although they infringed for five years). As a commenter pointed out, that's why such cases are unlikely to change their posture on software patents; even when they lose in that arena (and they are serial infringers, frequently losing such cases) - they have already made a huge profit on the whole dirty business. Same old Microsoft.

The way damages were calculated is detailed by the document linked (and was upheld by appeal, as it most likely substantially underestimated the real damages).

Re:The appeal decision is worth reading in full

[crazybit]

The way damages were calculated is detailed by the document linked (and was upheld by appeal, as it most likely substantially underestimated the real damages).

Next time court should hire RIAA lawyers and let them make the math of the damages.

Re:The appeal decision is worth reading in full

[benjamindees]

I imagine Microsoft has no problem with being "forced" to remove support for custom XML elements now that the enterprise threat posed by OpenOffice has waned. Others saw this coming and warned that Microsoft's OOXML was a marketing gimmick pretty much from the start.

Though I do use Word periodically for my work, I have not been foolish enough to rely on it in any sense. At one point I did consider that perhaps OOXML was a step in the right direction (of interoperability). But as we can see, Microsoft can't manage to support anything, that doesn't directly increase lock-in and their bottom line, for longer than a single upgrade cycle. This is precisely the reason I and others haven't wasted any time taking Microsoft's "open" document standards seriously.

Re:The appeal decision is worth reading in full

[jbengt]

I imagine Microsoft has no problem with being "forced" to remove support for custom XML elements now that the enterprise threat posed by OpenOffice has waned. Others [blogspot.com] saw this coming and warned that Microsoft's OOXML was a marketing gimmick pretty much from the start.

ODF vs OOXML has little or nothing to do with this lawsuit. The custom XML capabilities of MS Office application that were the object of this lawsuit are not part of the OOXML file format specification; by definition it could not be a custom schema if it's defined in the spec.

Re:The appeal decision is worth reading in full

[benjamindees]

Well, yes, obviously any "custom" XML added by others could not have been specified as a part of the OOXML file format. But the ability to support and ignore (rather than silently remove) custom XML in the OOXML file format is a vital part of it being the extensible and interoperable format that it was advertised as. Pulling the rug out on that interoperability years later is completely consistent with Microsoft's modus operandi.

Re:The appeal decision is worth reading in full

[ortholattice]

(and was upheld by appeal, as it most likely substantially underestimated the real damages)

I won't argue that i4i doesn't legally "deserve" $290 million because of what MS did or that MS shouldn't be "punished" by that amount; the courts are supposed (in an ideal world at least) to determine the proper amount based on patent and contract law.

But I'm assuming that you are using the term "real damages" in the non-legal sense of what i4i actually suffered (in the sense of what they would have that that don't have now, had MS not used their patent). I highly doubt that "real damages" in that sense have been "substantially underestimated". Small companies rarely sell $290 million of any kind of software, patent or not.

Re:The appeal decision is worth reading in full

[symbolset]

If OpenOffice has waned, why is Microsoft hiring a compete group leader to cozy up to the community and bring back knockdown arguments for their marketing team?

Re:The appeal decision is worth reading in full

[harlows_monkeys]

It's very hard not to agree with the court that Microsoft wilfully infringed. Furthermore, it seems they expected to be caught, and to lose the inevitable suit - and didn't care either. Not hard to see why: The damages awarded are equivalent to just two days' revenue for Microsoft (although they infringed for five years). As a commenter pointed out, that's why such cases are unlikely to change their posture on software patents;

Why would they change? Microsoft's position on software patents is that there is nothing wrong with them in principle, but the patent office needs to do a better job of not granting patents on things that are not non-obvious or that are not novel. Their position would be that the i4i is one of the ones that would not have been granted under what they would consider proper standards of novelty and non-obviousness.

The way damages were calculated is detailed by the document linked (and was upheld by appeal, as it most likely substantially underestimated the real damages).

Considering how few people actually make use of Custom XML in Office, it's hard to see how the real damages are underestimated. If Microsoft had left that feature out, leaving it for i4i to provide as a plug-in, i4i would not have had big sales.

Re:The appeal decision is worth reading in full

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, even though it's Microsoft (I don't live under bridges) and I'm on slashdot (I don't live under bridges), I can't say that anyone should be fined for software patent abuse. Software patents are abuse. It's a disgrace that the US is so hell bent of selling their 'ideas' around the world that they've exported their patent stupidity (I don't live under bridges) to less powerful neighbors but perhaps what this case serves to highlight is that software patents hurt:
- Big business
- Small business
- Patents
- The legal system
- US credibility
- The US economy
Same old Microsoft? Indeed and we should applaud (I don't live under bridges) any company that has such a low regard for software patents that they'd regularly abuse such a substantially broken system.

Re:The appeal decision is worth reading in full

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is of course that I4I doesn't deserve the awarded damages either, the patent being utterly trivial. But Microsoft can't admit that since they're generally pro-patent and have quite a large patent portfolio and thus no choice but to keep lobbying for them and if it bites them back every once in a while just suck it up.
Don't get me wrong. There was nothing just about this ruling. That Microsoft likes this kind of world doesn't make it any more just and more importantly doesn't help any of us if we're ever sued over some piddling little patent. Neither does the current legal situation make the software ecology any healthier: it stands between users and features, and worse on principle, effectively lets lawyers, by all accounts the least qualified, write code and use the law to force their stink upon innocent users.

Re:The appeal decision is worth reading in full

[Peter Nikolic]

The way damages were calculated is detailed by the document linked (and was upheld by appeal, as it most likely substantially underestimated the real damages).

Considering how few people actually make use of Custom XML in Office, it's hard to see how the real damages are underestimated. If Microsoft had left that feature out, leaving it for i4i to provide as a plug-in, i4i would not have had big sales.

Does it really matter even if only 1 single person used it the fact of the matter is that once again MS went theiving and freeloading hoping not to get caught .
It's just an real shame that they got away so lightly once again it seems the courts are afraid of the MS for some strange reason one of these days sanity and a bit of mental strenght will arrive in the courts and MS will pay up properly that will then make them sit up and take notice , realise that their days of running amok are over

PATENT you dum mofo

[Anonymous Coward]

What a maroon !!

Why patch?

[l2718]

Existing copies of Word were expressly grandfathered in by the ruling -- only the sale of new copies was prohibited. Is the patch intended to be applied against shrink-wrapped copies bought after Jan. 11th?

Re:Why patch?

[LOLLinux]

Because they want consistency across all copies of the same version of Office?

Re:Why patch?

[benjamindees]

I imagine Microsoft would like to make it easy for IT departments to scuttle any attempt to use the "Custom XML" feature to extend their file format in ways that would be difficult for Microsoft to control and compete against.

Re:Why patch?

[Ephemeriis]

Existing copies of Word were expressly grandfathered in by the ruling -- only the sale of new copies was prohibited. Is the patch intended to be applied against shrink-wrapped copies bought after Jan. 11th?

I would assume that the patch is intended to be applied to every version of Word possible. If for no other reason than to have a unified codebase.

Re:Why patch?

[Blakey Rat]

It'll probably be optional for existing installs of Word. So you could just not install it. It might be a good idea if you have to interoperate with a lot of other people who may or may not have it, at least you know you won't be sending them incompatible files.

For new installs, though, it'll have to be burnt on the DVD, so you're out of luck.

Re:Why patch?

[yuhong]

Nope, this patch is supposed to be applied by OEMs to OEM preinstalls of Office 2007 so that new computers sold will comply with the injunction.

Re:Why patch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if you don't patch MS will eventually determine that your copy of Office is 'pirated' and it will stop working. The patch will also be a prerequisite for every future security patch ever issued so your copy of Office cannot be maintained. Of course, I'm sure the court ruling expressly forbids MS from following this tactic or any other which would result in similar results. :)

Microsoft Word recalled due to contamination

[David Gerard]

CENTER FOR UNEASE CONTROL, Seattle, -- A federal court has banned Microsoft Word from sale as a poisonous substance, suspected of causing millions of brain-deaths around the world.

Microsoft Office has long been considered potentially hazardous to health, despite advertising claiming that "four out of five CEOs prefer Outlook" and most of the billions of dollars sloshing around in major banks' credit-default swaps before the Great Recession actually having been calculated in macros in Excel.

Workers whose computers are infected with Microsoft Office are advised to press "escape," step slowly away from the desk, break into a run and gather at the official hazardous substances meeting point, in the pub around the corner from the office.

Symptoms include nausea, irritability and short temper, hostility, homicidal impulses, loss of mental clarity, diarrhoea, mental confusion and liver damage from excess alcohol consumption.

Doctors have recommended victims of Word use OpenOffice instead, its "majestic" startup time giving one healthy pause to catch one's breath, make a cup of tea and nip off to the loo, and its fibrous composition providing the same health-giving effects and taste sensation as eating a bowl of sawdust with milk every morning for the rest of your life. Many sufferers have instead opted to write on toilet paper with a burnt stick.

Re:Microsoft Word recalled due to contamination

[Hurricane78]

Something ab out the “majestic rise” of the great “OOo” made me crack up. I imagined such an animal, in the woods, standing up, gracile like a 80,000 pound sperm whale, ramming against the giant beast of Word. And after having won, beginning its elaborate mating dance with a seduced Emacs cow.

Oh man, if imagination were downloadable, there would already be a YouTube video out there. ^^

What did I want to say...? ... Ah, I know: I prefer...

Emacs! The word processor of CHUCK NORRIS!
It feels like eating his favorite morning cereal: Gravel and nails. Without milk!
It’s blazingly fast, just as Chuck Norris is... If you have completed the 10 years it takes to find out the most basic functions.
You can do everything in it, just as Chuck Norris can do everything.
And I mean ev-ery-thing! (The only thing missing, is a good text editor.;)

Yay. Software patents.

[headkase]

Hooray! Now we can all stagnate. See: Melancholy Elephants but instead of standard writing, apply it to programming writing. From a comment in: This Story (which I'm in too ;): "To protect all artists you must disadvantage some. Those some rarely see the logic." which leads to: "Its a horrible future where the copyright maximalist dream (copyright forever and ever) is near at hand, and is finally shown to be a nightmare. The "some" artists that are disadvantaged are the ones who cannot profit from their works in a reasonable time period and refuse to cope with the markets. The Vast Majority who are protected are the Other artists of today and the infinite future, protecting their freedom to innovate, rebuild and even reinvent without some ancient monopoly power looming in the shadows to spank them and call them thieves." Software patents are basically "copyright" for ideas so all of this applies. Now, I'm not saying software patents shouldn't exist but rather in the context of stagnation especially with the pace of development that they should be much shorter than they are now.

Re:Yay. Software patents.

[Anonymous Coward]

Software patents are basically "copyright" for ideas so all of this applies.

No, copyright and patents are different things. If you just wish to make a simile, you should do that more clearly.
 

Now, I'm not saying software patents shouldn't exist but rather in the context of stagnation especially with the pace of development that they should be much shorter than they are now.

No, software patents should not exist.

Besides this I fully agree with you.

Re:Yay. Software patents.

[Theaetetus]

Hooray! Now we can all stagnate. See: Melancholy Elephants but instead of standard writing, apply it to programming writing.

You do realize that patent length has been extended only once in this country, and that to comply with the rest of the world?

Damages weren't upheld as reasonable

[Petersko]

"The way damages were calculated is detailed by the document linked (and was upheld by appeal, as it most likely substantially underestimated the real damages)."

The damages were not upheld because the estimate was worth a shit (and after reading how they arrived at them I think they were WAY high) they were upheld because Microsoft failed to file a pre-verdict JMOL on damages. Or so it says under B. Reasonableness of the Damages Award.

Patch was available to OEMs in October

[garg0yle]

This isn't really news - Microsoft started making the patch available to OEMs in October in anticipation of a losing legal battle. Is it any surprise they could make it available to end-users so "quickly"?

Steve Ballmer screams

[masmullin]

YOU HAVEN'T HEARD THE LAST OF MEEeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!

* /steve shakes fist angrily.

Re:Steve Ballmer screams

[stoborrobots]

Or something like this...

Canadian i4i?

[garg0yle]

The workaround should put an end to a long-running dispute between Canadian i4i and Redmond

Oh, hey, I know that guy! He lives down the street from me, right next to C3P0 and THX1138.

Ugh. If it worked, I'd use it.

[CFD339]

Open office's word processor isn't bad. I've been forced to use the powerpoint replacement (called "Impress") recently and the word "SUCK" doesn't even begin to cover just how badly unworkable it is. In fact, I've renamed it "Repress" because that's a more accurate description of what it does.

I'm not trying to do fancy transitions or stupid animations either. Just basic slideware for hour or 90 minute long technical presentations. It can't even do a fsking "replace template" or "master" properly. It just sucks. Totally and completely sucks.

By the way, in case I wasn't clear -- I don't care for it.

When it meets even close to parity, I'll jump all over it. Until then, I'll pay my Microsoft tax (or switch and pay my Apple tax).

Mod parent up.

[John Hasler]

n/t

Will this be a foreced patch?

[Joe The Dragon]

Will this be a foreced patch? that can not be blocked?

Re:Will this be a foreced patch?

[mysidia]

The order essentially says MS can't license any new copies of the software with the Custom XML editor.

So, I understand this to mean, if for example, your enterprise has a volume license, and you buy more copies after the effective date of the order... the new copies might not be able to support Custom XML, according to the order..

Similarly, if you upgrade from a trial version of Word via an online license purchase, after the effective date, MS must not convey you the ability to use the Custom XML feature. It seems like enforcing the patch might be a requirement in those cases for MS to comply...

I wonder what predicament this puts people in who rely on the Custom XML feature to build templates for programmatic population of documents and segmenting the presentation?

I use OO.o with business documents; works fine.

[jbn-o]

I do exactly that with business documents every day. I open them in OpenOffice.org, print them from OO.o, and if something doesn't import/open correctly due to mistranslation, I make do with what I've got just like millions of users have done across decades of opening important documents in various versions of Microsoft office programs. Microsoft's office programs don't always open and work flawlessly across operating systems or even versions of Microsoft Office. Any talk about "guarantees" and 100% perfect conversion, that's the utopia.

Re:I use OO.o with business documents; works fine.

[MightyMartian]

This has been a complaint since even before WYSIWYG. In the olden days when I first started with computers, if you wanted that you used TeX or Postcript (which PDF is a descendant of) or some other typesetting format. Word processors alone could never, and were never designed to allow absolute 100% rendering every time. Differences in operating systems, software versions, printers and other rendering/printing devices are so substantial that it would be impossible. Even with modern printer abstraction layers, you just can't deliver that assurance. WYSIWYG has always been a certain percentage bullshit, and the kind of bastardized monster that the Microsoft doc format (or rather formats, the whole thing even up to and included OOXML is just a mishmash) is no different.

So what?

[symbolset]

There's no guarantee the next version of Microsoft Office will support them either if history is our guide.

So if you're throwing away your productivity building your business intelligence into office applications, how 'bout just not doing that?

MS is religion

[Anonymous Coward]

I have disliked MS products for many years, but many schools and businesses require submissions to use MS products. If you use an alternative you run the risk of compatibility issues, and this can be a deal breaker or grade deduction. The recipient says,"Can't open it." It's a simple .txt file! Can't or won't?

Re:MS is religion

[MightyMartian]

I have disliked MS products for many years, but many schools and businesses require submissions to use MS products. If you use an alternative you run the risk of compatibility issues, and this can be a deal breaker or grade deduction. The recipient says,"Can't open it." It's a simple .txt file! Can't or won't?

You mean sort of like what happened when all these Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 shops suddenly started getting these weird .docx and .xlsx files that they couldn't open.

Yes, you could download a stunted embedded version of Office 2007 called the Office Compatibility Kit which would allow you to, for the most part, load and save these weird formats, but then again, Sun has had a similar feature available for MS-Office software to open ODF files.

finely detailed and rigidly laid out documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

...finely detailed and rigidly laid out documents...

You mean Corel WordPerfect Office yes?

This may be off topic

[symbolset]

But I also learned at Groklaw today that Microsoft is looking for somebody to reach out to the open source community...

The whole thing is quite amusing. Somebody should probably cache that - I'm sure it will be gone by morning.

Re:This may be off topic

[symbolset]

Perhaps this google cache link will be a little more persistent. We still need a long term archive and I'm not doing it.

Re:This may be off topic

[MightyMartian]

Looks like the standard "Reach out and hand bombs to OSS types". I'm sure part of it will be "Get an interview on Slashdot where you lie about Microsoft's intentions to the Open Source crowd. Maybe this time they won't send you packing and will actually believe the pure unadulterated bullshit we're making you shovel as part of the deal where you sell your soul for a paycheck."

It's a marketing position, or more precisely a FUD position.

Re:This may be off topic

[symbolset]

Yeah, it looks like that to me too. But a team leader position with a group of OSS bashers is probably the wrong way to go. Probably involves some input to the scripts for the blog center in Bangalore. I hope they get somebody good for that - the astroturf has been pretty weak the last few years.

They really need several people for this gig. A cuddler or two to get up close to the community, a handler to dump their data, some "perception change agents" (PCAs) to pump the results to their pets in the press. Maybe a blogging coach to fly to Bangalore and teach people not to paste all of their talking points into every post or ask obviously knowledgable people to cite. They're probably trying to hire the handler, but don't know what they need.

I'd probably add to that a whole herd of temps from the local LUGs in focal regions as focus groups to laugh at the pitches the PCAs come up with and so refine them -- you could probably get those guys for pizza and Bawlz, and a tour of the Campus of Serene Giving.

If they don't structure this so that some of these folks are consultants who provide input as "consultancy" under their own corps and deliver the rest gratis, they're going to get outed through lack of plausible deniability and a few years from now the next version of the Halloween Documents or Comes Documents will burn them yet again. They're really flailing up there. Since BillG left the subtlety just isn't there, which is probably why the stock is flat over the last decade.

Hey, maybe I'd be good at this - except for the whole dancing with the devil part.

For sure the HR department needs a performance review - "MICROSOFT NEEDS A MACHIAVELLIAN JERK TO BEAT OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE" isn't really the type of job ad you want to hang out there where everyone can see it.

No worries for me!

[dufachi]

Office 2007 has refused to update itself on my machine since March, so I'm not worried about losing functionality. Sorry, i4i, I will still be violating your copyright unwillingly! :D

The Patent, itself, is a joke.

[tjstork]

So essentially, Microsoft got sued for, putting extra data in a file. What a joke.

Re:Ugh. If it worked, I'd use it.

[Interoperable]

Your wording will probably get you a Troll mod but Impress is certainly weak compared to Powerpoint. May I suggest, however, that you try Latex + Beamer. It will construct very readable, elegant presentations quickly and without any "tax" at all (it's open source of course).

Leave MicroSoft Alone

[mevets]

Don't you think they have suffered enough. Everywhere I look, I see hatred being dumped on this poor company that is just trying to do what it does best. For gods sake, leave microsoft alone.

Besides, don't you think apple fanbois had something to do with this. Apple really sucks, and I think this is them dumping on microsoft, again.

rats ass, given by, nobody

[mevets]

This is such MSBS; ranks up with 'its not because our sw is complete shit, its because we are popular' excuse for providing an ease-of-abuse platform to one and all.

People make plain simple documents and need to distribute them. There is nothing about these documents that wasn't fully served 15 years ago. The add-on-pointless-crap is only about lock-in. Look at any "business user" you know, and think carefully about their need for anything beyond what can be faxed.

Adobe were doing well on being the defacto standard, until they found out that their software had to protect against all the inadequacies of the (windows) platform, or be a vector of attack. Go figure; a sort of virus-mine planted by MS. Nice work.

Re:rats ass, given by, nobody

[domatic]

Adobe were doing well on being the defacto standard, until they found out that their software had to protect against all the inadequacies of the (windows) platform, or be a vector of attack. Go figure; a sort of virus-mine planted by MS. Nice work.

Adobe buys trouble same as any other vendor making focus-group-marketing driven changes to their software. MS didn't make them add Javascript to an electronic paper format.

Help wanted: OSS competition boss

[symbolset]

I've submitted it. If you like it, please vote it up.

I'm not familiar with Microsoft "Word software"

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently it's "popular"?

Re:Ugh. If it worked, I'd use it.

[ozmanjusri]

It can't even do a fsking "replace template" or "master" properly.

This seems to be your only substantive complaint in the whole diatribe.

I've just tried replacing a Master and found the process simple and efficient. Likewise templates seem logical, simple and not noticeably different to other presentation software to me.

Can you please be more specific about the problems you're having?

so pirating microsoft stuff is pretty much fine

[Anonymous Coward]

.. if you go by their thinking.

First steal, make money, then pay a pittance if caught and nailed.

Not that their products are worth it.
I only ever spent money for 1 XP license everything else is FOSS.

Does this affect OOXML and ISO?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was this written into the OOXML standard that was approved by the ISO? If so, then Microsoft documents are no longer compliant to their own standard.

Hmmmm

[sajuuk]

If I don't install this patch, will Microsoft get sued again? Quick, nobody install the patch!

A good start

[geminidomino]

IF Microsoft wants to really blow openoffice out of the water, they need to make sure that when you export a CSV, it doesn't go all Y-2-Krazy on standard ISO dates. OpenOffice can't compare with that!

(And before you try to tell me OO.o doesn't do that, I'm looking at a fresh file that says it does... goddamn it...)

Patch is only for redistributers

[TropicalCoder]

If you read TFA, it says "Now it appears that the patch is available on Microsoft's OEM Partner Center Website". If you go to the OEM Partner Center Website, you will find it is intended for system builders who preinstall the Office Ready image on new PCs and sell Office Ready PCs to customers.

Re:Patch is only for redistributers

[Ephemeriis]

If you read TFA, it says "Now it appears that the patch is available on Microsoft's OEM Partner Center Website". If you go to the OEM Partner Center Website, you will find it is intended for system builders who preinstall the Office Ready image on new PCs and sell Office Ready PCs to customers.

Now why would I do that? I'm reading Slashdot, after all...

Good suggestions...

[CFD339]

...and yeah, no shock that some find that trollsome, but it's truly based on hours of use.

Unfortunately, for my needs, just having a good presentation isn't quite enough. It needs to be compatible and re-usable for different conferences -- often where a specific background template is required.

Re:Ugh. If it worked, I'd use it.

[CFD339]

I don't want much. My need is common. I write and deliver presentations at many conferences. Often, they are the same or variations on the same sessions with just updates and tweaks. Conferences often require specific background templates and masters.

1. Application of a new background master (with it's own color, font, bullet, background graphic logos, etc.) should be a two click change.

2. Making a "global" change on the master to how bullets, fonts, indentation, colors, etc. are applied to sections should be a few clicks at most, and easily re-applied to all slides.

I find these two most basic functions entirely painful and barely workable in Open Office Depress.

I find it crashtastic when doing something as simple as reformatting, and there are times when font layouts for text areas become "confused to the extent that you're better off deleting them entirely and re-entering the text than trying to figure out what got screwed up.

In short, the product doesn't do what it needs to do for me, as a presenter.

My mac-geek friends all swear by Keynote. I'm quite used to Powerpoint. I don't know anyone who prefers depress.

Re:Ugh. If it worked, I'd use it.

[ozmanjusri]

1. Application of a new background master (with it's own color, font, bullet, background graphic logos, etc.) should be a two click change.

I just click View/Master/Slide Master. There's a selection of Master Pages, clicking on them gives the option of applying to selected or all pages. I don't know how you could find this hard.

2. Making a "global" change on the master to how bullets, fonts, indentation, colors, etc. are applied to sections should be a few clicks at most, and easily re-applied to all slides.

In View/Master/Slide Master, click the master page you're using. Make the changes, done. What are you finding difficult about it? To me it seems simpler and more logical than Powerpoint.

I find it crashtastic when doing something as simple as reformatting, and there are times when font layouts for text areas become "confused to the extent that you're better off deleting them entirely and re-entering the text than trying to figure out what got screwed up.

It's been far more stable than Powerpoint for me. I don't remember it ever locking up or crashing. Likewise I've never had any problems with font layouts. What are you doing when they mess up? If you're having problems with imported/pasted text, try Edit/Paste Special and paste as unformatted text.

Isn't this kind of old news?

[MtViewGuy]

Given that the patch was posted on Microsoft's OEM Builder web site back in October 2009, it's kind of old news if you have a Microsoft OEM license. The question now is will Microsoft roll out a similar patch on the public Office Update website, though.

Re:Ugh. If it worked, I'd use it.

[mrdtr]

I know user experience is subjective, and it sounds to me that because you are accustomed to using Powerpoint, and you were expecting Impress to be an exact replica, your experience was worse than if you would have gone into the situation with the expectation that it's a different program and you need to learn a different way of doing something.