With Microsoft Office on Android, Has Linus Torvalds Won?

sfcrazy writes "The father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, once said, 'If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.' Microsoft yesterday released one of its cash cows, Microsoft Office, for Android. Since Microsoft has a very vague idea of what users want and is suffering from lock-in, the app is just an Android front end of Office 365 and is accessible only by the paid users. There are already quite a lot of office suites available on Android including Office Pro, QuickOffice and KingSoft, so Microsoft will have to struggle there. Still it's a Microsoft core application coming to Linux. So, it looks like Linus has won."

Comments

I don't know, has he?

[Raven42rac]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

Re:I don't know, has he?

[poetmatt]

It's a silly question, anyway.

Linus isn't really linux by itself, he just had a critical part to play. The more accurate question would be "is Microsoft losing relevance and marketshare?" to which the answer is yes, and not really a surprise.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Lunix Nutcase]

If they are losing relevance than why would this even warrant a story? How would having even more people using Office be akin to losing relevance? It seems it would be the opposite.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Anonymous Coward]

It uses the Linux kernel, therefore it "is Linux".

It is not "GNU/Linux", if you're a Stallmanite; it uses none of the GNU userland. (Although who the hell ever actually said guhnoo-slash-linux anyway?)

The graphics stack is not X11, but that hardly makes it a different entity.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Raven42rac]

The community does the job of fragmenting the Linux community far better than Microsoft or Apple could ever hope to. That's the downfall.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[tylikcat]

They are losing relevance. But they have a lot of relevance to lose, so expect them to be significantly relevant for a while yet.

(May the Lord Bless and Keep Ballmer - far, far away from us.)

Re:I don't know, has he?

[Archangel Michael]

For the first time in a very long time, Microsoft isn't a "Windows" company. For a brief moment, there was someone who realized that in order to be relevant moving forward, Microsoft will have to stop being a "windows" company. Let see if it stays a "second tier" Office App on Android or if Microsoft makes it world class. That will be the true sign that Microsoft has or has not stopped being a Windows company.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[schnell]

Precisely. Linux as a kernel has "won," but Linux as a desktop OS is still far behind. And I think that's what Linus was talking about at the time, Linux on the desktop.

Android is "Linux" to approximately the same extent that MacOS X is "BSD" or "Mach," and I don't think anyone imagines that BSD has "won" because of Office for Mac or that there are 900K iOS apps out there. I think it's much more appropriate to say that if anyone "won" here it's Android, but I think that Linus is smart enough not to try to take credit for what Google has done on top of "his" kernel.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[lgw]

Word is the least interesting part of Office. It solves a problem that few people have any more: editing a document for printing. Word was important during the era of "desktop publishing", starting when home printers became decent, and ending when people stopped handing around printed paper as a way to communicate.

The important Office products are PowerPoint and Excel. There are no good competitors for either. And while I wouldn't want to edit either on my phone, being able to project a slideshow or spreadsheet from one's phone will be really big deal for years to come.

Re:I don't know, has he?

[lgw]

There are many perfectly serviceable competitors for PowerPoint and Excel, both free and proprietary.

People who live and die by the PowerPoint sales presentation don't agree. I can't stand slideware myself, so I don't have a strong opinion, but people I know who make and show presentations all day (and have good reasons to use non-MS products) say there's just no comparison. SmartArt automation is a big part of it, I'm guessing.

Similarly, unless you just need a spreadsheet calculator, I haven't seen anything that stands with Excel - certainly the online spreadsheets like the Google Docs one don't come anywhere close. I use Excel as my drawing program (if you make the cells square, it's great for the kind of drawing you do on graph paper), which nothing else seems good at, but mostly there's this whole culture of "spreadsheet programmers" who only know Excel/VBA (seriously, no other languages or training, but spend days on VBA programs).

Mod summary -1 troll

[AmiMoJo]

Linux already "won" - his goal was to create a Unix-like OS and it became incredibly popular. As far as I am aware he has never shown much interest in getting MS Office for it, or for market share.

Nice try creating animosity where there is none. The summary is full of typos and weasel-words. I'm not huge MS fan but the summary is full of bias in an attempt to turn a mildly interesting story into a flamewar or hatefest.

Re:Mod summary -1 troll

[cervesaebraciator]

Linux is bigger and more important than 'beating' Microsoft. Sure, many of us go through the puerile stage of trying to win people over from Windows, but that usually ends when maturity teaches us two things: first, to be content having free as in freedom software we can use; second, not to volunteer ourselves for tech support by telling giving friends and relatives unsolicited advice to make significant changes to their computers.

Re:Mod summary -1 troll

[Sique]

Actually, Linus' stated goal was "world domination".

A webapp is a webapp is a webapp

[VGPowerlord]

It seems silly to conflate this with Microsoft making products for Linux.

This is just an app that's a wrapper for a web app. The same web app you can already run on Desktop Linux.

Besides which, last I checked this wasn't a free webapp and was, in fact, a way for Microsoft to milk more money out of companies that would have otherwise only had to pay Microsoft for each Office license once. Now it's a monthly fee.

The fact that it also works on other OSes is just a "bonus."

the only thing

[CAIMLAS]

The only thing that O365 - a closed web platform available only to those who pay a subscription - on Android means is that users lose.

Excuse me, you're late to the party

[nashv]

Microsoft has already released several applications for Android, as is evidenced here https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Microsoft+Corporation. I still cannot find any thing for Microsoft Office, except maybe Onenote.

MSN Messenger for Android was released in 2012.

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[samkass]

Linux the kernel is the core of both Android the operating system and GNU/Linux the operating system. If one gets pedantic, then technically Microsoft Office for Android satisfies the argument that it's supported on an OS running Linux the kernel, but when most people use "Linux", they're not referring to the kernel, but the operating system with all of its GNU and POSIX stuff.

So, this is a win in the same sense that the Spruce Goose flew.

If you're really being pedantic, and really want to start the flame war that you seem to be encouraging, "Linux" is the name of both the kernel and the original operating system, and some other organization has attempted to rename it to put their own brand in it more recently. Someday we may know it at MIT/BSD/GNU/Canonical/RHEL/Linux if that trend keeps up. Or we could just call it what the person who created it called it, and if GNU wants a GNU/whatever OS, they can release a distro with their name on it.

Genius...

[Real1tyCzech]

Guess what?

Microsoft didn't release Office for Android.

They released Office Mobile for Office 365.

What you imply is that they released an office suite for Android, when in fact, they merely released an Android client for Office 365 users.

As much as you might care to think one is pretty much the same as the other, you would be wrong. This app is not for editing office documents on your mobile device. It is for Office 365 users to view items synced to their cloud....nothing more. It cannot even access items on your mobile device...

Re:Technically yes, but in reality, no.

[invid]

So what you are saying is that both Linus and Richard Stallman won.

No, Google won.

Re:office 365 is the end of office

[SuricouRaven]

Microsoft is pushing for subscription services because they realised their greatest competitor is themselves from five years ago. Look how long it took to get people off of XP. They reached the point where their software was 'good enough' that no-one has a compelling reason to upgrade to a new version, and the loss of a perpetual upgrade cycle ruins the whole business model.