Slashdot Mirror
MS Office on Linux (Continued)
GeeWiz
writes "According to the German Heise Newsticker, the
c't editors got hold of information that confirms that
Microsoft has assigned 37 developers with the task of
porting Office to Linux. "
Try using Babelfish
to translate the article to english
if your Deutsch ist nicht so gut.
When I chose an office suite for home I got something better than MS-Office. Granted that was for MS-Winders.
When I need one for Linux I'll still choose something better or wait for a better one to be ported.
It mean's Bill's won. He'll be the one who is controlling the way people are using the computer. He'll use office as a tool to migrate people away from linux like he migrated people from macos and os/2
I agree entirely with the sentiment that bastardizing Linux to look like Windows is kind of sickening. I understand that some of you for perverted reasons want to copy the look and feel of Windows because you think that this is what is meant by making Linux user-friendly. Especially perverted are the desktops that emulate the Win95 desktop to a great degree. I think coming up with ideas that make the computer user-friendly to people who have never used a computer before is a better idea. People actually think that learning to use the Windows interface is something that was valuable and need not be abandoned. At least that's what these copycat ideas seem to indicate. Personally learning to use Windows requires very little learning; therefore, abandoning this scheme and learning something else that requires very little learning seems to be no big deal to me.
This may be a dumb question (hence AC), but...
...wouldn't they have to be fucking stupid to do this? Surely the only reason people buy Windoze is because (and let's be honest here) the apps are better/more developed.
Putting Orifice on linux just takes that advantage away - and big corporates can just change the OS without the majority of users noticing much except mayby faster execution and less downtime.
Am I missing something here or did MS just flip?
Well, if you think of the alternate meaning of :-)
"moon" (as in: to moon somebody), the contents
of either of Gates' books and the tripe that
normally issues from Redmond, the translation
makes a lot of sense, does it not?
So, from here on out, when referring to "Redmond"
in the narrow sense of meaning "Microsoft",
perhaps we ought to substitute "Talking Moon" for
"Redmond." (Or "Microsoft", for that matter.)
Hey! Do you suppose that's what the little "tm"
things that MS puts all over the place *really*
mean?
MS would be required by GPL to release the
source for MS Linux-- the source release
would make MS's changes obvious
I agree entirely with the sentiment that bastardizing Linux to look like Windows is kind of sickening. I understand that some of you for perverted reasons want to copy the look and feel of Windows because you think that this is what is meant by making Linux user-friendly.
Yeah! Tell the KDE guys to stop stealing our Windows UI!
:-P
...I'll believe it when I see it. And maybe not even then!
This simply does not fit into Microsoft's aim of World Domination.
There are just way too many down-sides for MS in this approach.
It would be a different story if their apps were worth a damn even on
their own platforms. Then it *could* be a case of ensuring
maintained market lead. But they're not. They're garbage. As is
Windoze in all its incarnations. Porting Ms-Office to Linux would
only cost them market share, and customer lock-in, on the Windoze
platform.
A simple UNIX utility called "diff" will tell you exactly what changes MS made,
. . . assuming that they give you the source, and assuming that the source they give you is the same as what they compiled. the people using MS-Linux won't be compiling their own kernels. and if MS violates the GPL, who will sue them? who can afford to stay in court with them for years?
and a good developer will probably be able to guess why. Then the changes can be merged right back in, or flatly ignored.
they can't be ignored by the developers who have to decide which incompatible fork to write to. of course people already write for forty-'leven incompatible unices, as with config.h in GNU programs. but for most users (and damn near all users of MS-Linux, once again) you'll have to distribute a second binary, or else come up with a friendly GUI build thing which does not tell them that they're using a compiler! just make it look like an install.
there's not much (if anything) that you won't be able to work around, but it'll be a hassle. and it'll be great FUD material: "See, we made these great changes to introduce all of our Tools and Technologies(TM) and the Great Features of Windows(TM), but these Rogue Hackers(TM) won't accept our Innovations(TM)! They rejected our patches! They forked Linux on us -- we're just doing what's Best for the User(TM) but the Rogue Hackers(TM) don't want that! Poor little us!"
Then look at it the other way: other vendors will use the incompatible, effectively proprietary (as in "not subject to peer review") API's that MS introduces. suddenly, there's a wealth of "linux" software out there that won't run on your Debian box. Suddenly, users install "standard" MS programs which "upgrade" their libraries, and all their non-MS software breaks. This versioning hell is not a figment of my (admittedly paranoid
Will Microsoft buys mslinux.com to market it's new suite and following products on the Linux platform?
can somebody think of a reason *why* MS would be doing that?
I can think of lots of reasons why it would *not* port Office.
Psst, be quiet. I was trying to be more subtle than that. Also, stealing is not a word to be used with look and feel. Flattery through imitation is better. I agree that KDE guys should stop flattering your Windows UI.
:-P
if you think of the alternate meaning of "moon" (as in: to moon somebody), . . . the translation makes a lot of sense, does it not?
it makes perfect sense!
"talking head" . . .
becomes "talking butthead" . . .
becomes "talking moon"!
Do you suppose that's what the little "tm" things that MS puts all over the place *really* mean?
oh, yeah. what else could it mean?
Remember OS/2 1.x was a M$ product so they ported Word 1.x and Excel 2 or 3(?) to OS/2. :) )
(I for one wish I had the time+skill to make a Word 1.1 clone for Linux
Money, for one. MS Orifice is HUGE. Money money money so he can buy more companies. Control and power. BillG's a control freak. Want to know what's coming for Linux? Look at what they've done on the Mac side.
"Oh, Office on Linux is slow? Well, 'upgrade' to the Windows version until we release a newer better version for Linux RSN."
"The Linux version of our Product does Not Support these few, minor features: x..x..x...infinity"
"MS Access will Not Be Ported".
Just go back a few years, and everywhere you see "Macintosh", substitute "Linux". Want to know what Talking Moon is going to do re: controlling Linux? Think to yourself: what's the worst possible things that could happen, technically? Every time somebody pipes up with, "It'd be really terrible if MS did this. It would just corrupt Linux terribly" you're giving MS ideas. Don't think MS doesn't read Slashdot.
They did this EXACT same thing with Explorer - they promised Unix versions of IE3 - which got critics off their back - and then the port never materialized...
Mark
Let them try. Its far easier on Linux to figure out what's in a DLL than it is under windows.
If they include a special widget library, the community just replaces them one-by-one with GPL'd versions
First, don't forget the M$ motto: "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". This is what they're trying to do, you can guarantee it. Here's how.
1) Make Microshaft Orifice available for Linux natively, with libraries available for free download. During the install routine, install said libraries (closed source libraries, unless they're kind enough to give you the code under NDA, which they will for some commercial software companies, but not to the average hacker), and encourage companies to use them to write Linux apps.
2) Once this is in full swing and has been working for a while, all commercial apps (which will of course look great, but will actually accomplish next to nothing with a measure of instability due to M$ virtue) for Linux will be using M$ code. Then they start screwing with the kernel, forking it to shreds, telling everyone that they're "extending the functionality" of the OS. Since people are so dependant on the M$ libraries, which now, amazingly, only work with the M$ kernel, people are forced to switch to M$ Linux, which starts slowly losing support for GPL software (or keeping the stuff they're too lazy to write themselves or know they can't write better). The main source tree won't be affected, of course, but that doesn't matter. Microshaft would have taken back all the people they lost to Linux, while giving them the illusion that they're still using Linux. And Poof! Microshaft just hijacked themselves a new OS. Pretty spiffy, eh?
Heh, unlikely. I hope they ARE porting Office to linux, it'll kick linux onto the desktop just that much closer. I seriously doubt they'd gain dominance...the strength of the Linux culture has already shown its force in the face of tyrannical business practicves. Me, personally, I like Corel's WordPerfect. And even if Office was a little better, I'd prolly just make do with Corel to support them. They're not total open source, but they seem to be rather open to their customers, something MS ISN'T. I like Star Office, its just a tad bit too much like Windows for me. I'll prolly use it here more soon. In short:
Star Division & Corel, don't worry, linux/free unix users like choice! And if you price your stuff decently, and they have a semi-decent manual, I'll purchase your products.
This must mean that a team of the most skilled Microsoft programmers are working overtime to port Microsoft's greatest innovation ever: The Blue Screen of Death. Even as we speak, they are desperately trying to figure out how they can cause illegal operations in kernel32.dll, so that useres can get the complete Microsoft experience.
Only a moron would use this bloatware on linux.
It makes me sick even thinking about m$ doing something like that
Had he made Office for OS/2, it would have allowed people to use OS/2 instead of '95. It would have been an admission of defeat.
Mark
We have spent a fortune training people how to use MS Office. If I want to roll out Linux to people, it will be easier if we can keep the same software.
Microsoft will probably charge twice as much for the Linux version and still be years behind the 'doze version.
btw I like the paperclip.
Their over-inflated stock price makes them the largest corporation in the world, even though their sales and profits are not.
Something bad is going to happen - they can only go down from here.
Mark
Ever work Tech Support?
Who really cares if they port Office? Who cares if they even go so far as to write their own kernel to fork development, then call 'their' Linux the 'real' Linux(TM)? I for one won't use it - I'm too hooked on my Debian system to give it up and I'd rather have a system that doesn't crash every 5 minutes.
If Micros~1 does make their own distribution, do you honestly think that Debian, Redhat, Slack and everyone else are going to vanish? Linux has always been an insanely cool alternative for people who are sick and tired of Microsoft's crap. These people aren't going to disappear. As more people become sick of Microsoft's tactics they'll switch to a true Linux alternative.
Linux is still young. There are several GUI's out there for it, none of which is as user-friendly as say, the MacOS, but there WILL be one (this is Linux we're talking about!). Most people who've been developing for Linux in the past aren't going to say "Hey... Microsoft is cool. We'll use their APIs!" If that were the case they wouldn't be developing for Linux - they'd be developing for Widnows already.
This isn't to say that I agree with a Microsoft distribution. Just the opposite - I think it would be bad. But I don't think that all of us who use Linux as an alternative to proprietary are going to switch over to their distribution. Debian, Redhat, the GNUers and the FSF are going to be around for a long time yet, and as long as they are, there will always be an alternative to Bad Software(TM).
Chris.
(Too lazy to set up an account)
PS - does anyone else think that "Windows 2000" should be renamed "Winnebago"? If that doesn't describe the efficiency, size and reliability of Microsoft's OSes, I don't know what does!
bzzt. Wrong. MS *has* delivered IE for Unix -- Solaris and HP-UX, IIRC. Of course, it needs 50 MB of disk (probably includes an implemenatation of the entire Win32 API set so that they wouldn't have to actually port it).
Try using babelfish to translate the article
on the same page about BeOS. John Louis Gassee
is translated as "John Louis gas lake".
Ummm, if you'd read even half of the posts before yours you'll see several reasons why MS would do the port.
And if it were really so horrible, the GPL would be updated to avoid their circumvention. Don't worry, Microsoft is a corporate behemoth. It's fairly easy to stay a few steps ahead of them. And unlike everything else, they can't just buy up the free software. That'll confuse their management to no end.
Which is the former and which is the later? And, how is "konquerer" different from the current kfm - or are you talking about the same thing?
I use kfm a lot for web browsing. It seems faster than Netscape but doesn't display Java Script as smoothly, and of course no Java. The only time it crashes is when viewing the Linux section of ZDNet. Strange. Everything else is a lot smoother with kfm than with Netscape, though, because scape reloads a page every time the window is resized, etc.
Opera for Linux would be nice, but it's been so long now with nothing to show I put it in the same category as Mozilla - vaporware.
Take a look at MS Office for Macintosh. It pulls in something like a billion dollars a year for MS. That's pretty good size money, even for Bill. Probably somebody thinks the market for selling a Linux version of Office is at least as large.
There is also a precedent for MS both learning and doing a reasonable job on a non-Windows Office version. Remember that MS Word 4.2 was an object of universal derision among Macheads, and the current versions are generally grudgingly admitted to be pretty decent and more Mac-like. MS doesn't own Macintosh (though they did pump a pile of money into Apple), and they don't have to own Linux.
But, as I've said before, bring 'em on. We'll see who wins on a level field. (And don't worry too much about proprietary extensions to Linux to make Office run, unless they're something like "closed" DLLs that will emulate Windows APIs or ActiveX. If you have to do a bunch of reconfiguration or recompilation in order to be able to run Office, nobody will do it. No Problem.)
I wasn't aware that God had anything to do with Slackware.
I use lynx, even under X. Avoids such things as tiny fonts (no, 9 point does not look very nice at 1280x1024 on a 17 in monitor..), as well as table layout, and eliminates the need for loading imagemaps to use them (lynx gives you a list of links..). And I can view graphics if I want, by calling xv.
Same reasons they ported Office 97 to the Macintosh.. there's money to be made, and more importantly: It gives Microsoft another OS they can believably point to as a real competitor - and weakens the anti-trust arguments against them
The GPL protects Linux in that if Microsoft makes changes to anything licensed under the GPL, they have to release the source code of their changes. They can't take the Linux kernel, make it the Microsoft kernel, and and make their apps only run under the MS-Linux kernel without releasing their changes to the Linux kernel.
And all this time I've been listening to grape vines and talking to little birds.
Piracy!
If we are going to let pigs like Microsoft and other major corporations abuse and destroy the dream of the Free Software Coaliance, then let it happen. Let's get it over with; Let's just give them the whole thing. I can't care.
But there is another option, and one that we must face bravely, for the most potent rays of the sun are also the ones that hurt the most.
I say that we must come forth and endorse piracy, completely, and totally. Piracy is just another word for nothing left to loose.
Piracy is Enforced Compliance. When we pirate, we ENFORCE compliance with the Free Software dream.
We are on the one medium that can actually deliver the philosophical dream of freedom, and we have allowed pigs and fiends to abuse and rape it, we have just signed on with another feudal lord.
If serfdom is your destiny, then, please, by all means, go ahead and enjoy all of these scum destroying Linux. These are the people who ignored us for years and years, and then, when finally light began to shine through the cracks in the walls, decided the only option was to CO-OPT the whole thing.
If you allow this to go on uncontrolled, you can kiss it all goodbye.
How far away are modules distributed without source code?
Not very.
The dream is being bought and sold. And you are letting it happen.
The only way to battle these fiends is piracy.
The term has been corrupted by the media & large corporations (MSNBC, anyone?) and has become a despicable in the minds of the general public. That's why I propose we, as a movement, use the term 'Enforced Compliance'.
A mere philological correction can correct the whole damned system back to what it was supposed to be.
But, I'm aware it's useless... you are all resigned to this ignoble sufference of fate. Fine.
Enjoy your dinner. It's the only one you're getting.
Hats off to Babelfish for this remarkably
accurate translation of Redmond!
They don't claim it's the truth though, they just claim that
it comes from reliable sources.
c't magazine kicks ass. If they made an English edition they
would get millions of subscribers extra. It's better then Byte
ever was.
It's the best source for accurate information here in Germany. c't ("computer technik") is targeted mostly at developers, network admins, web designers and other people who have a clue. Reading c't since about six years I don't remember any hyped false information.
The content is very interesting, they cover Unix/Linux fairly often (lyx, setting up a dialin router, atalk, Samba, redundant server setups, load balancing). There are several news pages devoted for Linux.
They started the c't crypto campagne against key escrow and other political BS which should encourage people to use PGP and let their key sign by c't.
Heise Verlag (their publisher) rocks - they also publish iX, the multi-user, multi-tasking magazine which has really unique content.
...in an interview (three reporters against The Enemy). Comments from the readers were very critical (partly cynical) and attacked Gates more than once. That was a good laugh.
You'll be a slave to Microsoft forever if you let this beyond the city walls. The wooden horse is hollow inside, damn it !!!
As a German I like c't and iX, too.
But I wouldn't say that all they do "rocks".
Have you read the article about the new 2.2
kernel features? That was pretty lame.
The article explained stuff, which had something
to do with OSes in general, but only a view
aspects of really new stuff.
Anyway, there is no mag I could mention, that's
better here in germany.
They couldn't bundle IE or Office with Windows, but they could bundle them with Linux, even if they made a Linux distribution. They could easily make a linux distribution that looks and behaves like windows. Imagine that. Especially if they already have ported win API as we've suspected with such things as IE for Solaris. If MS made a Linux distribution, then put their marketing behind it it would sell like mad. Then MS could start claiming that IE and Office were integral to Linux...
This doesn't hold true because it is almost an apples/oranges thing. You can program JAVA with MS extensions without even knowing it. It would take a conscious effort by a programmer to select their widget set.
Most people creating windowing apps on Linux are in most cases much more aware of what they are doing than the vast majority of JAVA developers who are mostly making dinky web-apps. (And I don't mean that as a jib against people who are doing more serious JAVA stuff whether web based or not it is just the way things seem to be.)
(FUDON)
I do find it funny that IE 5.0 now crashes NT4.0 SVR 3.2 when ever it hits a web page that uses both EM tags and B tags.
(FUDOFF)
You spent a fortune? Why? Isn't MS Office supposed to be the intuitive, point-and-click, so-simple-a-dimwit-toddler-could-use-it office suite?
Could it be that it isn't really that simple and superior after all? Could it be that the whining about how "hard" Linux is to use is just that: whining? Could it be that money spent on supporting MS is invisible, while the (imagined) cost of supporting Linux is trumpeted far and wide?
Given the choice, why not spend a fortune training people how to use StarOffice (or emacs)?
Courtesy of Mr. Wayne Kramer:
1. Dope
2. Rock'n'roll
3. Fucking in the streets.
Power to the people! Right on! Fuck the Man!
Netscape already exists for Linux. And now that AOL/Netscape are one, their Linux Hacks can port AOL over to Linux.
Porting office to linux is fine. If these paranoids on slashdot are correct, and ms tries to put a monopolistic strangehold on linux (eventually bsd?).... Has anyone else read "The Cold Cash War" by Asprin? Bill'd tick people off something mighty.
What's to keep MS from building a Linux clone and having it *not* be under GPL?
There is already a non-GPL Linux clone. It's called Unix.
Hello,
:-( Is there MS Office for UNIX? No. The rumor is MS is porting Office to Linux. MS's business model, IMO, works best for them when they control the platform. They can't control Linux due to the GPL. They'd (potentially) like to control the Linux platform. A way they can potentially do that is to port MS Office to a Linux-like platform which isn't under GPL. Something like *BSD. Or maybe they could write a clean-room version of Linux and call it MS-Nix or something (though supposedly MS's contracts with SCO prohibit MS from making a MS version of UNIX). Would MS be able to steal Linux's thunder and/or control Linux by making a MS Office run on a Linux clone or by making it run on a similar OS like *BSD?
Thanks for dropping the context.
I don't know. What do you think?
Cheers,
Scott.
'nuff said
This will be the first time microsoft develops apps for a *growing* OS and it won't be the last.
They are preparing to extend their dominancy wherever the computing industry goes. We can't stop them---we just have to prevent them from dropping a closed version of Linux
Because he's already spent a fortune teaching them how to use Office (the real one), that's why. Also, some people's time is valuable, and they can't shut down their lives to adopt some hippie paradigm or spend their slavish 9-to-5 existences flipping thru tech manuals and liking it.
I only tell you these things because I love you.
IE on Solaris immediately locked up the window manager on my Ultra 5. I had this creepy feeling of Micros~1 sloppiness oozing over into my Unix world...
Sorry, but that's bullshit. MS developed for Apple and many other systems that were "a growing" OS - down to the Altair that ran the first copy of MS Basic.
Revisionist idiot - learn some history.
God has everything to do with everything!
Here is the raw whois output for mslinux.com:
[rs.internic.net]
Registrant:
Newyen Corporation (MSLINUX-DOM)
6119 Welch Ave
Stockton, CA 95210
US
Domain Name: MSLINUX.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Nguyen, Kiet (KN1767) domain@NEWYEN.COM
1-510-459-7528
Billing Contact:
Nguyen, Kiet (KN1767) domain@NEWYEN.COM
1-510-459-7528
Record last updated on 31-Dec-98.
Database last updated on 19-Mar-99 06:41:35 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
BMW.AUTOBAHN.ORG 206.79.223.28
FERRARI.AUTOBAHN.ORG 206.79.223.25
The InterNIC Registration Services database contains ONLY
non-military and non-US Government Domains and contacts.
Other associated whois servers:
American Registry for Internet Numbers - whois.arin.net
European IP Address Allocations - whois.ripe.net
Asia Pacific IP Address Allocations - whois.apnic.net
US Military - whois.nic.mil
US Government - whois.nic.gov
This is a partial excuse. When Off-2K hits, his people will return to training mode. The price may be tangiable, or not, but everyone will pay. In MS world this happens every 2 years.
Now, a jump to Linux apps will cause a 1.5 -2.0x training hit, but it need not keep happening over, and over, and over. Further, you will have many more skilled people so newcommers will come on board much faster than they can today.
I've yet to meet that mythical "Microsoft software expert", things change too fast. An expert takes 2-3 years to grow, MS runs a 1.5-2 year release cycle.
Hence, you train, use 10% of the software, and train again. Repeat until broke.
this would be worst mistake MS will ever undertake
hahahahaha
Office 2000's binary file formats are the same as for Office 97. And they only changed the previous time in order to support Unicode. Maybe you should rethink your outlandish conspiracy theories.
Actually they are the most reliable magazine I know. They sometimes are more accurate in setting up their articles as most of the scientists, I have to do with, are.
/.ed, as anything I read about Linux in the magazine happened to have appeared on slashdot weeks ago.
But the last two months, I had the strong feeling they were
Lets see. I guess it wont be possible to overhear it, if it happens on CeBit as they say..
-Knut
kneumann@uni-duesseldorf.de
Wow! Not a trace of an accent!
All the beter if MS decides to release a closed version of Linux. Let them use their media machine and distribution channels to put Linux on everyones desk. Let them support the new computer users at $75 a support call. Let them hold classes for morons to support their version of Linux. After that it will be a verrry small step to an open distribution of Linux. I like the idea of MS-Linux.
Keep Staroffice? No thanks - its got more bloat than me after 100 cans of Pepsi.
Stodge in disguise
Really? They mailed me "free" copies of VJ++ 6.0 and WNT 4.0. The CDs are still sitting on a shelf collecting dust, along with VC++ 5.0, etc.
Yeah, I had to make a simple bar graph (only about 28 datapoints) for my brother the other day. It took all of about 5 minutes with TCL/Tk, and we got it to look exactly how we wanted. No harder than a spreadsheet.
M$ is basically scared that WordPerfect, Applix,
StarOffice, and other are gaining marketshare on a growing OS. This is just too much for them to handle, so they're leaking vaporware announcements to kill off competitors.
Worse yet, they could attempt to sell a M$ Office/Linux distribution (kinda like what Corel will be doing).
Check out Cringley's latest column at pbs.org. It makes the
c't article look like small potatoes. All about how Apple is
screwing over the GPL with its APL - much harsher than
anything Bruce Perens said about the Apple license. I couldn't
believe it. The rest of the column is about MS port of Office
to Linux and MS Linux. Read on....
Not only does "Microsoft Bob" Cringley confirm that MS is
working on a Linux port of Office, but he adds that MS Linux
is also coming. He almost takes it for granted.
Bob thinks MS Linux will go over big with the corporate types.
Aren't they having enough problems with Windows 2000 in
Redmond?
Cringley needs to be slashdotted in a massive way to bring him
to his senses. pbs.org/cringley His column is very influential
with the yuppies and many others.
Maybe you should rethink your outlandish conspiracy theories.
If I had any "outlandish conspiracy theories", I'd certainly rethink them, but unfortunately you're drunk
As for "conspiracy", there's no conspiracy when there's only one participant.
As for "outlandish", see the post alongside yours for a few thoughts on arbitrarily introduced incompatibilities. See also my response to his post, going into more depth about the VBA nightmare.
You really think MS doesn't introduce arbitrary incompatibilities? Nonsense. When it benefits them, they do it. They're a shitty company, and better companies than them do the same. You think they're in this as benefactors of mankind? Please, grow up.
Idiot? No---you're the momma's boy pacifist who only uses such words under the cover of a nome de guerre.
Never has a OS caught marketshare the way Linux has---NONE OF THEM---not in modern times.
My statement stands.
VBA is horrible. If they'd done the same thing with a decent language like Python, I'd give 'em an A+, but Visual Basic is intolerable. (Disclaimer: I do c/c++ for a living. I'm biased against toy languages.)
Compatibility issues: I once got stuck maintaining something done with VBA in Excel 5. Then Office 95 came out and broke half the code rbitrarily. So I busted ass and found workarounds that worked with both versions. Time passed, and Office 97 broke everything again! Now I had to find workarounds that would behave equivalently in *three* different versions. In some cases that was impossible. In all of these versions the user could break everything by doing stuff through the regular Excel GUI. No fix for that.
In the end, we did it in C++ as a stand-alone program --to save time and money.
To hell with VBA. It's worthless.
Personally I live by a cross of Moore's Law and PT Barnum's Axiom:
"The number of suckers born every minute will double approximately every 18 months."
Jesus.
I am in awe.
You have fully described the "high-tech" industry, eBay, Amazon, Wall Street, Microsoft, and all. Like that Borges story about the poet and the Emporor of China: The Emperor has a palace many miles on a side, and he takes the poet on a tour of it. They walk for weeks. Finally, the poet utters one simple sentence which fully describes the entire palace.
(The bummer part of that story is that the Emperor has he poet excecuted on the spot. Hopefully Gates won't do that to you
Tracking all this shit down and stopping it would hurt proprietary software houses more than any "piracy" would. This would be incredibly painful for everyone. I know it would practically cripple the company I work for.
You're right in most cases, but not all. Where I work, as far as I know absolutely everything is legal. They're maniacal about it. The pres., believe it or not, is a really ethical person -- while also running a startup!
Why do you think W2K is so late?
Because it's the world's largest ball of shit, that's why.
Imagine the biggest, most mismanaged and clusterfucked software project you've ever been on, and then multiply that by a thousand hells. Stir with insane edicts imposed by marketing and/or PHB's. If they ever get something functional out the door, it's because God hates their customers more than He hates them.
file-format (.doc, MSJava, AVI) and API (MFC, CaptiveX, etc) are still viable strategies to keep the stranglehold on the computer industry.
I agree with you there. They've got a lot to gain by fostering incompatibility. It may bite them in the long term, but they've never planned farther ahead than lunchtime so they just can't conceive of that.
Oh my God. I thought I got away from them.
Why 'prevent' them? If they want to create a 'closed' version, let them.
No one is stopping a 'forking' of 'GNU/Linux' are they? No one is stopping them from creating a 100% reversed engineered MSLinux.
Its up to the 'market' to determine if such an effort would be successful. And, given the amount of money needed to make a non-GNUed MSLinux, M$ would be stupid to try.
I swear to God you people have to bitch about
everything. First about Apple, then Dell, then
this. Is there anything you agree with? The
bottom line is that commercial software companies
aren't going anywhere and you will have to
pay for software at some point along the line.
If you think you're little la-la land is going
to last you're mistaken.
Compile an Apple ][ emulator and run AppleWorks. (yes, the Apple ][ version, not the Mac)
Ah, I have to disagree a bit here, I've used MFC and the MFC app wizzard, and it is a fast way to code, you didn't understand the code because you did not have that much experience with MFC, but I've used for a while and studied it, the app wizard was a nice feature, imagine if you will if there was an app wizard for gtk+, you could specify what you want the application to be like, and it will automaticly generate most of the code, the rest of the code that you write is what the data is how it is managed, and how it is viewed by the user, this essential combines the idea of taking your old application and copying and pasting the code from it into a new application, except it does this automaticly and gives you options for the various types of applications you write, this is incredibly usefull if you understand gtk+. Now to talk about what you said about the app wizard, imagine if you did not understand gtk+, and you ran an appwizard wich generated code, you would feel the same way about generated gtk+ code as you did the MFC generated code. Now that is just defending the idea of an appwizard, but that does not mean the MFC library itself is great, I've used it and have always had some gripe about it, and its inconsistencies, they have something they call the Document View architecture, but how it works is actually inconsistent with its meaning, for example if I wanted to use a modeless dialog box to show document (data), you would think I would be able to do this in the view part of the architecture, but guess what, you can't. This is just one example, I've come across many others that I didn't like and caused me to use non-standard means of getting things done.
The next thing they could be doing is to port Internet Explorer to Linux, so that they can control internet standards since everyone is using their browsers, they can market their standards and no questions asked, this also leads to people using their software and their libraries.
Wheter --> Whether
practise --> practice
Maybe more, but hey, English isn't my native language either.
(hmmmm to imitate the average American there need to be more spelling errors...)
MS recruits 2 year olds and MSCE's to port Office. The end result is a port that crashes even more often than the windows version, if that is possible. Microsoft blames the crappiness of the port on Linux. "What do you expect for free?" they will say. In the end the general public shuns Linux, and it is dommed to 5% market share for eternity.
Free Kevin
Thats what this article should be called cause
that is what linux is. It must be part of their
plot to kill linux.
Office exists for the Mac because much of it originated on the Mac platform. This gave Microsoft a huge advantage when Windows 3.0 was released, as it already had experience with developing software for a clean, consist GUI. Its competitors (Lotus, WordPerfect, et. al.) were still locked into DOS, and were faced with porting to a very messy graphical interface (Windows) from scratch, so the transition for them was very long and painful (and mostly unsuccessful).
If it were not for that history, I doubt there would be MS Office for Mac (or perhaps at all). I don't think it was ever offered for OS/2, and am still sceptical of rumours of Office for Linux. (I do hope they're true!)
I think Microsoft hasn't ported IE to Linux because it doesn't want to, for both legal and competitive reasons. Remember, IE is `part of Windows'!
The GPL does not keep MS from including proprietary extensions and keeping that code closed. SuSE has YAST. MS will have their own.
The MS Window Manager would surely be binary as all the other components, like Notepad and all their other applets.
I doubt the GPL protects against MS proprietizing their own special linux. just against them proprietizing existing kernel and other GPL code.
and what's to keep them from taking existing GPL source, making some modest "changes" and compiling into their own binaries?
ACtually, it would be a good idea for them to replace the underlying DOS-7.x or something under consumer Windows with something more extensive, so that Windows has more problems crashing the system. But the resulting system you describe would have as little visibility of Linux as the current Win-98 has of DOS: it would be stupid to call it Linux since it would bear no similarity to Linux for application developers (except perhaps text-mode) and users. What they could do, however, is to indeed use X (which is not a GUI, but rather a graphics device access protocol) and a WINE-like library and kernel interfacing layer.
Of course, they would offer click-and-drool interfaces for building MSLinux applications that would run nowhere else.
The sad thing is that Office for Linux is very bad news for Linux: it will kill off competition in the Linux area, it will give a bad name to Linux since people will notice that Linux office will crash much more often than Microsoft Office does. It will probably have less of a chance to take the system down with it, but that's about it.
Office will spread the use of proprietary binary formats under Linux, which means that many of the processing advantages of the text mode environment will be lost. It will establish mass-used software under Linux that maliciously tries to undermine privacy and security, as has been proven time and again by Microsoft's actions and little "accidents".
If office suites and GUI-based desktop apps bring in more users, great, the more the merrier. That doesn't change the utility of Linux to the existing community. If the needs of office suite users and traditional Linux users turn out to be irreconcilable, Linux will split, and that's fine, too. The existing users will continue to use the existing Linux, and the office suite users will use the other version.
If the Windows world was based on a POSIX-compliant, robust, well-designed set of APIs, we'd all be better off.
You know it has to be installed setuid root? /dev/kmem for IPC, /dev/hda for loading shared DLLs and you need a kernel module to switch the processor to 16bit mode.
MS Office would need access to
It also must set the system in the MS runlevel with init 6.
The danger that mot folks don't envision is that they can "develop" MSLInux the same way they developed MSJAVA. In fact in the end the MicroSleeze bags in effect won. I guess in the end the only thing they won't be able to copy is the name.
There is more danger here than most people think.
Also, they may no bother to reverse engineer all/any of it. As we saw in http://www.slashdot.org/articles/99/02/27/076204.s html ,
GNU copyleft infringements have begun. Depending how the initial court cases go / (don't go), GPL could become a joke.
Yeah.. Redmond became talking moon... kewl... :D
... suggesting that someone with whom you /.'d - as if /. were some kind of
disagree--or someone whom simply has it wrong--
ought to be
weapon.
Besides, what's the big deal? We're only talking
about the normal effluent that issues from Talking
Moon anyway.
Mmm Hmm, and look what their policy of holding back Mac version of sofware until long after the Win version was released and strong-arming Mac developers to release Win versions first did for Apple.
I look upon anything that MS does for another platform with great suspicion.
Wrong-O sweatpea. I've created docs with O2k and then opened them under Word97, and Word97 continually gpf's, gpf's, gpf's. (Word97 SP2, NT4 SP 4).
The file formats are *slightly* different. Probably just enough to force millions of users to upgrade just to stop the gpf's.
Clevo
IE 5 for both Slowaris and HP/yux shipped the same day as IE 5 for all the other platforms...
I'm sure a bunch of techno-elitists want to run that idiotbox pos...
I can't wait until Opera is ported to Linux. Back when I used windoze, that was my browser of choice. Small, fast, and efficient. Plus the designers actually put some inovation into the interface instead of copying what everyone else was doing. Opera for Linux would be a dream come true.
download anti virus!!!
Heh .. that's how I got my copy of NT. A friend bought Visual something-or-other and gave me the NT Workstation CD which came with it.
Of course they do care about Linux!
Anyway, let them develop Office for Linux... This will be the biggest "blue screen" in the whole MS history. They will make the Windows9x slaves to break their chains and move to GNU/Linux by millions! And who of us will buy for a license of "Office for GNU/Linux"?? Not me, for sure! So let them do the biggest General Protection Fault ever!
In fact, I believe this information is bullshit. Because who are the Linux' users? People who are kind of "rebels". Unlike Apple's users, they won't pay, for the vast majority of them. So they are worthless for Microsoft.
And already... Microsoft is worthless for us !
...with a 10 meter cattle prod.
Let MS port it to linux. Since linux doesn't support all of the secret MS kernel APIs and all those other neat things MS software relies on (e.g. the registry), it probably won't run even half as well as on a Windows machine. Plus, since I doubt that MS has very much expertise on unix/linux systems in the first place, it will probably be even more of a bloated hog than the Windows version. This will just give the Bill and Ed show another reason to say that linux sux, because it can't run MS Office.
It's time to support people/companies that want to take advantage of linux's strengths instead of trying to turn linux into a bastardized Windows.
Wait until you see the libs, and GUI toolkit you've gotta install to get this bugger working. Forget standard Xt, Qt, and/or GTK. This is the first "MS-X-Toolkit" product, I'd bet. As for source code, the MS EULA will be in full effect, meaning you get NO rights to ANYTHING.
Perhaps Microsoft is preparing for a breakup into an OS company and an applications company. The Office group accounts for 1/3 of their revenue. If they get spun off into their own company because of the DOJ thingy, they may want to support more platforms than Windows.
the last time i used office on a report, it crashed and took out the win/sys directory... not exactly as gracefull an exit as staroffice
I've read other stories translated here that originated at CT, in translation. Can't remember anything notable. Could someone please educate me why CT should be believed in this matter? Have there been other CT scoops that didn't pan out, or other scoops that CT got first, and correctly?
If CT is so good at getting the news first and getting it right, somebody could make a bundle here in the USA mirroring their site and translating it into decent English. The fact that this hasn't happened yet makes a doubting Thomas.
in need of clues....
What would Office for Linux look like?
If it's anything like the Mac Office experience, you will HATE it. Office for Windows is carefully optimized, and tightly tied to the underlying OS to give it the best perfromance it can get. Mac Office STILL has emulated 68K code in it, all kinds of garbage libraries in it, memory leaks beyond belief, and a very Windows-ish user interface. What does this lead to?
1. Destabilization of the OS.
2. Crappy performance from the entire system after Windows for the Mac er Mac Office is installed.
3. PC Magazines running Office benchmarks and then saying see the Mac sux because or Excel Macros run 8x faster on Wintel.
4. Loss of innovative software applications because they all get crushed by Office.
5. Pollution of user interface consistency (not that this is exactly a virtue of Linux).
6. Not-quite feature parity that will bite you in the ass time and again.
7. Not quite file format parity that will bite you in the ass time and again.
The good news -
If the only reason you still have any Windows is to run Office you MAY be able to get rid of it, assuming that the critical features are there, and you have access to a PC for the occasions when you really need the real thing.
By the way, corporate users ALSO need Microsoft Outlook for thos Exchange server Intranet email networks. I you think Office for Linux is a revolting concept, wait to you see what Exchange looks like.
Personally I think that the warts likely to exist in any port make the value of Office for Linux nearly nil.
I'd like to think that you're correct and that Linus is correct. But put this story together with the rumor that MS will bundle office 2000 with windows 2000 and I think you may be wrong. Maybe they want to make $ on Linux --which I'd applaud I guess in a way though I won't stop using StarOffice-- maybe OTOH they want a way to justify tying Windows and Office together, with lots of pitfalls thrown into the Linux version. That way they can say: what is it that you want? A free OS (that is clumsy for a ordinary user to set-up and use) and an expensive office suite, or would you rather have Windows 2000, which will cost you a little (since it is hiddn in the OEM preload charge), but will be easier to use and include the world-standard office suite for free, with fully integrated app/OS functionality. That's what I'd be doing if I were them, but then ppl do tell me I'm an asshole.
When I interviewed at MS many years ago, they told me
that they had done a port of Word to the Atari ST, but they
were waiting to see how successful that platform was before
they released it.
A company like MS can easily afford to write software that
they never release. It gives them lots of flexibility in their
strategy.
Hi All,
It seems to me that if MS decides to *release* a port, then they have two options. 1. Make sure MS Office runs on a standard Linux kernel and distro. 2. Make their own distribution. I'd think that 1 would be quicker, especially if they use WindU - the port of Win32 to Unix.
Knowing MS's whole business model depends on control of the platform, I'd think that eventually they'd want to move to 2 - recall what they did with Java.
What's to keep MS from building a Linux clone and having it *not* be under GPL? Or making MS Office run on a variation of FreeBSD? Aren't there ways for a company with $20B+ in cash to legally get around the GPL if they are willing to spend the time and money?
Personally, I believe that even if MS is working on a port, they won't release it for at least 2 years. They've got enough troubles with Win2k and approaching Y2K issues, IMO.
Cheers, Scott.
The MS business apps division has to have been thinking about this for over a year. Why I believe this: well before the dates on the Halloween Docs, I went to Redmond to interview for a position as a developer. I had mentioned in screening that I was an avid Linux enthusiast and had done some minor kernel-related hacking (heck, I know for a fact some of my interviewers saw the anti-MS links on my web page :-)); judging from the product teams I interviewed with, I think I may have been considered at least in part as a potential Linux developer - one was the team working on the next (post-Office2000) release of an Office app (almost certainly the release of Office they're porting); another was working on an as-yet-unreleased (AFAIK) technology they'd simply *have* to port to Unix and Mac for it to be realistically marketable.
But anyway, more to the point - here's what's probably happening... The port is probably underway in secret; throwing 37 Microserfs on a Linux port is a small price to pay for the business apps divsion to hedge its bets and increase its viability in the event MS is broken up or Linux gains significant desktop market share. But no, there won't be any kernel, /lib, or /usr/lib modifications in the picture - that's pure paranoia; monstrous, statically-linked binaries seem more their style. No, they won't use WineLib or open source widgets - the early start they would have had to make (think: two year product cycles that end up dragging on longer than that) rules out taking advantage of the recent maturity/development of Qt, GTK+, or WineLib, so they'll use MainWin and/or Motif instead. And no, definitely don't expect any public comment on this soon (ESPECIALLY not at Cebit).
As for me, even if Office for Linux gets released I'd still pay good money for WordPerfect Suite for Linux. :-)
It only makes sense for them to port their binary-only stuff over - to discourage the development of a GPL alternative - or even legitimate competition from the smaller, innovative companies. Once the alternative is created, it IS possible to port the other way.
I can't wait to see how they 'improve' linux. GPFs? BSODs? A little flashlight searching for things? The REGISTRY? 'Smart Quotes?' Oh, you'll have to run it on at least a 300MHz processor with at least 64MB of RAM too.
You'll also have to install 'upgrades' for the standard libraries (binary-only natch - or else under some mutilated 'Open' license) - or these fine applications won't work.
Not worth it to exchange info in a proprietary format.
6. Office and IE on Linux will help MS to decommoditize HTML and other protocols.
Disagree here, too. Unlike Windoze, Office and IE won't and can't be the sole option under Linux, so MS can't leverage anything.
they aren't the sole options under windows, either. they're just the commercially dominant options, and they will probably become so on linux as well. a hell of a lot of IT people will sell linux standardization to their PHB's by agreeing to compromise: "If you, O PHB, agree to use an OS that isn't a complete piece of shit, I, your IT minion, will agree to provide you with the same piece of shit word processor that you've always used. I promise that you will not be afflicted with acceptable quality in all areas." The PHB will think it over and say, "Okay. I can tolerate competence in my OS as long as my applications are still rotten, unstable, and proprietary."
If, however, they try to replace files in
but that's just what they probably will do. why not?
Given the "progress" Office has made since Word 5.1, I doubt Office 2000 will be compelling enough that customers will be willing to throw away Linux to get it.
enough of their customers, partners etc. will "upgrade" [sic
i don't know anybody who "upgraded" to office 97 for any other reason than that. they didn't want to spend the money, they expected it to be less stable with no worthwhile new features -- and they were right. but they bought it anyway because they had to deal with office 97 files from customers and whatnot. pretty horrible, IMHO, but that's what happened once, and will probably happen again. when MS maintained file format compatibility between word 6 and word 95, a lot of people didn't bother "upgrading". they were happy with what they had, so if they weren't forced to "upgrade", they didn't. MS learned a valuable lesson from that, and they will never let it happen again.
they may even introduce a few arbitrary file format incompatibilities between linux office and windows office. that would be a real coup.
Think about this scenerio:
:)
Even if MS modifies the kernel and Linus doesn't like the modification? what can they do?
Issue a patch for every 2.0.x or 2.2.x or 2.3.x or any of Alan Cox's patches??
They can't do nasty things either cause:
1. Linux community (most of them) = technical experts, so they can find all the secret nasty stuff in a day or 2.
2. There are many reporters who read slashdot.org and would be happy to publish any nasty stuff MS did. It's the Internet age...
hetz@dream.co.il
Hetz (Heunique)
Well, I'm sure there are plenty of people that will jump at the chance to have Office on their Linux boxes. I'm not personally a fan of the program, but a lot of people like it. Offices (oops, sorry 'bout the pun) certainly need this if they want to move over to Linux and still be able to read all documents made by those programs..
Of course, my greatest fear with all of this is the possibility that Microsoft will hamper the performance of the software (I hear they did that with Office for Mac), and try to blame the OS for the problems..
Hopefully, that won't happen -- but you never know with Billy G. 'n' the Gang.
... so any "GPL MSFC" project would get a hell of a lot more skilled developers working day and night to bring it down.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Ms Office for Linux expects(expected)
The rumors circulate already longer, but now there are concrete indications for the first time: Microsoft portiert(porting) its popular Office package on Linux. c't experienced from well informed source that in talking moon a separate department for the project had been formed. According to the information Microsoft set 37 developers on the Portierung(porting).
It is expected that Microsoft announces the Portierung(porting) still during the CeBIT and calls a date for the completion. The software giant is far in the hintertreffen(?) guessed/advised in the Linux Applikationsmarkt(applications market); Office products of other manufacturers are long available. Those Hamburg star division makes its star available Office for the non-commercial application even free of charge. Whether Microsoft can struggle through itself to a similar selling concept, remains being waiting still.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
After seeing that their preconceptions about how stable computers can be are wrong (after observing stability of non-MS apps on linux), they won't go back.
At least, not all of them.
Posted by Open Matrix:
I got the drift from the babelfish but this makes it much more understandable.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
Have you ever heard of the GPL? Or Linus Torvalds?
Look into it and your fears will be allayed.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
So what if they recreate WINE? How does that "destroy Linux"?
Posted by timmymagic:
Early 2000 - Microsoft releases MSLinux (TM) 1.0, retailing at 100USD. MSLinux includes a window system that runs as a kernel module and emulates the Win98 UI. The window system completely replaces X and is started at boot time (no console-only mode). MSLinux also includes a set of copyrighted libraries that implement the Win32 API and DirectX. These libraries require the use of the MS window system and store configuration options in a system registry. MS software for Linux (including Office) only runs on MSLinux. Microsoft launches a developer program to encourage companies to port Windows apps to MSLinux using these libraries. Large numbers of developers, including many game companies, sign up. A similar developer program is launched to encourage hardware companies to write MSLinux drivers for their products. Visual C++ for Linux application wizards and tutorials produce programs that require MSLinux. Microsoft press releases emphasise how MSLinux is far more suited for businesses and home users than other Linux distros. They also inist that the proprietary window system and libraries are essential to make Linux 'fun' and easy to use. Sections of the non-computing media hail MSLinux as 'Linux for the people'.
Early 2001 - 70% of mass-market consumer software and 90% of games for Linux require MSLinux. Most hardware products include MSLinux drivers.
Late 2001 - 95% of Linux distros installed on home machines are MSLinux. Non-computing media frequently refers to Linux when they mean MSLinux.
Where do you want Linux to go today?
-------------------------------
Sorry if I've got any technical stuff wrong, I don't know that much about it (Could you implement a GUI as a kernel module?).
Posted by timmymagic:
Eccles wrote:
> Look, almost no one who uses Linux now would
> use it. We've chosen Linux for its power,
> reliability, etc. -- not for a Windows
> interface. Current users aren't going to
> switch.
Too right.
But imagine this: Microsoft decides to switch its entire OS development to MSLinux. Why? Because they get a stable Window98/NT with only a fraction of the development costs. Think of the money they can make off that... Once the apps are on MSLinux there's no need for 98/NT, and they get to effectively merge them, just like they've tried to but failed, for free.
Now imagine that Microsoft 'encourages' computer sellers to bundle MSLinux instead of Win98. Assuming they can manage it, which is by no means sure cos the sellers won't like it, then they've got the home market by the balls. There's no need for people to actually switch from Windows to MSLinux - it's forced on them.
Home market share 2004:
MSLinux 85%
Win98/95/3.1 10%
Linux 3%
Other 2%
As far as I can see, the only difficult bits are getting the apps and, more importantly IMO, the games, ported, and persuading people to bundle MSLinux instead of Win98. If they conquer these problems, they've won.
Where do you want MSLinux to go today?
Posted by bumr:
The really sad thing, though, is that we accept the fact that the applications we use to view a simple html page would actual take more than a meg of memory. They're web BROWSERS... its not that complicated.
Our browser choice is either bloatware or something that crashes every 5 minutes. As a consumer I'm nonplussed, as a developer I'm ashamed.
Sorry... the complaint that one browser sucks an extra 6 megs when both are WAY to heavy for healthy was too annoying to pass by. I don't necessarily mind 20+ megs.. I just want some value for the consumption. The current feature set in both browsers is pretty lame for that kind of consumption.
Posted by NBrazil:
Inaccurate. Early on Microsoft had a demo for what was called MS Write. What a lot of people don't know is that the ST was originally going to be a Windows (long before any version had shipped on the PC) system. It was a bid to make a Mac that was truly 'for the rest of us' in pricing. Redmond was already getting frustrated with Apple's inability to appreciate the mass market where application developers would have a field day. After it became apparent that Windows wasn't going to materialize in time for Atari's needs they went over to Digital Research for GEM running over CP/M 68K. The early demo of MS Write was a standalone bit of code written entirely to the metal since there was no OS yet. People remembered that demo though, and never stopped asking MS for the real thing, ignoring the fact the most of the WYSIWYG elements of GEM on the ST were still unimplemented. The users were desparate for recognition from a 'serious' brand name. (Sound familiar?) MS eventually delivered MS Write but by that time the platform was in serious decline in most markets with piracy driving away developer interest and stopping those who had already tested the water from offering new versions i.e. Word Perfect.
Ain't gonna happen.
Look, almost no one who uses Linux now would use it. We've chosen Linux for its power, reliability, etc. -- not for a Windows interface. Current users aren't going to switch.
Developers aren't going to be too keen to rewrite their apps to be locked in to a Windows solution. Right now, we develop for Windows because that's where the users are. I don't see 250 million people switching over en masse, do you?
So we're left with current Windows users, who are offered a switch that gains them a more stable kernel, but not much else. And they presumably have to shell out for all-new applications, deal with the fact that no one will bother writing drivers for older peripherals, and deal with what will be a buggy interface for quite a while. Microsoft is having trouble extending their own stuff -- yet you expect them to rewrite Visual for Linux and rewrite their GUI to work on Linux? I don't think so...
Relax, Linux -- pure Linux -- is winning.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
No mention of special tools for doing the porting though.
If MS does the port, so what? Some people might look at it and say, yeah cool, Office for Linux! and try it out. Most people with a clue will run in the opposite direction, fast. The more I read about MS "products" the more I shake my head and wonder wtf I'm doing in this business.
In any case, MS most assuredly has ulterior motives behind this move, if it is indeed true.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
So, It would be MS GPL Linux 2.2.7. Big hairy deal. A simple UNIX utility called "diff" will tell you exactly what changes MS made, and a good developer will probably be able to guess why. Then the changes can be merged right back in, or flatly ignored.
Nope. Until Windows was bundled with PC's it was pretty much a flop market-wise. Go and read the really old Byte back issues.
When Babblefish first came out it was nearly impossible to read the translation anyway.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
Here's the problem. What if they decide to change the way a system call works? Yes, you can do a diff, but that's not the whole story. They may make incompatible changes.
Suppose it's November of 2000, and Microsoft produces their incompatible version of the kernel (and yes, of course they have to make the source available -- that's not the concern). Now, Corel, say, or Caldera, or whoever, has a problem. Most of their users have deployed Linux in production systems, and are happily using MS Office. Corel must make a decision. Do they package the "Torvalds" kernel in their next distro, or do they use the "MS" kernel, so that their users can use the new version of Office?
[Yes, you could take the "Torvalds" kernel, and apply a diff to get the "MS" kernel, but then you have the "MS" kernel ].
Let's say Corel, etc. go with the "MS" kernel. This is the thin edge of the wedge. These two kernels will begin to diverge. This is the "fork" that frightens me.
With the next release of Office, though, MS explains that in order to implement certain features, they had to make some modifications to the Linux kernel. So, if you want to use Office 2000, you need to install Microsoft Linux 2.2.7.
They're obligated to release their modified version under the GNU GPL, of course, but what this does is effectively fork the code tree. This would be a Bad Thing.
Granted, it's just a paranoid scenerio, but after reading the Halloween memos, it seems like the kind of thing they might try.
I'm sure Steve Jobs thinks he's won because MS made Office98 for Mac.
Come the year 2010 when the latest version of office for mac is still Office98, he'll have to re-assess that thought.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Wealth nothing. Freedom. I cringe at using Bill Gates' OS or productivity applications, but I have no qualms about driving a car with a license plate he made bolted to my back bumper. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Word is by far THE most expensive word processor for the Macintosh, (by like 4 times). Office98 is bloated and buggy compared to Apple Works (Claris Works renamed), and Office98 does not come with a database (Access). Office98 installs a whole buttload of system extensions and libraries which you'll spend days on troubleshooting system conflicts.
Apple Works seems to work just fine on it's own. Apple Works comes free (bundled) on an iMac.
Apple Works does have a Windows version (tho I've never seen it - i don't know if that's any good).
I would MUCH rather see a Linux version of Apple Works than MS Office.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Personally I live by a cross of Moore's Law and PT Barnum's Axiom:
"The number of suckers born every minute will double approximately every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Ah. If only Babelfish could translate Office95 documents in to Office97 format.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Why do you think W2K is so late?
All the W2K developers have been pulled off the project, because Bill knows he's going to lose Antitrust, so OS hegemony is a waste of time - but file-format (.doc, MSJava, AVI) and API (MFC, CaptiveX, etc) are still viable strategies to keep the stranglehold on the computer industry.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
You can get the file format of Word 8.0, Excel 8.0 and friends from developper.microsoft.com after registration, unfortunately these format make heavy use of OLE 2.0 so implementing them is not a piece of cake...
Microsoft officially apologize for the way it destroy the computing platform with ugly platforms like Windows 95(tm), Windows 98(tm) and Windows NT(tm). Microsoft have decided to concentrate it's efforts on a new platform called Linux. This was due to the fact that the 2 Windows code base (Windows 9x and NT) where in an almost useless and unmaintanable state.
Microsfot is sorry for the problems caused all these years.
Smile! 8-)
There's something wrong with your statement: Office is not (and never was) available for OS/2. So if MS is going to use Office to draw users away from Linux in the same way as from OS/2, they would not need to port it to Linux in the first place - that according to your statement.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
asinus sum et eo superbio
asinus sum et eo superbio
in omnibus veritas
This translation seems to be accurate. It fixes many of the grammatical errors in the earlier the earlier version.
Well, I'm not a fan of the program either, but this is pretty much the one single most app I want to see on Linux. I switched to Linux exclusively on my work pc about a year ago, and the biggest headache I've had is interchange of documents with other people in the office. I'm using Applixware right now, and it's all right, but it's not exactly stellar in my opinion. For the longest time, I couldn't find ANY linux program that could handle the '97 formats, and I had to ask people to convert documents for me all the time. Now at least I can read them, but I still can only write to the '95 format. Office is ok, but the biggest issue is not how good of a program it is, but whether or not you can use it to communicate with everybody else in the office. A free software word processor and spreadsheet are great things, but will never be used by me until they can read/write the formats that everybody I have to work with use, because 95% of what I do with these programs is read documents people send me, not write my own documents. In this one area, free (speech not beer) matters a great deal less to me than compatibility.
Shawn Asmussen
I think it is about options. How many times have we heard someone say something like, "yeah I do almost everything in Linux now, except for the occasional reboot into Windows to use M$ Word, because my boss/company makes me use it." This sort of comment is always followed up with something like, "well did you know that you can write Word 97 format with StarOffice?" Or, "Why don't you tell them to save their documents in RTF." etc... If M$ does this, people who find themselves in this situation, will have another choice. I don't doubt that M$ is doing this for their own self-serving reasons, but choice is still good. Even if using M$ office for Linux is a bad option, at least we have the option to use it, or not.
Ole decoding tools for linux are available, information of getting the formats, and the ole tools, and a work in progress converter for converting msword 8 format documents into html can all be found at my mswordview page, or its mirror on gnu.org
Lend a hand, less talk more code
C.
I sometimes write stuff
I'd rather see IE for Linux than Office. It'd inject some competition into the browser market on Linux (which is virtually a one-horse race).
Unlike on Windows, on Linux Microsoft cannot count on getting ownership of the market as a fait accompli. MS Office for Linux will probably sell to corporate markets standardised on Office. Other than that, Corel, Applix and others have a fighting chance among those not committed to the One Microsoft Way, especially if their product is more reliable.
If Office comes out on Linux, and is marketed inexpensively at non-enterprise markets, it will provide the others with a bit of healthy competition in a fair arena.
Seems that to support Office in all it's glorious proprietary-ness, a special MS Linux will be required.
:-)
Then when Office "breaks" in "non-standard" Linuxes, MS can show that it's Linux is the one true Linux. No doubt the objective trade rags will proclaim the one true Linux, the superior of Linuxes, with it's "standard" Linux GUI (as seen in win9x). and OLE-X compliance. and because of the lack of stability and standards in the non-true-linuxes, of course IE6 only works on MSLinux.....
....after they fail on their first in-house distro attempt, who they gonna buy/assimilate as to get it right? maybe a slashdot poll can be done to find out gets to be "it"??
cranford$ file bin/iexplorer
bin/iexplorer: Bourne shell script text
cranford$ tail -8l bin/iexplorer
executable=${MSFT_HOME}/progs/${OSdir}/startup
if [ -x $executable ]
then
exec $executable $target $@
fi
echo "Support for $OSname $OSrev has not been installed on this system." >&2
cranford$ file progs/sunos5/startup
progs/sunos5/startup: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, SPARC, version 1, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped
cranford$ size progs/sunos5/startup
23004 + 1546 + 18432 = 42982
cranford$ ldd progs/sunos5/startup
libX11.so.4 =>
libc.so.1 =>
libXext.so.0 =>
libsocket.so.1 =>
libnsl.so.1 =>
libdl.so.1 =>
libmp.so.2 =>
Not statically linked, and not very big. There is also a big pile of .so files with names that look suspiciously like those of Win32 DLLs but with .dll replaced by .so; those might be loaded at run time with dlopen().
...but, yes, if Microsoft ports Office to any UNIX-flavored OS, I suspect they'll use MainWin (that being what they used to port IE).
Yes, and, if I remember correctly, HP-UX as well.
MainWin, from Mainsoft; Mainsoft's home page mentions that it was used for the IE 5.0 port, and an older press release mentions that it was used for IE 4.0 as well (that used to be what Mainsoft's home page mentioned, before 5.0 came out).
Another possible interepretation is that they're repeating their usual tactic of preemptive vaporware -- via the rumormill -- announcing a Linux office suite to keep other makers of office software out of the Linux market out of fear of competing against M$. Different OS, same tactic they've employed many times. Whether they actually deliver Office is immaterial in that aspect.
That's not my actual opinion, but a possible one. My actual opinion is that, like any good company with money and resources to burn, they're simply hedging their bets -- Linux without Office that gained a significant desktop market share (as Corel &c are looking into) would be a bigger desktop threat than Linux with Office -- recall how Office allowed M$ to strongarm Apple a few times. They'll have a tough time strongarming the Linux community, but they'd still be in a better position generally, as a precaution should Linux gain a monetarily significant fraction of the desktop market.
Precaution, IOW, being the operative word. They can afford 37 programmers "in case," and they gain preemptive-vapor and potential-foothold benefits merely from the rumor. :)
(still not having decided whether I'd buy it or not, if it made it to the shelves)
the writing is on the wall....
1. ms linux distro
2. mswm
3. ms office for linux
all of a sudden linux becomes more notorious than windows nt for instability, bloatware, poor performance, incompatibilty --- thanks to microsoft...
I guess it doesn't really matter as long as there are real linux distributions out there like debian and redhat.
"Of all the treasures a State can possess, the human lives of its citizens are for us the most precious." --- Joseph S
Uhm. You'll note that the GPL requires them to release any changes they make to the kernel. So, MS Linux won't be. . .
** Martin
I recall reading an interview with Linus where he said "If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won." I just wish that I could find it. If anyone does, tell me. I wanna keep a link to that around.
** Martin
Microsoft using XML announcement is FUD, just like the declarations of ActiveX becoming an "open standard" (remember THAT one, last year?).
If Microsoft documents their file formats using XML, but XML is merely wapper glue between OLE objects, that's not "XML format" to me.
Although, the average reporter at c|net or ZDNet will not catch the distinction (not all of them are like this, but they do seem to have a difficult time attracting and retaining real "techies" who know how to write).
Don't discount Microsoft's "efforts". They can affort to make a LOT of costly mistakes because they have a lock on the OS market and Office applications.
Microsoft could EASILY sell Office below cost, at $0.00, with the intention of raising prices later (or maybe make it "part of the OS" for their OWN Linux distro) [shudder].
And my definition of FUD includes strategic vaporware, since this is a well-used tactic by Microsoft. "Want to frighten a cutting-edge software company into giving you their patents?" Announce Hydra! Look up the MS vs. Citrix story -- these guys came up with thin clients which could get their own desktops on an NT server (really their own desktops... like the stuff found on most UNIXen).
Unfortunately, Citrix did not have a lot of capital and so paid their employees in stock options. When Microsoft announced they would build this technology into a version of NT, the Citrix employees revolted against management, since their "pay" became increasingly worthless as Citrix's valuation plummeted against the MS' threats. Eventually Citrix reached a deal where they divided the market with MS.
What's this have to do with MS Office for Linux? It could be FUD designed to scare away investors from those currently writing "office suites" for Linux. This is why we need open sourced office suites -- this is too important a communications mode to let some company whore us out at whim.
Hey, if they DO put out a version for Linux, enough people will get their product that they won't QUESTION why Microsoft does not publish their file formats.
:) if they just level the playing field. They STILL have the biggest wallet, but play on a level field. Until they do, I will cheer anyone who finds ways to hurt Microsoft.
Can you imagine if we had this format mess with other mediums of communication, like the telephone, or email?
I will retract MANY bad things I say about microsoft (but not all..
The problem is if Microsoft collapses HARD, like say how Apple collapsed between 1995 and early 98, Microsoft will take down all the other stocks with them.
And Microsoft crashing that hard IS possible. Just keep supporting open/free software, and make animal sacrifices for the excellent work being done for WINE. It'll fall into place, and then the only thing remaining is CLEANING UP Linux and making it "user friendly" (no, not killing or hiding the shell as the press sometimes opines, I mean updating obsolete man and info pages, application interoperability, and KDE merging with Gnome).
I just love machine translations!
Dog is my co-pilot.
Apple has always been dependent on Microsoft for applications. Bill Gates supported the Mac strongly when it was launched. Linux has got where it is now without any support from Microsoft, and it has proved that it is useful with or without MS applications.
MS Office for Linux expected
Rumors have been flying around lately, but now
there seems concrete evidence for the first time:
Microsoft will port its popular Office to Linux.
C't learned from well-informed sources that a
division has been built in Redmond especially for
this project. According to this information,
Microsoft has committed 37 developers to the port.
It's expected that Microsoft will announce the
port during CeBIT and will target a release date.
The software giant has been left behind in the
Linux application market; office products from
other vendors have been available for quite some
time.
Star Division from Hamburg, Germany offers its
Star Office free for non-commercial use.
Wheter Microsoft will choose a similar
distribution policy remains to be seen.
However, its common business practise for the
Windows company to offer applications for
competitors' operating systems: Office for MacOS
made a lot of money for the company.
(cp/c't)
Customer lock-in is only half of the story. The other half is developer lock-in. Anyone who has written Win32 applications will attest to the fact that any non-trivial Win32 application is not portable to a UNIX. Win32 actually discourages the use on ANSI C standard library calls. Win32 greatly encourages a Win32-specific program architectures centered around callback functions with particular prototypes. Take daemons (called "services" in NT), for example. WinNT services must have a callback entry point ( know as ServiceMain(), but may be alled anything) and a callback status handler. How many UNIX deamons have these functions?
Nope, we're not going to see MS Office. Microsoft would have to develop some kind of Win32-for-Linux libaray, IHMO, which would allow every other Win32 app to run on Linux. It would be the mother of all WABIs and WINEs. It would free other ISVs from being locked-in to Windows, and diminish the business case for Windows.
I guarrantee it will be hideously ugly, slow and crash happy. Much worse than the windows version. Look at the software that big commercial companies port over to unix - acrobat, word perfect, etc. They all use crappy motif instead of gtk. Everything is ugly, washed out and deformed. They always do such a half assed job.
I'd like to have some of those programs but it's as if all these commercial companies are still stuck in 1990 or something WRT unix development. These folks are so out of touch. Don't they know about gnome and kde?
support gun control: take guns from cops
These software houses are always whining about piracy and how much money they "lose" because of it. Ridiculous. They depend on it for market share.
What we really need to do (all of us who are admins) is relentlessly hunt down illegally copied software in our workplaces and keep everyone in rigid compliance. I know for one if I were to do that at my workplace, I would meet overwhelming opposition. My "IT" co-workers (read:warez-losers) are the biggest problem! My guess is that 99% of all companies are depending on a hell of a lot of warez every day. Tracking all this shit down and stopping it would hurt proprietary software houses more than any "piracy" would. This would be incredibly painful for everyone. I know it would practically cripple the company I work for.
support gun control: take guns from cops
... They will have to compete on the merits of their application, and not through bundling or anything else, hooks in the operating system, etc.
As long as Linux remains a level playing field, I don't care if MS writes Office for Linux.
If however, they try to subvert Linux somehow by doing this, things could get very nasty indeed.
It's not the fact that we have to pay for it that bothers us. If you've even bothered to read any of the posts, we're just kind of skeptical.
Microsoft isn't well known for fair play.
There have been rumours for quite some time, but now for the first time there is concrete evidence: Microsoft is porting its popular Office Software to Linux. c't (German computer magazine) found out from a reliable source that a separate department in Redmond has been built for this project. According to the information, Microsoft has assigned 37 developers to the porting (project).
Microsoft is expected to announce the porting during the CeBit (computer fair in Hannover, Germany) and announce a date for when it will be ready. The software giant has fallen far behind in the Linux application market; The Office Products of other developers have long been available. Hamburg's Star Division has even made its Star Office freely available for non-commercial use. Whether Microsoft is willing to use a similar marketing concept, waits to be seen. In any case, it is normal business practice for the Windows Company to offer Application Software for competing operating systems. For many years, Microsoft has earned a lot of money for (MS) Office for the MacOS.
John Kacur
Nothin' wrong with that. It fits into my own pet theory, which is: If Bill thinks he can make money porting Office to Linux, he will do it. He has never demonstrated loyalty to anything other than making a buck.
Disagree. This would merely reinforce Microsoft's already legendary reputation for shoddy software and "promises" that never materialize. Linux can survive without Bill.
As long as they don't try and stick them in /lib or /usr/lib, they can go nuts with shared libraries. If, however, they try to replace files in /lib or /usr/lib, that's when I'll haul out the high-calibre ordnance.
Disagree here, too. Unlike Windoze, Office and IE won't and can't be the sole option under Linux, so MS can't leverage anything.
Given the "progress" Office has made since Word 5.1, I doubt Office 2000 will be compelling enough that customers will be willing to throw away Linux to get it.
Mmmm... Possible, but when MS discovers that O2K isn't pulling people over to W2K, they may discover they'll make more money porting O2K to Linux.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
What's in it for the Good Guys is that PHBs will start to wonder why they are forking over for licences (workstations, network) if Office runs on Linux.
Not that I myself would touch Office if I could help it, but some people like it.
But what's in it for Micros~1? Sure, they may sell copies of Office on another OS, but risk losing their lock on the desktop OS itself and many apps.
Bad News Indeed! What are their true motives? We have WordPerfect, the excellent StarOffice, and Applixware. Are they reaffirming everybody's dependence on Microsoft. This will pave the way for more commercial apps and may legitimize them but excuse me I am very paranoid of this. It may be the end of Linux as we know it. Thank God(and Patrick Volkering) for Slackware.
-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com
I know alot of people give StarOffice flak because it is a little slow and bloated....but how do you think Office would be?
I've only had star office die on me twice (I've been using it since 5.0 came out... I do 3 4-7page lab write ups each week) and both times it said "An unrecoverable error has occured. Your work has been saved, and will be reloaded when the program restarts."
Uh...and wouldn't you know it, both times I loaded the files without problems!
Now, I'd like to see Microsoft's Office do it.
In the line of what another poster said, if they port Office to Linux, I wonder what excuse people will have to not use linux.
---
Interesting for business people. I myself won't buy it. Porting this package won't make it less buggy.
.sig: SEGV
This is something that bugs me. One really neat aspect of using Linux is the plethora of choices available in terms of interface. I mean, with Windows all you get is command.com and Explorer. Big deal. With Linux I can run bash, csh, ksh, GNUstep, KDE, et al. Heck, I can even roll my own if I feel like it. Personally, the fact that I didn't necessarily have to stare at a Win95 interface anymore was the first thing that attracted me to Linux. I never saw the real point in having a Win9x interface to Linux. But, to each his own I guess.
Furthermore, MS might not even make changes to the kernel. They'll just release a bunch of proprietary (and coincidentally, brain-damaged) libraries. They'll also probably make sure their Office binary is stuffed with a bunch of nops. I believe they did something like this with the Mac version of Office also.
This is true. But given Microsoft's extremely shrewd comprehension of the business, I'd say it's likely that they are at least looking at it.
2. If they want on Linux, where's IE for Linux?
Well, IE is free (as in beer). They certainly wouldn't make any money from it. They could stand to make a lot of money from Office for Linux. Also, they have the chance to wreck a lot more machines with Office than they do with IE. More demand.
3. Why would they release a major cash cow on UNIX after all the anti-UNIX rhetoric they've engaged in?
Microsoft has the same marketing savvy as President Clinton and his handlers. They can swear up one side and down the other that something is a Bad Thing and then suddenly do a flip-flop and say it's the greatest thing since sliced bread; and very few people will notice or care.
4. What about all the other versions of UNIX? I'd think they'd all line up like a bunch of cats looking for milk.
They probably will. But I don't think MS cares. Linux is a lot more "popular" than other Unices. I mean, quite a few non-technical people have heard of Linux; how many of those same people have heard of HP-UX or IRIX?
To be honest, I'll believe this when I see the announcement from Microsoft.
Of course. I mean, this isn't a done deal or anything.
This was recently posted to aus.tv:
I run both Netscape4 and Explorer4 on a Sunbox here, and we have contests to see which uses the most memory. At the moment, Explorer wins. When asked to show an *EMPTY* *FUCKING* *PAGE*, Netscape used a paltry 24 megabytes of memory, compared to Explorers 30 megs.
The funny thing is, half-an-hour later (after coming back from lunch), Explorer was using 36 megabytes. That's right, folks. It took an extra 6 megabytes to sit around and do *NOTHING* for thirty minutes.
I miss Meept.
You wanted a *programmable* editor?
:-)
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Theories so far:
1. MS wants to make money on the ported Office, plain and simple.
2. MS can't sabotage Linux unless they first get a foot in the door with a Linux app.
3. A flaky port of Office would hurt the credibility of Linux.
4. A promised port of Office that never emerges would hurt the credibility of Linux.
5. MS Office will require proprietary MS libs, allowing MS to gradually take over or corrupt Linux.
6. Office and IE on Linux will help MS to decommoditize HTML and other protocols.
To these we now add the following:
7. Office on Linux is just a lost leader, with the upgrade to Office 2000 requiring a corresponding "upgrade" to Windows 2000 (your theory).
Finally, I would add the following variation:
8. Office on Linux is a desparation ploy, to keep users from migrating away from MS Office (due to Y2K), while MS finishes Windows 2000.
This last theory is interesting. Office 97, Win95, and NT are not Y2K-ready. Windows 2000 will not be ready in time for Y2K. Office beta-2000 may be Y2K-ready, but there is no MS platform to support it. If customers migrate to Linux to solve their Y2K problems, they will also migrate to other office apps, making it nearly impossible for MS to get them back. The only way out of this is to port MS Office (beta-2000) to Linux in order to keep Office users in a holding pattern until W2K plus O2K are ready. It's their only chance.
Of course, there's always all-of-the-above.
You're forgetting something. Wiping Microsoft off the face of the earth, as enjoyable, and as beneficial for mankind as that might be, is not the primary goal of Linux. It is, at best, a side benefit, and it's likelihood is questionable.
:^). MS might win or lose in marketshare, and in court.
:^).
Remember--the primary goal is to have a great O/S (plus apps). All that is required for this is a critical mass of users who are dedicated to Linux and open standards.
If MS created their own proprietary version of Linux, then it's true that many, if not most businesses would support it. If MS violated the GPL, the lawsuits would fly (class-action suit--all Linux users please donate $1
In the end, though, none of it would matter. The market would be split between MS Linux (Win 2001) supported by a single vendor, and Standard Linux, supported by many vendors, IBM, Oracle, etc. If you don't think that a critical mass of support would survive for Standard Linux, just look at the Debian crowd
If you'd say that Bill Gates needs to be expropriated (in a legal process) of a good portion of his wealth that was acqired with gross violations of the business law spirit and letter - I would agree.
But I can not deny anybody, or any corporation the right to release an application for Linux platform. As long as he does not control the platform, and with GNU GPL license on Linux that is not possible without further violations of the law, which is not a problem for Bill Gates, but we can assume a lot of fun legal action in that case.
Vassili Leonov
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wow, talk about not understanding Microsoft.
If Microsoft decides to modify the Linux kernel, they will modify the Linux kernel and that will be the end of it.
They won't move their Office suite to any new kernel revisions except their own. Period.
-- I avoid spam by accepting only OpenPGP encrypted or signed email at this address. Clear-signed, RFC2015, heck, even
There was a joke in a movie a while back about Americans failing English classes, and it's our mother tongue.
BTW, "practise" is a British spelling, so that might not have been an error by the translator.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
On those occasions when their servers haven't crashed, Microsoft's Web site says that all of the listed products are fully compliant if you install all necessary patches. Maybe "fully compliant" means "they won't crash measurably more often just because it's y2k," but you can't predict a mass Y2K exodus away from MS Office on the strength of that.
IE is a hairball, but if you were running CDE, then it's probably not entirely fair to blame IE. The mwm Solaris runs, even though mwm SET the standards for so many window manager, is horrible about desynchronizing events, meaning that it will lock up when code behind many GUI events locks up. Not even windows displays that kind of behavior.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
It's a KDE-programming communist nazi first-poster beowulf cluster of a proprietary microsoft FUD troller.
Wonder what the moderation on THAT will look like
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
yeah well they boil their meat and drive on the wrong side of the road too so PTHPTHPTHPTH.... :)
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
When Windows gets multiple desktops, a stickpin widget (for those desktops), windowshade as a standard feature, and a panel, and lets me reorder the window decorations, lemme know. Then there's themability, though I hear there's themers for windows that are pretty good now. I always found the relief look of the widgets looked more like OS/2 than anything else.
Though windows does do one thing very much right: tap the alt-key, and you go into menu mode (stolen outright from wordperfect mind you) where you navigate with the arrow keys. I really really like that little touch.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Konquerer is the user-agent name of kfm. As for it beating Mozilla, the scuttlebutt I've been hearing is that it's the other way around, that it will itself use Mozilla. Certainly TT has shown interest in wrapping browsers in Qt, so they may even do it themselves instead of leaving it to the KDE project. And I didn't even know kfm did javascript. Pretty groovy. Still feels a little sparse for a browser (I use the link icon and toolbar folders a lot in netscape for example)
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Besides, XML as file format still requires some implementation of your transformations (which should be XSL or CSS, sure). If <hangingindent> points to the "hanging indent formatter object", fine by me, it's still human-readable and writeable.
Of course MS doesn't grasp the concept of using readable names and relies on GUID's instead, so you'll probably see tags peppered with GUID's like the OBJECT tag they use for ActiveX controls currently is. The white paper on Windows Scripting Host is great for a laugh:
This is the state of the art from MS? File extensions? ProgID's? Funny, I have no problem remembering a symbolic ProgID like, oh, #!/usr/bin/perl. And MS is trying to play in the unix ballpark? Microsoft is gonna learn a very hard lesson very soon.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
In fact, you're exactly correct. They used Mainwin or somesuch Windows API emulation layer to do the port, just like they'll do in the Office port (if it really happens. 90% of the installation is basically a virtual windows machine with all the support libraries, fonts, registry crap, etc.
"Talking Moon" as translation for Redmond... I like it! Appropriate, too, seeing as how Microsoft talks out of its ass so often! ;)
This is a danger of using non-free applications on a free OS. I used to think RMS was a crackpot, but maybe his anti-"open source" stance saw this coming.
All this vendor interest in Linux is probably a bad thing. Big companies (MS being only one of them) have many reasons to fork Linux if and when they can.
Heh...
Hah....
Hmmmph...
1. It's only a rumor.
2. If they want on Linux, where's IE for Linux?
3. Why would they release a major cash cow on UNIX after all the anti-UNIX rhetoric they've engaged in?
4. What about all the other versions of UNIX? I'd think they'd all line up like a bunch of cats looking for milk.
To be honest, I'll believe this when I see the announcement from Microsoft.
--------------Rev. C.C.Chips---------------- For the real truth, visit
Yeah---and I remember it was quite a cat-fight, too. Atari wanted Microsoft with them, Microsoft Windows wasn't ready, they went with DR, then Microsoft essentially said "OK screw you!" Then Apple threatened to sue DR, which put a real kink into the Atari marketing pipe...
--------------Rev. C.C.Chips---------------- For the real truth, visit
> and if MS violates the GPL, who will sue them?
> who can afford to stay in court with them for
> years?
Anyone.
Think damages.
Think contingency fees.
99 times out of 100, the rapaciousness of the legal profession is only horrifying. But in this case, it would do some good. I don't doubt that an enterprising law firm would leap at the chance.
D
----
I've been fooling around with GTK thanks to the most excellent book 'Developing Linux Applications' by Eric Harlow (see my review at amazon.com).
...) to get most of the needed functionality. But it was several hundred lines of impossible to read code, cranked out by some kind of Wizard.
I remember when I last tried C++ on Windows. I had an application I needed to write; it wasn't very complex, because I could just use Internet Explorer (yes, I know, I know
I don't think Microsoft is going to beat the ease and elegance of GTK+ any time soon. I can write graphical applications that work and that don't require all sorts of confusing DLLs, and - most importantly - I understand every line of every program I write.
So far, I'm impressed. I think the temptation of the Microsoft libraries might be easier to resist than you might think. Haven't you lost code you were writing while using the MS development environments, because they crashed, or because you couldn't save your stuff (!)? I have. I haven't lost one byte of anything I've written in EMACS.
The dark side isn't so tempting when you have choice.
D
----
What's even worse is that the programming lanugage changes radically for every version of Office.
I've written a commercial application that was written in VB. We decided to make Word our word processor using what was, at that time, WordBasic. Of course shortly after we started, WordBasic changed. At that time it was possible to put in a whole ton of conditionals that allowed me to say "MailMerge" or "ToolsMailMerge" depending on which version was being used. When WordBasic changed to VBA, we had to rewrite everything once again.
It was a big pain, but it definitely forced our user base to migrate to Office97, since our code would have otherwise become unmaintainable.
If that was a deliberate effort to make people miserable, it couldn't have worked better.
On the other hand, I will admit that I like many things about the design of VBA. Programming your word processor does have many advantages few users will ever see. One of the few things MS has done that deserves praise.
D
----
Ok, rather sketchy memory, but I recall reading a number of months ago that MS did a port of IE to (I believe) Solaris, using a third party tool that emulated the Win API. Haven't seen anything on it recently, and I don't even recall exactly where it was I read it (although I am reasonably it was an article here).
So, I see it as entirely reasonable that an MS port of IE is in the medium-near future... scary as that might be.
Lets see... they (MS) forks the code and uses its marketing steamroller to flood the masses that the MS Kernal is one-true-kernal...
1. Linux community (most of them) = technical experts, so they can find all the secret nasty stuff in a day or 2.
You forget... MS does NOT market to the technical crowd. MS is interested in desktop/market share. Thats means corporate and Mom-n-Pop. As stated many many times, Mom and Pop don't want to or care to compile their kernal.
2. There are many reporters who read slashdot.org and would be happy to publish any nasty stuff MS did
And the overall effect of this is... ?
The majority of the negative press is in technical journals and on technical websites. Again, Mom and Pop don't read /. (can't imagine why). They watch the nightly news and some sitcoms on the telly.. where MS advertising rules, not /. articles.
Just remember, just because we're paranoid doesn't mean that MS isn't out to get us. Now is a perfect time for MS to cause a code fork. This could be devasting to the movement.
You are assuming that most of the people installing word processors under Linux would have a clue. Right now that's probably the case, but if Linux ever becomes mainstream, it won't be.
Business decisions seem to be based on either whim or on "industry standard", and the "industry standard" for document exchange seems to be Microsoft Word, however ugly that may be. So, unless you are looking at companies that are unusually receptive to reasonable requests made by the programmers, Word is what will get installed in the majority of locations, IMO.
The home market is respectable, but the business market is where Microsoft makes most of its money if I understand correctly. Business licenses for Office are expensive.
I remember reading a quote a couple of months ago (though I can't remember who or where) stating that evidence that Linux was a marginal product was that Microsoft wasn't writing any applications for it. I guess the point was that MS smells a market like a shark smells blood. Apparently there is blood in the water now.
You should get out of your geek shell once in a while -- normal people need some training (friend, book, class) to learn *any* application.
It's amazing how many secretary's press Enter at the end of each line, instead of each paragraph. Something $10 in training costs could solve, if someone would have bothered spending it. You don't think that the same mistake could be made in KOffice, AbiWord, or WordPerfect?
Besides your argument is "Someone needs training for MS, therefore Linux is easy!!!" which is just retarded on the face of it.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Further software support will draw users to a more robust stable environment.... however MS can start with good support then slowly draw it back to their home ground causing some users who were using Linux to migrate to Windows.... however I think that few would do that.
What I think would happen if that was tried is the sheeple would migrate to Linux and as MS support for linux floundered would migrate back to MS... while the users who see the power and stability of Linux but were never introduced to it before due to lack of software support would stay with Linux and find another office solution.
Personally I have MS on my machine for one reason and one reason only - GAMES. And as more and more games get ported, I dedicate less and less HD to MS Crap and more and more to Linux!
MS won't support Linux unless they are really getting desperate.... so maybe they are gonna....
Zanthor
c't experienced from well informed source that in talking moon . .
Man, that's nice. Lovely.
Those Hamburg star division makes its star available Office for the non-commercial application even free of charge. Whether Microsoft can struggle through itself to a similar selling concept, remains being waiting still.
I betcha it'll be free [beer] on the same terms. MS can afford to do it, and they'll want to own this market quickly.
It's depressing, though. Only a few weeks ago I was confidently predicting that MS would be too arrogant to sell Linux software, thereby giving others a shot at that market. No such luck. Stupid Borland hasn't even announced plans to port Delphi yet. They'll be beaten to market by VB on a new platform -- a platform they could have owned if they'd had some sense. That class library is abstract enough to make it very, very damn nearly possible to write source-portable RAD GUI programs in a real language. Of course, if there's one company on earth more arrogant, unresponsive, and fucked up than MS, it's Borland. They just have this annoying habit of releasing enough good products to keep our hopes up. Thank god, thank god for gcc.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
> The GPL protects Linux in that if Microsoft makes changes to anything licensed under the GPL, they have
> to release the source code of their changes.
Correct - but that doesn't answer the question: *will* the Linux community accept patches to the kernel from MS when those patches are offered in order to "improve" Linux so that it will run MS apps better (or at all?)
For example, if MS offers a patch that adds Win32-like registry support to the kernel. They've made the source available, it's under the GPL, and hell! - you can download the latest version direct from the MSLinux DevTeam CVS repository, if you want it...
...and *all* MSLinux products *require* that this patch be installed in the OS, otherwise they can't run, period.
Lather, rinse, repeat with MS patches for networking support, filesystems, etc., each of which is *required* for closed-source MS apps to work at all. They'd be giving away the source, all right - and slooooowly forcing people who want to use MSLinux products to use *their* version of the OS.
And when 51% of the kernel is source contributd by MS, how long do you think it will take MS to find a way to claim ownership? Even if they *can't* claim that, legally... what's to keep them from doing so anyways, over and over again in various different ways, and dragging out a lengthy court case that ends with "Whoops! Sorry! We must have misunderstood the GPL!"
Chances are, they wouldn't even end up paying damages - who would they pay, themselves (after all, *they* were the ones who released their code under the GPL), other developers, who? "Let's see, the judgement was for $100 million... and while we had the source tied up in legal battles, we were able to make over a billion off of it."
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
I had to laugh out loud while reading the babelfish version. An amazing technology, for sure, but translation agents have a ways to go.
If there is a chance of MS making an Office port for Linux, then the people at Corel will try to finish their port earlier.
With an Excel port I could also get my dad to switch to Linux.
Now we will just need more games and support for SB Live
Or are we above playing on their level?
Adults are obsolete children. - Dr. Seuss
doesnt make sense, if he has ported apps to linux then that means billy means he has to support a platform that is not his own... and make his platform less of a requirement.
Linus is not wrong here.
Porting apps TO a os is not going to draw people AWAY from it.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
But, really?? How many people who actually buy a Microsoft Distro of Linux? ;-)
;-)
;-) he he
It's just wrooong... wroong... just wrooong.. it's just wroong..
Besides, how long before RedHat+Caldera+Suse+etc.. etc... would drag MS's butt right back into court if MS was the one making violations of the GPL?
Ouch
At best, I might expect in the face of Linux competition MS would simple add more "Unix like" API's to NT, and maybe even a binary compatibility layer for Linux apps.. And then use it's marketing might to say "It does everything Linux does.. PLUS what NT does.."
ps.. that would be crash right?
In the Fall of 97 I bought a copy of Visual J++ for $50. It came with a free copy of NT 4.0.
How about that? You can't find it that cheap anywhere else.
Of course, M$ could easily disband the development team and deny they ever existed...
I've been reading c't's website for the past couple years, and they don't open their mouths unless they know what they're talking about. Unfortunately only a few of their articles come out in english, and i can't read a lick of german.
That means MS is making more money from Office than they are over their OSes. I remember reading an article about Office2000 that said that Office accounts for about 30% of Microsoft's total revenue. Hey, let's ask Microsoft for some figures! I'm sure they have records, don't they (written down on paper instead of digitally)?
This might be another FUD campaign to kill all off development of all other Linux office suites. As soon as rumors of MS Office for Linux fly out, Star and Corel decide maybe they don't wanna dump too much money into developing their Office suites if MS is gonna take over anyways. Then, when Corel and Star are dead, MS stops development of their own Office suite, points at Linux and says "See! They don't have any good software!"
That's my conspiracy theory. More realistically, I think they'll make Office for Linux, release it, and rake in a ton of dough from newbie corporate Linux users who are forced to standardize on MS software...
...that MS could ever bundle Office with the OS. Just look at how much trouble they're getting in for bundling IE with the OS. Unless the DOJ loses the AT case. But I can't see that happening.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
If the kernel weren't changed but there were required binary only modules or libraries, you would never see the code. MS lawyers would find their way around the GPL.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
No, they haven't announced anything. A company the size of MS can keep its options open by researching a port with out making a decision to do anything.
Expect to see an extended FUD campaign about a port to Linux. At one point they'll probably try to say that Linux isn't robust enough for Office.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I knew you could.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Look for them to at least make up their own closed-source widget library, and then start touting it as a "standard" library over Qt, GTK, etc.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
Come on, you've got to admit that though Microsoft produces a lot of crap they're very good at dressing it up prettily...
chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
Man that was a funny conversion. Turned the article into "Germish" or "Engman". Couldn't translate a couple words. Kinda cool, funny and frustrating at the same time.
wooHoo!
It's Friday.
Does anyone here know what the "Blue Box" in Mac OS (Server) is? It's a virtual Mac, running Mac OS 8.5.1, sitting inside of the new OS. Completely different set of APIs, and the Blue Box thinks it is its own machine. You can even drop into Macsbug (the low-level debugger for the MacOS). The performance for apps inside the Blue Box is basically the same as when they are running on a Mac OS 8.5.1 box. The Blue Box is simply an app; you get into it by running the MacOS.app application.
Does anyone doubt that Microsoft could do the EXACT same thing with Win98? Create a Win98 box that lives as a process on top of a Microsoft Linux distribution? They might need to make changes to the kernel, but they wouldn't expose the Win32 API, and these kernel mods would probably be useless for the main code tree. MS could publish those changes under GPL, and Linux is still forked.
In fact, it would be even worse than you think; MS Linux would be a super-set of regular Linux. Any new features in regular Linux could easily be rolled in to the MS Linux package. You'd be improving Windows by working on Linux. Even putting in #ifdef LINUS_LINUX in the code won't help, because MS could just yank them out; the Linux source is released under GPL.
The Linux community might have made the same mistake that Netscape made: poking a sleeping bear until it woke up. Announcing that you're going to obsolete Windows before you've actually done so is fatal.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Now, if there are two Linuxes out there, which one will corporations use: the MS one or the standard one? There's an excellent chance that the MS one would prevail, since it would preserve the investment in MS products.
And MS can make sure that Wine never comes close to running the latest version of Office, so there's no free option, either. Office and the Win32 APIs are what MS cares about. There's zero chance that MS will have Office running on a distribution of Linux it doesn't control. People need Office because of network effects (everyone else already has it), so MS Linux squeezes out standard Linux on the desktop.
I'm not saying I like this scenario, but it's very possible.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
The only word processors are Word, ClarisWorks, Mariner Write, and Nissus. I can't figure out Mariner Write's target market, since virtually all low-end Macs ship with ClarisWorks. Using the word "niche" to describe Nissus' market share would be generous. WordPerfect was an option once upon a time, but it hasn't been updated in years. Once again, only Word is a viable choice for businesses.
In short, if you want to use a Mac in an office, you need Microsoft. An MS port of Office to Linux would probably result in something similar. Getting the Office apps to run on Linux is going to require something vaguely Wine-like. This could be done with non-GPL code, as a commercial binary. Say the only way to get this would be by buying Microsoft Linux (tm). If you want Office for Linux, you'll need Microsoft Linux. Instant "embrace and extend." Sound familiar?
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Don't forget Opera, and KDE's (kfm) Konqueror! Someone here even mentioned once the latter would obsolete Mozilla.
(unlikely, IMHO, but the more, the merrier!)
iSKUNK!
... is practically trivial and free on Linux. Tcl/Tk or Python, anyone?
Peace,
--
Kaufmann
[rnedal@olimpo.com.br]
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
So, how reliable is ApplixOffice with M$ formats? :-( .mdb files (I am testing it under 'NT, since it's horrendously slow on my Linux laptop).
I just installed StarOffice, and it seems unable to save charts within spreadsheets (at least in '97 version which is what matters for me), and it corrupts cell formatting randomly.
Also, whatever StarBase is, StarOffice launches Access for
It would be smarter for MS to port office and ie at the same time (and preferably have their own linux distro). Porting ie would just encourage some linux use at the expense of their profit (ie makes no money).
MS has probably already ported ie for inhouse use.
Good, a decent translation...I was about to do it myself..I had a hearty laugh after I took a look at the babelfish version after reading the original article on the c't site.
Hey, I hate M$ then most of you posters, but, at work they have standardized email and office apps .exe file when I'm waiting
on M$ Office, I'd rather run em on Linux then NT.
At least that way I can use significant UNIX knowledge to do stuff on the command line, instead
of trying to fool w/ an
for the 'save' to finish.., and my other windows
won't be frozen either!
Yup. Ding-ding. The man gets a prize!
I don't know why anyone would be so surprised. This is basically the same pattern of behaviour MSFT has had for *years*.
Gates has always covered all his bases. Thats why he pushed for Word and Excel on the Macintosh.
Office for LInux would just be covering MS's bets...
My journal has hot
I remember reading about Microsoft bringing Office up to speed with XML in the next release. IIRC, Excel would be able to save / load in XML as a native format (no loss of information), and I expect the same would be true of Word.
Anyone have any concrete information on this?
Actually Microsoft makes slightly more money from its OS products than from Office, according to a chart I saw recently (somewhere online, forget where, sorry). Both account for >45% of total revenues, the other few percent being miscellaneous other stuff.
This being the case, it isn't hard to see why Microsoft's sheer (if concealed) terror at the prospect of losing OS revenues to Linux. It would be utter fiscal irresponsibility -- of the sort that makes for stockholder lawsuits -- to not have a backup plan to launch Office for Linux if/when that shift to Linux really starts to eat into OS revenues.
However, Microsoft can certainly afford to port it but never release it if that suits them. Right now the FUDmeisters probably figure that rumors of Office for Linux will hurt Windows sales more than it will hurt sales of Corel, StarOffice, Applix, etc, so they're in "official disavowal" mode. As Linux share increases, that will change, and MS will shift into "announcing vaporware" mode. If Linux plateaus out and Win2000 takes off (hah!), then officially Office for Linux will never have existed.
-- Alastair
hmmm....
This rumour has been abounding for a while, I'm just wondering whether it is simply self-perpetuating. I'd wait a while before considering the matter any further.
They already do it. I have seen bundled packages of Office and Win98. At a price which is even below the price of Win98 or Office itself.
And at 198Mb, there could be a mighty lot of Greeks inside!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Ooops... I thought we were still talking about IE5.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If they want to do that, and the licensing on linux lets them, power to them! The more proprietary they made their 'version' of things, the less anyone will want to use it. Sure, at this point, they could say, 'Linux is what you want, linux is what you get' and trick the unknowing into thinking this is linux (which it would be)...
but really. If they replace X, then they are screwed. They are left with a closed-source Computing environment, and are no better off than they are now, except they can call it 'Linux'.
Whoppee. So if they decide to do something like this, that's fine! It doesn't stop us from doing what we've already done, and continute to do, and that's produce GOOD code and GOOD apps for a GOOD os.
subject says all
-?-
I don't like MS Office. I like StarOffice. I like SIAG office. I like Andrew suite. I tried LyX twice. I don't understand why porting MS Office would make any difference, except that the people who refuse to use Linux on those grounds will have to find another reason.
This will not ruin Linux. MacOS is still a decent OS, and Office has been ported to it.
hinter == behind, so I would guess that it's saying that Microsoft is way behind in the Linux applications market.
True but doesn't quite capture the reality of the situation
I believe taht Object-only files can be added to the kernel under certain circumstances, as long as they don't require changes to other parts of the kernel (I think this is for device drivers) I am unfamiliar with exactly when and where this can happen. Does anyone more familiar with the technical aspects know if this could be used by MS to skew their performance?
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MS ported IE to Unix a while back (SunOS at least) so it shouldn't be to difficult for them to port it to linux. Actually I'm suprised they haven't done this before they tackle Office, IE would be an easier port.
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AND YOU KNOW IT!
Perhaps, but Microsoft ported Word and Excel to the OS/2 platform.
I guess it was done, when porting the apps to Windows.
Soon after they where discontinued.
They both were a bit primitive (reduced feature set).
Live long and prosper...
I've used the Excel 3.0 for OS/2.
It is a bit more primitive than the Winslow-version.
Also there are no hotkeys!
But it is a fast little bugger!
Live long and prosper...
Well, XML is a good thing but it should really .doc format in Wp8 and StarOffice, that still suffer for most of the drawbacks of the M$ applications for what concerns the file formats is fairly good but by no means complete and quite often there are
become the default format (how many people used RTF for their documents before?)
and it should not be "MS-XML" like we have `MS-html' or
`MS-Java' (this language is nice, but why not extend it in some nice and proprietary way? By Jove, I cannot
even stand the "Netscape Enhanced" web pages).
Concerning the `opening' of the format used by Office97 I
have to say that that is exactly the way not to go. Of course I belive that "word2html" is much a better way for
reading ".doc" files than the old "cat foo.doc | strings > foo.txt" but without a complete emulation of the environment (\`a la wine) it is not practically possible to be sure to be able to read those files, and this is NOT good! (in fact the support for the
`porting problems'). I used to consider silly the fact that Office97 uses 330Mb
of space on a CD while the complete works of W.Shakespeare bzip2-ed would fit on a standard floppy disk (formatted at 1.7Mb). Something is wrong here... but still maybe this port stuff is just rumors or, even better, linux users are too smart to go and buy something just because it is "commercial" and "widespread"... Maybe there are some excesses in the way the FSF presents its policy, but still I belive they have a good point and that information has to be `freed' but first of all means of information have to be free and this is not only a matter of having the source code (that is nice) but mostly of being able to port and to spread it all around (whence the concerns against, for example, licenses that do not allow you to use the code for business purposes or the restrict the movement of the code).
The script extension used in order to identify the processor expected to run a script is just funny... but I belive it! Of course the whole issue around XML is that it has to be portable and using it just as a glue for OLE objects is just typical of the policy Microsoft has done so far.
It is worthwile to remember, on the other hand, that while complaining about "software piracy" the various suites used to require a non compulsory registration code during their installation (what is a "non compulsory reg. code" for ?!)... "no matter if people are not paying now, as far as they get used to our product and to our file formats... later on, or on different areas (like business vs. home) we can still bill them!"
Sounds like quite a resonable marketing tecnique and, just for the paranoid, it has already been used with digital TV (first satellite broadcast were encrypted with a really silly scheme; once a market formed the encryption scheme became something not so easy to overcome!).
This is good news, but it could be bad news as well: good news because it means that somehow linux is winning widespread support also in the desktop market and even M$ is forced to recognize this;
bat news in the fact that I fear we could go and see lots of people going to buy and install this product, just in order to face that "it works better under windows, after all" and then step back to that environment (after all Office on the Macs used to be quite bad and is not as up-to-date as on PCs; moreover you cannot install M$-win on a Mac, but you can on an Intel box with linux and, of course, Microsoft knows this!).
The key point is not wheather we shall get a port of M$-Office, but why and, in my not-so-humble-opinion, the reason we should avoid it like black plague: the thing I hate most about this suite is not its awful overbloated user interface, the fact that it runs snail-pace on all
machines but the latest P-III just in order to provide the service of a much glorified typewriter (btw: have you ever tryed typesetting maths in WinWord or having multilingual documents where one of the languages was sanskrit or middle egyptian in Word? I did not and I don't want to do that, but if someone can prove me that the final result is better than the one I can get with TeX, I would be very surprised), or the
fact that it is commercial proprietary software (but this is clearly BAD!), but the fact that it uses some propertary file format (even RTF is propertary): I belive that using a binary format as the standard one for saving all the documents, a binary format that changes
in incompatible ways from release to release so that people that created a document under WinWord 1.0 (there are still some) on their 286 at
home and edited it on WinWord 6.0 at the university are not able anymore to read it on their old machine... and installing Word95 in this case is not an option! Some institutions, moreover, like
French and Italian governments and the EC publish all official documents in the dreadful ".doc" format and require you to send them back your answers using the same encoding, where a SGML one would just be fine.
Office on Linux would mean Office formats natively supported under linux to their full extent. This would mean also that the pressure from the Linux community in order to scrap those propertary formats would weaken and this actually worries me quite a lot... I would accept Office on linux if and only if M$ were going to release a module for IMPORTING SGML documents (under a given, well defined and open DTD) under all the version of Office they ever released AND make this the default format (hardly possible, but I love asking things like this!)...
IMHO this is nothing more than a ploy to pound Corel down even further.
What about Windows?????
Doobie doobie dooo....
I already use a Win version of StarOffice 5.0 and will probably rely on it when I install Linux (most likely a Mandrake distribution). I think their wordprocessor equals MS Word, spreadsheet equals Excel, but their presentation programs is NOT the equal of PowerPoint, unfortunately.
Doobie doobie dooo....
Yeah, but the stranglehold MS has on office suite software (can you say fundamental utility) really gives them a huge opportunity to hijack anything that walks by. Call it an example of a known monopolist leveraging dominance in one area to gain control of another market segment.
Meanwhile businesses are shackled to proprietary formats which force them to upgrade to the Latest, Greatest Version every two years. SGML -- or rather, open standards -- are the answer. I seriously doubt Talking Moon is 100% truthful when it says O2K will faithfully implement XML for its native file formats. Imagine, if that were the case, it would make importing/exporting Office documents nearly trivial for competitors like StarOffice or Applixware. And the company that calls a 50 meg web browser indivisable from its operating system is much more devious than that.
But the ABM zealot in me would rather die than see bloated MS crap running on top of my beloved slackware (or any other [Gnu/]Linux). Hopefully this rumour is just more of the same old FUD.
We want endless gardens of data, where the bits can flower, flourish and reproduce. -- Andy Mueller-Maguhn
Microsoft's commercial dominance begins and ends with Office. To allow the possibility of having an operating system alternitive with a viable office productivity alternitive is the only thing MS that could reduce MS profits. Porting becomes an obvious means to insure the continued dominance of Office and of MS.
The difference would be that it would be stable. Faster too. In fact, for people concerned about performance, not philosophy, MSLinux might be exactly what they want. Plus, it might provide a better launching point from which to develop future versions of Windows2000, Windows3D, ... We would probably get device drivers for everythin in sight as a spinoff.
Peace.
You can get more info here... http://office.microsoft.com/unix/ie/main.htm When I was working for Sun last August, I heard about Microsoft porting IE to Solaris, and out of morbid curiosity, decided to install it on a spare Ultra I had lying around. 60 megs of windows dll's, 48 meg's of regular IE install files later, I fired up my fresh new browser... Ten minutes later, my system started to crawl.. IE had consumed 80 megs of swap, and 60+ megs of RAM. For one browser window. It wasn't leaking memory either (well, not much, AFIK), that was simply what it required to load the COM environment for it to run in.
Microsoft will compete with KDE, GNOME and GNUStep by offering Office only for THEIR Linux GUI. They can make their GUI available for $0, (though NOT open source), maybe set it up to run DirectX applications (it is embrace and extend after all!), and make everybody who wants to run Office on Linux use the proprietary MS Linux GUI.
By supporting a standard, then providing proprietary modifications to the standard, you can become the de facto standards body.
-Dan
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
That's just plain wrong.
Microsoft had release versions of Word, Excel...
for OS/2. At the latest version ( I think equivalent to v3), it was a PM application, not the old text mode stuff.
Yes, at one time, OS/2 was Microsoft's baby too. You can still find the famous clip on the net where Bill proclaims OS/2 as the future. :)
And yes, if Office were available for OS/2, it would be a big reason not to use Win95. That's why even though Word and Excel were both out for OS/2, it was canned after about v3.0
.. that Microsoft has plain and outright told lies about what it is or is not working on.
.. and were suddenly afraid that should Linux become dominant, then MS would not have "the standard proprietary Office Software suite" for Linux. They need *everyone* to be using their software.
It certainly would not surprise me at all if they were working on it.
My guess is they saw how positive the reaction to Corel WP for Linux was
Their solution? Develop MS Office for Linux "on the sly". Lie about it, to support your Linux FUD campaign. Should people catch onto Linux despite the FUD, release Office4Linux. "It's the standard" after all.
They don't seem to understand that proprietary Office Suites are most likely the way of the past.
It's possible that Office4Linux is just a rumor -- but think about --- would a company that has such deep pockets (can't cost that much to create LinuxOffice), and which is so paranoid about crushing competition, *not* spend the small bit of capital, just for "in case" Linux becomes big and they lose out to someone like Corel? MS can't lose if it does create LinuxOffice, on the sly.
MS certainly never made Office for OS/2, but MS did make OS/2 apps way back in the 1.* days. After the divorce, IBM got the bastard child, dressed it up with the improved Work Place Shell, and released it as OS/2 2.0=>2.1=>3.0=>4.0. MS never did directly support those versions with real OS/2 apps, but IBM made sure that Win 3.1 stuff ran under WINOS/2. So, MS kept breaking WINOS/2 with the Win32S game, by continually "updating" Win32S. This kept IBM busy updating WINOS/2 up to the Win32S 1.25 level, at which point IBM gave up because it was clear that MS would just keep breaking Win32S compatability. The last version of Office that ran under WINOS/2 was Office 4.3. I have heard of Word for OS/2, and even a PM version of Excel, but I've never seen them.
Hey, your playing with fire.
I hope that none of the Talking Moon marketing mangers did read your posting. It covers exactly their way of fighting a hostile computing environment and will give them some valuable advices how to complete the job this time.
I'm anxious, if Linux and the Open Software movement will be strong enough to defeat the threat this time.
Surely the Talking Moon programmers will have to solve lots of technical problems doing that job but with one of them they will fail:
I don't believe, that it is possible to port the famous "Blue Screen of Death" to Linux.
Some have tried (KDE's screensaver programmers for example) but they all failed. No computer running Linux did ever behave like a real Windows box after the Blue Screen appeared.
Indeed. This may sound paranoid, but if M$ wants
to capture the open source market, this is a good
starting point. They could approach linux the
same way they are attacking java, by splintering
ports and applications. All the while claiming
it is what is best for users and far superior
to what is out there.
> If they include a special widget library, the community just replaces them one-by-one with GPL'd versions
...er...wait a minute...nevermind.
Yeah, make (L)GPL'd clones of closed (or only partially open) widget sets. Harmony did.