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MS Office on Linux (Continued)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the end-of-the-world-or-dawn-of-a-new-era? dept.

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.

2 of 274 comments (clear)

  1. Scary Thought by cradle · · Score: 5
    Here's a frightenning scenerio. What if they release Office for Linux, and it becomes the standard office suite for Linux. A significant number of corporate users put this into production.

    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.

  2. Translation from a native :-) by Thalinor · · Score: 5

    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)