MS Office for Linux?

[Oommen Thomas]

Let me add my 2c.

The question here is, if M$Office (and IE) for Mac, why not for Linux (or
any other Unix)? Possibly because M$ fears that such a move will make it
lose at least some desktop users whose life is glued to M$-Office (and 
hence to M$ Win) now.

Everybody needs a level playing field to compete in a market.
It is not at all a matter of for/against any X/Y/Z company.

All this reminds me of what is said of MS's acceptance of Internet's
popularity and significance. Initially they had some plan to have their
own network (using MSN) as a 'super-product' to Internet (which they said
will never take off in a big way). All their predictions failed and they
had to eventually accept the Internet as THE medium/platform of IT in the
'90s and later, thus they becoming on of the largest players in the
Internet. This is jokingly said as follows :- "Gates wanted to fly to some
place and when he found that not possible tried to get on a train (which
he never liked) but the train had already left the station; he chased by
driving to the next station and eventually when he got in, he became the
star attraction there by praising and doing a lot of things for the
train". The train in this story is obviously the Internet.

God knows whether Linux will be his next train, once he finds other
vendors support Linux and grab his market share ??? He is after all a
business man.

Maybe we can witness (in our lifetime) when Bill will say "Linux is
the future...". Watch out for that :-)

-
Thanks
Oommen

On Mon, 3 Apr 2000, Massimo Morin wrote:

<mmorin>Hi,
<mmorin>	this is getting ridiculous!!
<mmorin>I can't belive the government can force a software company to deliver a
<mmorin>product to a "random" platform.
<mmorin>Ok, it is monopoly, ok it has done some illegal business practice but
<mmorin>let's get real! This is not a remedy and not even a punishment for M$.
<mmorin>
<mmorin>If some states want a MSOffice for windows they have to stop buying
<mmorin>office for WinXX and place a order for nK (n>100) copies of Linux
<mmorin>M$Office to the M$ sales dep.
<mmorin>
<mmorin>and BTW, if this is the case, why for linux? Why not QNX, Solaris or
<mmorin>cp/m? Or WizBangFoo platform?
<mmorin>
<mmorin>My 0.02$
<mmorin>... and now I shut up :)!
<mmorin>
<mmorin>MAx
<mmorin>
<mmorin>> 
<mmorin>> Here is a para from a report on the M$ case.
<mmorin>> Will we really get M$ Office for Linux?
<mmorin>> That would then be a beginning of M$ starting to support Linux.
<mmorin>> Wait for a week and we'll see what comes out....
<mmorin>> 
<mmorin>> <quote>
<mmorin>> Whatever be the judgment, it will be a trend setting one. Will the judge
<mmorin>> call for a breakup of the company? One of the major hindrances to the
<mmorin>> talks was the lack of a consensus among the 19 states on their demands.
<mmorin>> While some states want the source code of some of the Microsoft products,
<mmorin>> some call for a Linux version of MS Office.
<mmorin>> </quote>
<mmorin>> 
<mmorin>> -
<mmorin>> Thanks
<mmorin>> Oommen
<mmorin>> 







-
Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with
"subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" on the first line of the
message body to discuss-request at blu.org (Subject line is ignored).