MS Office for Linux?

[Derek Martin]

Yesterday, John Chambers gleaned this insight:

> 	 > I can't belive the government can force a software company to 
> 	 > deliver a product to a "random" platform.
> 	 
> 	 I have trouble believing it, as well ... I'm not a lawyer, but this kind of
> 	 remedy just doesn't pass my smell test.
> 
> Heh. Maybe you should ask a few lawyers. The is a great deal of legal
> precedent for governments doing this sort of regulation. For example,
> if I buy a package of light bulbs with the usual sorts of screw  base
> that  you  find  here in the USA, I can screw it into an outlet in my
> house and, aside from an occasional "sample defect",  it  will  work.

Well, there is a significant difference between this example and Office
software.  Barring extreme examples involving society's "bad element" (or
possibly the healthcare industry), no one is going to die if you send me a
spreadsheet formatted by a spreadsheet package with which mine is
incompatible...  It's just not the same thing.

> Similarly, you can go into an electronics store and buy a phone, take
> it  home  and  plug  it it, and it will work, even if your wiring and
> phone service was provided by a competitor of the phone manufacturer.

All of the rest of your examples are ones which came from industries which
were (or are) businesses which fall into a category that has been allowed
to exist as a monopoly or limited monopoly, because it was deemed
beneficial to society for them to do so.  Later, however, it was decided
that increasing competition was beneficial to the consumer, as in the case
of the phone company, and in some areas (perhaps all now, I don't know)
also the power company.  The equipment is all compatible because there was
only one provider of same for a long period of time.  Or in the case of
your wiring, because the equipment has to be compatible with your power
provider's equipment.

No such condition exists with software.  The lack of competition is due to
Microsoft's relentless pursuit of their competitors, the end result of
which is a kind of modern-day, "civilized" version of genocide... of
software companies.

-- 
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Derek D. Martin      |  Unix/Linux Geek
derekm at mediaone.net  |  derek at cerberus.ne.mediaone.net
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