MS Office for Linux?

[Jerry Feldman]

My comment to this is twofold.
First, you are probably correct that there should be an international 
standard for application interchange. Probably an ISO standard. There 
are existing standards, such as SGML. 

Second is that standards organizations create more bags of worms. 
 
Actually, Microsoft has standards for all of their applications in the office 
suite, but they change them from release to release as they add 
features. One really annoying problem in today's office is that groups of 
employees who use non-PC computers must have 2 computers, one to 
do their work, and one to use for email, and exchange documents. In my 
situation, I must have both a TRU64 system and an NT system, but even 
if I could change the NT system to Linux, I would still need 2 because 
the Unix system is on a private net. I really hate Microsoft Exchange.

On 4 Apr 2000, at 11:50, Richard Royston wrote:

> It seems to me that what Microsoft has a monopoly of is not so much
> operating systems as "Killer Aps" for the office. Everyone uses MS
> Office because everyone else does, and they can't read what others
> write, or write what others can read, unless they use MS Office.
> 
> If the specs for MS Office files were commoditized, the problem would
> (largely) go away. They should probably be made a standard, and in
> addition, perhaps, put under the control of ANSII, or BEMA, or ...
> 
> If my word processor of choice, running under my operating system of
> choice, on my computer of choice, could read and write whatever my
> colleagues and correspondents wrote and read, I would be free (in
> Richard Stallman's sense of the word).
> 
> Richard Royston
> 
> <rjroyston at earthlink.net>
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Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org
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