Some prominent figures in the Linux community believe that as enterprises increase their use of Linux on the desktop, Microsoft will be forced to consider offering a version of Office for Linux. "When the [Linux desktop] market share gets to a certain point, Microsoft will, just as it did with Apple in the past, make Office available on Linux," CEO Stuart Cohen of OSDL said in an interview. My take: Mr. Cohen is forgetting two important things: Excel was first released for the Mac (1985) and Word wasn't popular until MS ported it from DOS to Mac (1985).
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Member since:2005-07-06
The answer to this is painfully obvious to anyone that has a job which relies on more than just simple spreadsheets and word doc.
Like it or not, the MS Office suite is vital to more offices than any OSS fan wants to admit. Not only are the tools matue, but the people who use them know how to use them to do very complex things. OpenOffice will never be appealing to these people on the simple fact that it is different.
Member since:Agreed. Open Office tends to be a bit buggy too. I tried using it back in college to create a spreadsheet and for some reason it wouldn't let me change certain fields; I had to retype the entire thing. Not exactly what I would called "productive" office suite. MS Office is solid, safe, effective office software. Open Office can never replace it in the work place.
Member since:I can't really comment on MSoffice or OOo being able to do the most complex tasks, but as for people being used to Office, well that's just something corporations will have to add to the equation: educating people on OOo and "Linux" (more likely a DE like KDE or Gnome).
As for MS selling Office for Linux: I don't see it happening. There's little gain in it for MS (they would just make it easier running something else than Windows and probably not make a lot of money either)
Member since:2005-07-07
Member since:2005-07-14
Member since:
OpenOffice is already there, why would people switch to Office? I don't see any gains...