Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 20th Apr 2010 20:24 UTC, submitted by Governa
When Oracle announced its intentions to buy Sun Microsystems, many were worried about the future of Sun's large open source software portfolio, which includes things like Solaris, Java, MySQL, and more. It seems like Oracle is still struggling with what to do with the large body of products Sun entails; they've started charging 90 USD per user for the Microsoft Office ODF plugin.
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Member since:2006-12-05
For me, Oracle is the IBM of the past, black suit men only thinking about how they can squeeze a profit out of every product.
Heh, at those prices for a simple ODF plugin which used to not cost a penny, even compared the price of MS Office itself... it seems like gouging is the proper term. It's disturbing, really, the way some companies so arrogantly-price some of their stuff that--quite honestly--isn't worth more than a tiny fraction of their asking price. And I thought Microsoft (Windows, X360) and Sony (PS2/PS3) were bad...
Member since:2007-02-17
"For me, Oracle is the IBM of the past, black suit men only thinking about how they can squeeze a profit out of every product.
Heh, at those prices for a simple ODF plugin which used to not cost a penny, even compared the price of MS Office itself... it seems like gouging is the proper term. It's disturbing, really, the way some companies so arrogantly-price some of their stuff that--quite honestly--isn't worth more than a tiny fraction of their asking price. And I thought Microsoft (Windows, X360) and Sony (PS2/PS3) were bad... " If you want to use ODF, your only real choice now is OpenOffice.org, or one of its off-shoots such as Symphony.
OpenOffice.org reamins zero cost, and outstanding value for money.
Microsoft Office is no longer a competitive choice for producing standards-compliant documents.
Note that .docx is not standards-compliant
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/04/iso-ooxml-convener-mi...
Edited 2010-04-21 01:20 UTC
Member since:2008-07-15
For me, Oracle is the IBM of the past, black suit men only thinking about how they can squeeze a profit out of every product.
True, but this is as opposed to Sun who were so unconcerned with their bottom line that they ran themselves into the ground. There's a middle ground, and honestly I don't think Oracle would need to charge anything like this for an Office plugin, but they do have to try and make profits on everything they do or acquire. They are after all a corporation, which is a synonym for greedy bastards.
If they are trying a strategic move though, it might just be brilliant. For the governments that use ODF, doesn't Oracle now own Staroffice? If Oracle were to price Staroffice much lower than this plugin, they could put some serious pressure on Microsoft in certain markets. True there's Openoffice, but governments tend to like to have commercial support behind the products they use so might be more likely to opt for Staroffice. Either way, it would work out well for everyone except Microsoft.
Member since:2007-02-17
For the governments that use ODF, doesn't Oracle now own Staroffice? If Oracle were to price Staroffice much lower than this plugin, they could put some serious pressure on Microsoft in certain markets. True there's Openoffice, but governments tend to like to have commercial support behind the products they use so might be more likely to opt for Staroffice. Either way, it would work out well for everyone except Microsoft.
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/home
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#Other_projects
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#Ownership
Edited 2010-04-21 01:43 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
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Member since:
2005-10-14
I had a bad feeling about how Oracle is going to treat Sun products...
For me, Oracle is the IBM of the past, black suit men only thinking about how they can squeeze a profit out of every product.
Edited 2010-04-20 23:57 UTC