Microsoft has rejected porting its Office productivity suite to Linux anytime soon, despite the growing popularity of open source on the desktop.
Speaking at the LinuxWorld conference in London on Wednesday, Microsoft's head of platform strategy, Nick McGrath, said that the software maker had no intention of porting Office to any of the Linux desktop distributions.
"Microsoft is 100 percent focused on Windows — we have invested billions of dollars in it. We have created Office for the Mac but, and I thought I had been clear on this already when I said 'No', we have no plans at this time to build Office on Linux," he said.
McGrath made the statement as part of a panel debate at the conference on the issue "Where is the Innovation? — Does the free software development lead to proprietary or is the other way round?"
The Microsoft executive was replying to a question from one member of the audience, made up mostly of open source advocates. The audience member asked why, if Microsoft had ported Office to the Mac — to tap into the Mac desktop market — would it not to the same for the Linux desktop which is rapidly gaining on the Apple operating system's small share of the market.
Analysts disagree over how the market for operating systems on desktops and laptops is carved up, but agree that Microsoft's share is above 90 percent. Linux has been reported to have a market share of upwards of 3 percent, and there has been speculation that Apple's market share could reach 5 percent in 2005 on the back of the success of the iPod.
On the specific issue of Office for Linux, Eric Raymond, a prominent figure in the open source community, told ZDNet UK recently that a release of Office for Linux isn't even that desirable, since alternatives such as StarOffice and OpenOffice.org are already available. "The important move would be to document all [Microsoft's] file formats and communications protocols, make the documentation publicly available, and make a binding promise not to sue or harass people who write open source software to interoperate," Raymond said.
Matt Asay, director for Linux Business Office at Novell, also taking part in the panel on Wedneday, said that Microsoft would never put its Windows desktop position at risk by building Office for Linux. However he claimed that the open source community should stop fixating on what Microsoft or hardware vendors are doing around Linux and let the market decide their fate.
"We need to get over our fixation with Microsoft. The question is not what Microsoft is doing; it is what are we doing? The open source movement is a bottom-up, not top-down, action," said Asay.
"We should be talking about how we can use the benefits of open source and Linux to leapfrog what's out there at the moment. After years of eating into Unix, Linux is finally starting to take market share from Windows on the server," Asay added.
Talkback
As someone said on LinuxToday: "Can we have that in writing?"
No MS Office in Linux is great. It means more of a chance for OpenOffice to grab market share and mature.
The REAL question is : WHY do we NEED Office? Office 12 is already DEAD even before it gets released simply because M$ refuses to support Open Doc. The world is going to pass M$ by, so who really needs Office 12?? It is throwing good money after bad.
Let's say that M$ comes to their senses and includes Open Doc. in Office 12 -- who knows amybe M$ will get smart. The question then becomes... Who needs M$'s Office 12??? For those who need hand holding and have tons of money to throw away they might buy into Office 12, but *if* the reason Open Doc, why not buy Sun's Star Office 8 for a fraction of Office 12?? And if you really want to pinch pennies, why not download Open Office??? ( yeah I know support issues, but I said pinch pennies -- if you want software support Star Office is the way to go since it is released by Sun Micro., almost as big a name as IBM and Microsoft ).
"No Office on Linux"?? Linux *does not need Office" to survive, not when it has both Open Office and Star Office. The truth of the matter is -- in M$'s bottom line -- M$ *NEEDS* LINUX, not the other way around. Right now M$ could not *give* Office 12 away, let alone charge an absurd price for it... and it does not yet support Open Doc. And when it does -- as it surly will -- then who wants to pay absurd prices for it??? No, *if* M$ hopes to sell Office 12 they are going to
1) Have to include support for Open Doc., otherwise it is a total waste of money.
2) Actually COMPETE ( maybe for the first time in their lives ) based on PRICE and PERFORMANCE.
3) Actually compete with FOSS that at the current time is MILES ahead of M$ and their buggy software.
In short M$'s hand will be forced to sell Office 12 to Linux users, at a reasonable price. Otherwise, say by-by to M$'s cash cow. If we are REALLY LUCKY.... Maybe M$ will DIE -- we really don't need anymore of M$ buggy, inferior software.
Fine with me: For the desperate, an extra $40 for WINE solves the problem. For those who don't want their data hidden within proprietary changed-with-every-release MS data formats, switching to OpenDocument sooner is probably easier than it will be later.
I have read that MS intends to encrypt the entire disk under "vista", further hiding your data. You'd best assert YOUR ownership of YOUR DATA before it's too late.
MS can't afford to put Office on Linux and it can't afford to include OpenDoc.
a) Office for Linux would encourage business to migrate away from Windows because they could reuse old hardware rather than having to upgrade hardware to run supported Windows versions.
b) OpenDoc in Office would mean companies would be able to choose to have any OpenDoc compatible software rather than just Office.
Either of these would break the cycle of control that MS has over their customers and they are too big and have too many costs associated with that size to be able to ever consider doing either of the above. Without Windows or Office MS would suddenly find itself on very unfamiliar ground - not being able to leverage one monopoly to support another one.
Final comment - MS Office is really a horrible suite, it is old and buggy. I run Office on my Mac and PC boxes and they can't consistently transfer files between them. The user interface is a mess and it only stays the way it is because people are used to it. I recently bought a copy of iWork from Apple and while it is quite immature with its own quirks, the design of the program is years ahead of Office. Documents on the screen come out exactly the same on the page (can't say that for Word), the inspector is a brilliant way of handling formatting, you always know where to look. The menus and features are logically organised once you stop trying to find them where Office puts them. Using MS Office or even OpenOffice is a chore after using Pages or Keynote for any length of time. Once Apple puts a bit more work in and includes OpenDoc support and a spreadsheet they will have something really special. MS really doesn't need to worry about Linux as much as they should worry about OS X, especially once Intel based Macs appear that can run old Windows software very well using Wine or virtualisation. I've been using Linux since 1994 but only recently bought a couple of Macs and I am totally sold. I still have Linux on my servers but my laptop (iBook) and desktop (Mac mini) are both Apple. Most scary, they were both much cheaper than any PC I have bought in the past and yet far more functional. OS X is the real deal.
Back in the early days M$ had an R&D division. It was called APPLE. Now that they are "trying" to do their own innovation they are falling short. Who needs an unstable, buggy, program like office anyway? Linux needs to use their innovation and continue with OO. If M$ doesn't want interoperability then let them die a natural death.
Who the shaq cares?
I think that Linux, software-wise, is actually in a pretty happy position.
Two reasons:
*We have enough users and developers that we have essentially every program that Linux users use, programs that are up to date and plenty of drivers.
*We DON'T have enough users that marketing firms try to hit us up with spyware.
I'm pretty content with that.
Besides, Microsoft's software probably wouldn't be that good a thing to have on Linux. Microsoft doesn't just make software with holes, they make software with revolving doors that simply ~let~ malicious spyware simply waltz right in without even having to hack or break any laws.
When they say 'no Office for Linux', I equate it to God looking out for us. (Maybe He's tired of computer crashes too.)
Microsoft will experience a slow but verry sure suffercating death, Inhailing its own ignorance. But that is realy ok by me, the world is better place without microsoft.
Reality calling geek world
Microsoft OS and office applications will still be 90% of the market in 5 years time. Linux is zero threat to Microsoft, it doesnt even register (yeah they have to pretend to get the interfering monopolies boards of their backs)
Nb NHS Europe's biggest employer bought 1.2 million Microsoft licences for NINE years.
Reality...
The Microsoft market share will become more and more fragmentated. Meaning increasing numbers of organizations that run all sorts of Windows versions, Office versions, whatever versions in all sorts of languages and in combination with all sorts of third-party tools in various versions as well. In the mean time the world wide adoption of non-Microsoft solutions will increase. For one because Microsoft won't really support older Microsoft software versions that well if at all. And Microsoft software works not that well with others so something needs to provide (which won't be, at least not enough, Microsoft). Second, Microsoft needs increasing revenue streams one way or another. If they can't get that by finding new markets to exploit they'll have to resort to whatever they can milk out of their existing customers or at the expense of their current partners. That won't work out in their favour. Sure, they have an enormous warchest but they also have huge expenses. Something has to give sooner or later. Mind the snowball effect.
<<Nb NHS Europe's biggest employer bought 1.2 million Microsoft licences for NINE years.>>
Here's where that came from:
http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/news/031104
Old news, kind of, since that deal is about a year old.
Still there is some hope for them since in the press release they state the following:
"The option to use Open Source software in the future remains and continues to be evaluated."
Nonetheless, they (and their taxpayers) need OpenSource much more than OpenSource needs them.
It's clear that McGrath doesn't share the same vision that made Microsoft the giant it is today.
The statement that Microsoft is 100% focused on Windows explains a lot.
It contradicts what I know about the company which is that Micrsoft is a technology company focused on the customer and the success and adoption of technology.
Office on Linux would put MS in the driver seat for the linux desktop movement which is definately a reality. They confuse linux with OS/2. Linux is here to stay.