Microsoft Looking At Office For Linux In 2014

[TemplarGR]

Linux has already won the battle for the Desktop. I have been saying this for the last 3-4 years. It is clear to all of us who follow the trends of technology.

It may not be clearly visible NOW, but it is inevitable that Linux will become the defacto OS for desktops a few years in the future. Microsoft can't compete. It was clearly demonstrated when they spent so much money in Vista and they still released a crappy product no one wanted. They cannot keep the pace, they need more and more money to provide some noticable improvement while the no cost alternative keeps getting better and better. The truth of the matter is that there is no need for Windows anymore. Only inertia keeps them in their position for the time being.

Seriously, what was so much improved in Vista, 7, and 8? After 12 years since XP, what is the real progress? 7 only tweaked the window manager a bit and 8 replaced the Start menu with a Gnome Shell-like alternative, that is all. All other improvements are so minor they are not even worth mentioning. Other "improvements" between versions are artificial, for example no IE 10 for Vista etc...

So Microsoft will do the smart thing, and embrace Linux and GNU, instead of hopelessly fighting it. They can make much money through Office and .Net if they are smart. Windows is a dead horse, it is to their best interest to let it fade away. But this will happen gradually. It will be a slow process, but this is how things will turn out in the end.

[necro-lover]

But I do fear Richard Stallman jumping on this and his army of idiots following him to do whatever is necessary to thwart Microsoft's plans.

I think you can't even spell the word "Philosopher" hey do a reality check RMS do have a wikipedia page you don't have a wikipedia page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman

Your babbling is just SPAM without any relevance.

I'm sure RMS beat you in any tropic in a nano-second.

but go one write bullshit no one will ever try to stop you.

[newwen]

Exactly. I'd welcome a Linux port of MS Office. If it sucks, hey I still have LibreOffice. I love having CHOICE to use whatever fits my needs, not what someone else thinks I should use.

Yes, more choice is good. As long as it doesn't kill LibreOffice, it's fine. But beware of vendor lock-in and all the embrace extend extinguish practices Microsoft's follows whenever they can. That includes their own OOXML (internal memory dump) "standard" they got approved through bribery and corruption, only to kill ODF, but to which they never intended to comply: "get this approved and just move on" said at Microsoft.

[timothyja]

What exactly was I generalizing?

You are hilarious. You really need to ask?

And no it won't be open sourced but only zealots care about that. The rest want to use office and would gladly to that on linux if it were available.

1. "but only zealots care about that" really? Are the crazy aluminium foil hat wearing people really the only ones who care about open source? I didnt know everything was so simple. hmmm that wouldn't have been a generalisation would it?

2. "The rest want to use" Since we are a world of black and white and you have kindly told us what the crazies want, everyone else MUST want to do what you want to do. Wherefore art thou Generalisations?

[VinzC]

Native or not, this doesn't change anything to the fundamental problem: in the facts non-open-standard-based document formats owned by a commercial company. Whether they port their suite or not, still a big no-no.

[entropy]

Rubbish. The core code would have been reused and only the GUI would have been written from scratch.

Who knows, maybe they're going for WINELIB.

[timothyja]

Yes, they did. The OS X office is a completely different codebase from Windows Office.

Rubbish. The core code would have been reused and only the GUI would have been written from scratch.

If your going to make such clearly wild claims please at least attempt to provide some evidence.

[Vadi]

This'll be great if it was true.

[timothyja]

Generalizations, is rarely a good thing.

Comments made by BO$$ are rarely a good thing.

[curaga]

Why is it needed to write it from scratch? Did they do that for OSX?

Yes, they did. The OS X office is a completely different codebase from Windows Office.