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Microsoft looking to release Office for Linux in 2014

• JVIDEL 14y ago
  This is great news for Linux users everywhere and basically to anyone who has tried to convince casual users to switch. But to MSFT this is suicide: even if Office remains the leading suite with a Linux version every company out there can save millions a year switching to a distro and paying only for Office, but not for Windows. This is basically Nintendo giving away Mario and Zelda to other consoles. Do any of the newer divisions at MSFT make any money? Xbox probably but there is no way Winphone and web are bringing any cash.
• foxylad 14y ago
  This is a rumour that MS is taking a meaningful look at porting Office to Linux. All it takes is one OS exec to say "you're doing WHAT?!!!" and this meaningful look will be quietly stopped. Even if they do port, I'd expect it to be broken in many ways, each popping up a "This wouldn't happen if you were running on Windows" dialog. MS just won't be able to help itself.
• meaty 14y ago
  My arse. Sorry but this is link bait.
  • nailer 14y ago
    Since this is HN you shouldmprobably provide some counternargument, since I agree with you, here's two: 2% is a massive overestimation of desktop Linux market share, Microsoft doesn't want to fragment the existing diminishing desktop computing base, and would probably spend more effort working ona touch/voice version of Office because it would see better returns.
    • meaty 14y ago
      Thanks - that's pretty much what is in my head as well.
• lucb1e 14y ago
  Is it me, or are more and more things coming to Linux nowadays? Might Android's success and Linux' good and early ARM support have something to do with it?
• taf2 14y ago
  I read something like this and think... really MS should follow in Apple's footsteps and build their new OS on the linux kernel, as Apple built their's on the FreeBSD kernel... It could work
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  • Auguste 14y ago
    Unless Microsoft is prepared to invest a lot of money and time in preserving backwards compatibility with existing Windows applications, I can't see it being met with anything but resistance.
    • philwelch 14y ago
      Throw Windows 8 in a VM and establish a transitional API. Apple wrote this book over a decade ago. It's still pointless though. I don't think the kernel is Windows' biggest problem, or even necessarily a problem.
• saosebastiao 14y ago
  And with that, I no longer have any use for Windows. This is awesome, even if I can't understand why they would want to do such a thing.
  • sliverstorm 14y ago
    Preemptive crippling strike against Open Office and company? To my knowledge, Office is one of their main profit centers, to the point of Windows being a deliver platform for Office. So, I could see cannibalizing some Windows sales to boost Office.
• codeka 14y ago
  OK, I'll believe this when I see it.
• loeg 14y ago
  At my employer, we use Outlook for mail and calendaring. Currently I have to remote desktop into a server to use Outlook or run a Windows VM on my Linux workstation. If MS releases this, my company can simply license Office for Linux and we can access it "natively" (modulo it'll be a closed-source binary). There is a market for this, if small.
• ibrahima 14y ago
  Eh, it's not like porting to Android has any bearing on porting to desktop Linux since the UI toolkits are completely different. I guess this would be cool, but I'd be surprised if many people used it over LibreOffice.
  • klint 14y ago
    That's what I was thinking. On the other hand, Microsoft has already ported some of the functionality to JavaScript to make Office 365 -- maybe they could offer cross-platform support via an Office 365 client that could run offline? It would still be a far cry from Office on Linux/Android.
• homosaur 14y ago
  Hey, why not? Let the Office division compete on its own. I actually liked the last Mac version.
• Xion 14y ago
  I don't understand this. Valve is already doing mile-length steps in terms of upending one of the Windows' biggest advantages over Linux: games. Arguably, Office is another, but this time it's supposedly Microsoft itself who is about to diminish yet another selling of point of their own operating system. I'm really confused, if that's indeed true. You could say it follows naturally with all the screw-ups MS made recently with respect to Windows 8 & Metro UI. But really, seeing a company undermine their own business so blatantly... I don't know what to think about this.
  • slurgfest 14y ago
    Valve and Ubuntu have provided a platform. But the games aren't there at all.
    • _jason 14y ago
      a. Steam on Linux is still in beta and relatively new b. Cutting-edge triple A titles? No, not yet. Older, but well seasoned triple-A titles? Getting there (e.g., Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2). High-quality indie titles? Quite a selection, actually (e.g., Minecraft, Humble Indie Bundles, etc...).
  • amcintyre 14y ago
    Office is, I think, one of the big revenue earners for Microsoft, so it does kinda make sense for them to make sure they can try to sell it to everybody regardless of which OS they run.
  • purplelobster 14y ago
    Maybe they're afraid of losing their entire Office business to Google unless they're multi-platform.
  • patdennis 14y ago
    It's the same logic as offering Office for OS X. They know holding a OS monopoly isn't feasible. Might as well make money off of the holdouts.
  • 14y ago
• jonlarson 14y ago
  Why? Like the article pointed out, there can't be a very large market for it. LibreOffice is free, not to mention the increasing trend toward cloud-base office suites, including Office. Unless the crossover from an Android version really isn't that extensive I can't see the point. All it would potentially do is pull more people off Windows. On the other hand, I've heard it said that MS actually loses money on Windows. Their real cash cow is Office and other software suites. So who knows, maybe they have a tentative long term strategy of downplaying OS competition and focusing on business applications.
  • contextfree 14y ago
    Microsoft doesn't lose money on Windows.
• lwat 14y ago
  I don't think so.
• rhokstar 14y ago
  Never thought I'd see the day that this would happen.
  • _jason 14y ago
    That day may still never come. Seems like a rumor at this point, and consider the source-- Phoronix is well known in the Linux press for hyping rumors.
    • kaolinite 14y ago
      Yeah, like Steam for Linux.
• wildmXranat 14y ago
  At first, OpenOffice Calc and Writer were a nuisance that I had to learn to use. Then they became second nature, LibreOffice is now my most recommended piece of software to all my clients along with Thunderbird etc. Now, I find that LibreOffice handles all of my workload much better than Office did. Especially when dealing with international text encoding. I realize that there is a huge, existing market that requires Office, but I wonder how many of those could go through a transition and arrive at a better place without it.
  • chewxy 14y ago
    Except Excel. Microsoft Excel outpaces LibreOffice by many many many many lightyears. It's pretty much the only reason why I have Virtualbox on all my linux machines
    • wildmXranat 14y ago
      I might not be an Office Excel power user, although I'm not sure, thus can be blind to those critical features. What are the things that you can't live without in Calc ?
      • chewxy 14y ago
        Ohboy, let's go: * Calc's pivot tables is clunky, while working on Excel 2010 is like working on butter with a hot knife. No, it's not a "getting used to" thing. * Basic stuff like filter/sorting tools: Excel has a far better flow that helps you get the job done faster * DataNitro * Charting in libreoffice is broken. I use ggplot for most of my day jobs, but sometimes when you need to pull up a quick chart, LibreOffice serves to only nerf your speed. Again, not one of those "getting used to" thing * Try pivot-tabling a 1M row csv in Calc. * VBScript (though that's now more and more subplanted by DN) * Analysis tools - Excel is just so much richer. These things LibreOffice is better than Excel: * CSV (excel's a little clunky with CSV import) * regex search EDIT: formatting
        • DeepDuh 14y ago
• noonespecial 14y ago
  Microsoft has become the "Office and Exchange" company. They should just stop trying to sell OS's altogether and try to get Office onto as many platforms as possible as fast as possible. If I were MS, I'd be giving away an XP like OS for free just so I'd have a way to get Office out there easier.
  • ChuckMcM 14y ago
    If I were MS, I'd be giving away an XP like OS for free just so I'd have a way to get Office out there easier. One wonders if this is the strategy Apple has taken with OS.X. The value is in all the iTunes seats not so much the OS seats for them.
    • astrodust 14y ago
      It's not that hard to make money giving away an OS when you're the one selling the hardware it runs on.
      • rkuykendall-com 14y ago
        Apple has always sold the hardware and they never gave the OS away, until the new OS came bundled with an App Store which gives apple a 30% cut on each sale.
        • Someone 14y ago
          Few people did, as there were few Mac users when the OS fit on on one or two floppies and enough Mac users to copy from others when it no longer did, but In the 80's, you could walk into a dealer with a bundle of floppies and get a copy of the latest OS release.
        • nsp 14y ago
          Actually, they cut the price to 29 prior to creating the mac app store. They sold snow leopard for $29 as well, citing its focus on performance/stability rather than new features, and the faster upgrade cycle. I believe the price change had more to do with switching to annual releases
• damian2000 14y ago
  To do this they'd need to basically implement the Win32 APIs on Linux. And if they did that, that might enable other windows applications to run on desktop Linux. It would be similar to how WINE works, but by Microsoft.
  • meaty 14y ago
    Office is built on higher level APIs than win32. COM would be a major sticking point though ad that entire stack is huge.
  • jswinghammer 14y ago
    I doubt that. I don't think they made Win32 for Mac OS. It probably isn't much different than their Mac OS port.
    • yuhong 14y ago
      For Mac OS X. I remember they created WLM for classic Mac OS back in 1994 or so.
• crowhack 14y ago
  ahahahahahAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I can't fully understand why I find this so funny but I am just falling out of my seat laughing. While I find this extremely comical, I am excited to see the consequences of this for desktop linux. The way I see it, the more people who use linux the better it will become :).
• bhauer 14y ago
  If true, I think this is good news both for Linux and for Office. Just as an aside, I've installed Office 365 (the Office 2013 annual subscription program) and my tentative assessment is positive. I like the overall feel and functionality once you turn off animation. This evening, I found I really enjoyed the new alignment and drawing guides in Powerpoint 2013. They make Powerpoint a solid diagramming tool. At $99/year for installation on five family PCs, the pricing is much more reasonable.
  • chewxy 14y ago
    If you're using powerpoint as your diagraming tool, you might be doing something wrong. Try Dia, it's open source and free.
    • CJefferson 14y ago
      Why would Dia being open source and free make it a better diagramming tool? I am worried when those are the two main points you make as to why it would be better than Powerpoint (which I also use for diagramming, and find very smooth).
• jiggy2011 14y ago
  Office coming to Linux? What? Really?! open article... "This rumor stems from a source in Brussels, Belgium, who spoke to Phoronix’s Michael Larabel at FOSDEM" , "oh , right then" close tab I guess we can expect this by 2030
  • dasil003 14y ago
    Well at least it wasn't "an undisclosed source familiar with the situation".
• yum 14y ago
  Because I'm CS student I already get Windows for free through dreamspark, but I don't think I get MS Office. I'm assuming MS is making a big chunk of their profit from all the college freshmen buying Office every year. In my public speech class I gave a presentation about why people should use FOSS. When I mentioned Libre Office in the presentation, and how it could open and write .docx people's mouths dropped. Multiple people including my professor asked about Libre Office after the presentation. I think Microsoft may generally be worried about the future of Office, or they're hubristic about it.
• pwthornton 14y ago
  It's in the best interest of Office to be on every platform possible. It's in the best interest of Windows for Office to be an exclusive. That's the tension that's been there for years. But Office, especially with its growing Web and sharing underpinnings, may be a more enduring product than Windows. If this is indeed the case, it makes sense for Office to be on every platform possible, making it the standard for document creation and sharing. Microsoft is weak in the smartphone and tablet space. It makes a ton of sense for Office to go here; it's not like strong Office products on iOS would hurt Surface sales. And now with subscription plans and Windows becoming less ubiquitous, why not Linux? It's not Office's job to protect Windows, especially if Windows can't protect Office. If Office doesn't go on more platforms, people will switch to other solutions because they are using non-Windows devices all the time. Windows alone will kill Office in the long term.
  • astrodust 14y ago
    Office for Android could be pretty potent, but also extremely damaging to the Windows ecosystem.
  • dhaivatpandya 14y ago
    I don't see where this whole "Windows is becoming less ubiquitous" is coming from. Maybe market share has dropped a bit, but, Microsoft still rules the basically the whole desktop market. Sometimes in the startup world with all the glowing Apple logos, we lose sense of the rest of the world (heck, even the rest of the United States).
    • pwthornton 14y ago
      I'm referring to operating systems as a whole. People are spending less time using Windows devices and more time using smartphones and tablets. I'd love to use Office with syncing on my iPad, but that's not an option, so I have to find other ways to do these tasks. OS X market share is growing, but that's not what I'm referring to. Ten years ago, almost everyone's computing time was spent on Windows. Now even people who use Windows desktops/laptops have iPads, Android phones, etc.
• zoowar 14y ago
  We're doing just fine without them. LibreOffice!
• DigitalSea 14y ago
  Office is great and all, but I transitioned to Google Docs a long time ago. The one thing holding me back from Linux as my day-to-day operating system is lack of Adobe software. The day Photoshop and Fireworks comes to Linux (heck, the whole entire Creative Suite) I'll jump the Windows ship so fast. If true, this is a smart move for Microsoft because if the tide changes, Microsoft would already have a foothold because open source equivalents of MS Office just aren't as good as Microsoft's offering. When was the last time you ever saw a business using OpenOffice over Microsoft Office? Never.
  • dhaivatpandya 14y ago
    I like Google Docs, but, I find that it is nowhere near the "quality" (well, maybe just features) of Microsoft Word. In fact, I don't think it is even meant to be. I for one would do fine on Google Docs, but, there are many for whom that would not work.
    • rowanseymour 14y ago
      I wonder how many is many. Of all the people out there using MS Office, what percentage of them could do their job just as well if not better with Google Docs, bearing in mind the advantages of an online suite such as collaboration and sharing. I wonder if the majority of MS Office users are just unaware of the alternatives or nervous about learning a new application.
• nathanstitt 14y ago
  As much as I'd love to see this happen, there's no way it's going to. Linux has what, maybe a 1-2% desktop market share? Can you even begin to image the support costs Microsoft would have to endure to make this happen? Assuming the article isn't just link-bait, I have a feeling the "meaningful look" is really one guy in a cube somewhere who drafted a position paper that he is desperately peddling up the chain as far as he can go.
  • sounds 14y ago
    Seconded. Article is link bait. I don't see any comments actually thinking through what such a move would mean for MS.
    • jebblue 14y ago
      I just saw several insightful comments, you saw none?
      • deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
• atpaino 14y ago
  Pure speculation, but I have to wonder if Sinofsky's firing had something to do with him not agreeing with this decision. Seeing as a key selling point for the Surface over the iPad is the inclusion of Office, and the Surface was Sinofsky's baby, I imagine he wouldn't like this decision at all. That, and one of the reasons Ballmer cited for Sinofsky leaving was his lack of cooperation with other senior leadership.
• xaa 14y ago
  I am in (biological) research, and this would be a godsend in the unlikely event it's true. There are a lot of *nix users in research, but paradoxically, MS Word is a virtual requirement for submitting grants and manuscripts, and MS Excel is very commonly used to pass around datasets. Libreoffice is unacceptably broken in a thousand small ways. The best compromise we have come up with is to edit internal documents with Google Docs until they are almost finished, then polish them in Word.
  • crdoconnor 14y ago
    There's crossover office.
    • danieldk 14y ago
      Have you tried CrossOver with the latest Office version. I tried when considering if I should buy a Lenovo laptop to run Linux or a new MacBook. Even the most basic functionality did not work smoothly. Office 2000 ran great on CrossOver Office. I've used it for years. But Office 2000 is very old now.
      • crdoconnor 14y ago
        I'm running it with office 2007. It works perfectly fine.
        • 5555624 14y ago
          Office 2007 is not the latest version, though. There have been two versions since then, 2010 and 2013.
  • malandrew 14y ago
    You can't submit PDFs generated via LaTeX?
    • taneliv 14y ago
      That depends on the field (and publication), maybe it is less typical in biology? And all the research funding instruments I've used require (or at least very strongly hint) you to use Word for submitting applications. If LibreOffice docx export does not work correctly (or import missed crucial fields / paragraphs) with the funder's templates, you might get rejected. Academic funding is already so fickle that I wouldn't even try. (Personally, that's always a major hassle, as I have to find a computer with correct version of Word installed and borrow that for some time.)
• runn1ng 14y ago
  For me, standard "offline" Office suites are really "things of the previous millenium". MS Office or Libre/OpenOffice alike. I use Google Docs for everything. It's simpler to use, it's simpler to share documents, it's inherently more mobile. The updates are instant. And so on. Now I would be glad if there was free (as-in-speech) alternative to Google Docs, so I could just host it myself on my server. There IS etherpad, but it doesn't do tables and works slightly differently. What do others think? Are "offline" office suites still relevant?
  • svdad 14y ago
    Absolutely. The alternatives -- OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Docs -- are all broken in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways, especially if you're a long-time Office power user. There really is nothing comparable to the Office suite when it comes to features and interoperability. Yes, it has its quirks, but you just can't make the other products do what the Office products can do.
  • rowanseymour 14y ago
    As a complete convert to Google Docs I say largely irrelevant. The reality for me (and I'd imagine a large chunk of computer using population) is that I very rarely need all the features of Excel and Word to do my job, so the benefits of an online suite (collaboration, sharing etc) outweigh the lost features. I envisage Word becoming more of a publishing application for those few people in a company who need to make publishable documents. The rest of us will survive with only ~16 fonts.
  • shriphani 14y ago
    I got bitten by this problem once: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/t7MZYkHnLV8 http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/t7MZYkHnL... . Essentially, one fine day, google docs couldn't draw a scatter-plot that connected the plotted points with a line (the feature got removed for some reason). From the timeline of that thread, it took months to get the feature back. This is just unacceptable. Ever since, I have decided to stick with a native app for office software (excel on win + mac and some other stuff for Linux).
• dylangs1030 14y ago
  A much better idea would be to write a universal set of software for every platform, in the least amount of code possible, using the most powerful language, and increasing the amount of features in line with what users want. Where would such a mythical piece of software exist? On Microsoft's servers. It would be cloud tech, accessible from any platform, and would be far superior to any port Microsoft will cook up for 2014. The only foreseeable downside to this is lack of internet translating to lack of office productivity. But in almost every scenario I think that obstacle is overstated. That's the future of the office suite, not wasting money and effort doing market research and porting code from Windows to Linux (I can recall a handful of times that has worked natively).
• padmanabhan01 14y ago
  Even if they want to be on other platforms, how is Linux a good place to start? Wouldn't iOS or android be more logical? Unless they already have that going...
• vondur 14y ago
  I attended a Microsoft conference back in 2001 or 2002 and during a Q&A with the audience someone asked if Microsoft would ever release a version of Office for Linux. He basically said if the demand was there, they would do it, because they were a software company.
• notatoad 14y ago
  ExtremeTech re-reporting a rumour from phoronix? Sounds trustworthy.
• malandrew 14y ago
  The way I see it Microsoft may become the next IBM. IBM was a mainframe and "business machines" company until it saw it's market share falling and share price stagnate. That all changed in 1993 when massive layoffs set the groundwork for the reinvention of IBM as a solutions company. Like IBM, they have a massive network and talent base on which to draw from. I predict that Microsoft's cash cow shrink-wrap licensing revenue will start to give way to other revenue streams which may prove more lucrative long term.
• nholland 14y ago
  Now that they're on ARM, their office efforts probably shift to make it ubiquitous on every platform - even exploring the iOS/RIM options. Thus, the entire office team may have a different perspective now... creating a very different approach to development, etc.
• jpkeisala 14y ago
  That's not going to happen. There is just not market for it, nothing to do with Windows vs. Linux.
• hooande 14y ago
  The odds of governments or major corporations, M$'s biggest customers, switching from windows to linux are virtually nil. Institutions are heavily invested with Microsoft, linux Office won't be the tipping point for a switch to a whole new technology stack. The Microsoft of today has nothing to lose from this. 20 years ago the situation was different. A must-have app like Office was all that was keeping people from switching to a wide variety of competing OSes. But it's 2013 and the battle has been won. For all the hate that people heap upon Microsoft, they dominate the most profitable sector of the personal computing market. Their strategic position doesn't depend on any one piece of software. If anything, I think this move demonstrates how confident they are. In the past Office for linux would have been confounding, for both business and ideological reasons. This is the tech company version of dismantling the ICBMS. The OS cold war is over, and everyone can go back to business.
• EtienneK 14y ago
  Awesome news. Next step: .NET
• voodoochilo 14y ago
  nice try, m$!
• bjoe_lewis 14y ago
  >because Microsoft is reportedly already working on Office for Android. Android, as you may already know, is a Linux-based operating system, meaning a lot of the porting work will have already been done Well, I thought linux just bases the kernel of the operating system(Android), in which case porting Microsoft Office has nothing to do with porting to desktop linus, unless it's written in C :)
• webreac 14y ago
  On my PC, I do not want to see any Microsoft software outside of a virtualbox jail.
• valugi 14y ago
  I want to see Photoshop for Linux and Starcraft and that is that.
• nikcub 14y ago
  "Transforming from a software-maker to a devices and services company requires us to make big, bold bets and push our business in new directions." -- Ballmer on Office 365 launch last week
• eyko 14y ago
  The big question is... GTK or QT? I'm guessing QT.
• paines 14y ago
  So, hell froze over ?!? Goodness ....
• anoncow 14y ago
  It is not strengthening Linux based operating systems that they have to worry about. It is the obsolesence of office in the hands of better cross platform suites that can be a bigger problem.
• itsbits 14y ago
  Slowly am seeing some devs supporting Microsoft here...I donno why i should make an app for Windows now a days... Microsoft should concentrate more on Web product 'Office360' rather trying to rewrite Office for Linux.
• bobsy 14y ago
  Can't Linux users already use Office360? I was under the impression that Office360 was the future. That Microsoft was slowing moving their office software into the cloud? Supporting Linux seems pointless. Linux has a really small market share. I am fairly sure a lot of Linux users who are tech savvy would want to support the open source Libre Office instead of forking out for MS Office. Better places to expand would be Android / iOS app stores. Tablet devices are still exploding in growth. I could see a lot of use being got out of office software on tablets.
• bobsy 14y ago
  Can't Linux users already use Office360? I was under the impression that Office360 was the future. That Microsoft was slowing moving their office software into the cloud. Supporting Linux seems pointless. Linux has a really small market share. I am fairly sure a lot of Linux users who are tech savvy would want to support the open source Libre Office instead of forking out for MS Office. Better places to expand would be Android / iOS app stores. Tablet devices are still exploding in growth. I could see a lot of use being got out of office software on tablets.
• hamidpalo 14y ago
  Having looked at parts of the Office source I would be extremely surprised if this is anything but a statement to placate OSS devs. The sheer amount of effort required to port Office to Linux would be a few orders of magnitude greater than any sales that could possibly be achieved from Linux users.
  • potkor 14y ago
    They've been able to port various Windows-centric products to other platforms before (to Mac and Solaris at least). Exchange, Office, Internet Explorer etc. I agree they won't make a huge profit from it directly but I bet it's a good counter-argument to "let's standardise on OpenOffice since otherwise we are subject to MS vendor lock-in". A couple of big government or corporate deals should cover the costs.
• dmoo 14y ago
  It could be timed for the end of life for windows xp in April 2014. Its still a large chunk of the installed os base http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system... So maybe the point is that if you can't keep everyone of these on windows at least you can keep them using office.
• gambiting 14y ago
  In our company we don't use office at all. We only use LibreOffice - it's not as good,but it's completely fine for doing spreadsheets and basic text documents. Honestly, I don't see the need to spend money on the full Office suite. However, we still use Windows - why? Not because of Office - but because the only proper accounting suite available in this country runs only on Windows,and it's server can only use MSSQL as the database. Therefore, we have to use Windows as a company, even without Office.
  • revskill 14y ago
    There's even a certificate called ICDL (and updated MOS) from Microsoft that is required for every student in our college to get in order to graduate. It sucks really. The most useless certificate for a student to bet money and time on.
• motiejus 14y ago
  Microsoft Office is the last obstacle preventing my wife (and my mother coincidently) from moving to Linux. They both tried Ubuntu, liked it, but Windows VM just for office was PITA. And they switched back because of the office suite.
• rbanffy 14y ago
  Microsoft cannot afford the possibility another office suite (or another component) gains a foothold in the market. The moment that happens, the moment the market fragments around a different standard (even more if it's a cross-platform/cross-device standard), the mutual Windows-Office reinforcement collapses and each side has to fight on its own. Microsoft markets Office for Macs for two reasons: because it makes some money out of it and because it prevents a competitor from appearing and taking over the Mac side of the ecosystem and threatening crossing over to Windows. The same reasoning applies to Linux - if Linux ever becomes a significant corporate desktop OS and LibreOffice becomes a threat to Office, Microsoft's value proposition starts to be questioned. Offering a reasonable migration path for companies moving segments of their park away from Windows to stay reinforcing Office as a de-facto standard is vital. That is an existential threat for Microsoft.
• prawks 14y ago
  This is the first move by Microsoft that I can actually understand. They need to seriously rethink what their goals are. They can't have the computing monopoly they used to, so they really need to focus on what they're strong at: corporate software. And that is not a bad thing. How about marketing Surface as a solution to corporate IT departments trying to wrestle iPads into their Microsoft ecosystem? Windows Phone could be the same. They could be the Blackberry of the new mobile corporate strategies. Then just keep doing what they do best: build products that plug and play very, very nicely with the rest of Microsoft's portfolio, and offer better corporate support for those products. Instead of trying to figure out how to make a slicker Metro, how about making Sharepoint suck less? Keep the direction of VS going forward. Microsoft's "next big things" should be focused on innovating the corporate workspace. Stop trying to get tangled up in the Apple/Google wars and start focusing on challenging things like Google Docs, Box, and Red Hat instead. Those are Microsoft's real competitors. It seems like they're very conflicted and confused about who they are supposed to be. They're not the cool new unproven software maker. They're the people whose products you use when you want to reduce IT costs and modernize legacy application portfolios.
• rburhum 14y ago
  Horrible late move. What an incredible waste of resources. How many Linux users will buy Office? Instead, their resources would be better spent creating a Google docs killer freemium service. But what do I know...
• dannywoodz 14y ago
  Microsoft should release their own Linux distribution along with it. Imagine how attractive that might be: a version of Linux, with support contracts, that is guaranteed to work with Microsoft Office. The only drawback, of course, is that it would weaken the need for Windows itself. But, given the disasters that have been Vista and Windows 8, maybe they should look at long term survival rather than tying themselves to that particular anchor? They could even call it Lindows ;-) [yes, I know]
• randomsearch 14y ago
  If I were making decisions at MS, I would plan for a future O/S built upon Linux. It makes so much sense. RS
• genwin 14y ago
  I'm not going to increase memory allocated to Linux from 2GB to 4GB+ to run MS Office, even if it's free.
• snambi 14y ago
  I hope they bundle outlook too. Outlook is the main reason i am still using my macbook and windows. Even i do most of my work on Linux, i need to communicate with others through outlook.Actually having outlook on Linux is good enough.
• forgotAgain 14y ago
  The money quote: This rumor stems from a source in Brussels, Belgium, who spoke to Phoronix’s Michael Larabel at FOSDEM, one of Europe’s larger open source conferences. According to this source, who is presumably one of Microsoft’s open source developers, Microsoft is taking a “meaningful look” at releasing a full Linux port of Office in 2014. This is as thin as it gets for journalistic sources. I call BS.
  • tomku 14y ago
    ExtremeTech reporting on a Phoronix rumor is basically the perfect storm of over-hyped under-sourced tech journalism.
    • tadfisher 14y ago
      I wouldn't call most tech blogs these days "journalism". A journalist would at least put a little blurb in the story describing their attempt to contact Microsoft and corroborate the story.
• dorkrawk 14y ago
  I think this would be great because it would really let people use what they want. Office is good at what it does. There are lots of people who run Linux who could benefit from it. If you're not one of those people and Google Docs or LibreOffice works for you, that's fine you can keep using that. And from Microsoft's point of view, allowing more users to have access to Office makes setting up a Microsoft ecosystem an easier sell for a company. There is plenty of expensive enterprise software to be sold to companies that ties into Office. If companies can buy it without worrying about forcing an OS change for employees who are already productive with their current setup, that makes for an easier sale for MS.
• pippy 14y ago
  Desktop Linux biggest problem is bad software. LibreOffice is great, but it's still 10 years behind Office. GIMP is a joke. NetBeans and Aptana fantastic but come nowhere near the visual studio or xcode. It's a shame because some Linux distros make Mac OS X and Windows look like a joke. Have you tried http://elementaryos.org/ http://elementaryos.org/? it's like warm pillow on a cold night. A brilliant example of UI done right. I'm excited to see Steam come to Linux. If Office were to come, it Desktop Linux has a bright future.
• easternmonk 14y ago
  Yes. They should also have iOS and Android versions of MS OFFICE.
• toddnessa 14y ago
  Look for Microsoft to try to squash those in open source who are already nicely serving up quality office products without charge. Could this be why Oracle stopped working to develop Open Office (who btw allowed you to not only open but also save in MS Office file formats)? Did they know something about this that we didn't know? What happened with Open Office did not pass the smell test. Perhaps this is why. Hopefully, Apache can revive the efforts and get things moving forward again with Open Office.