Microsoft going Open Source

Microsoft is introube for breaking the anti-trust law.. how? It is because of MS Office.. almost every business out there, uses MS Office and it only runs on Windows and on Mac.

Microsoft's only option is to either make MS Office compatible for every O/S including Linux and unix and more.. Or.. they would make it Open Source too...
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its the only way to make other softwares company compete with MS..

MS was also forced to make Internet Explorer an Open Source...


"Human knowledge belongs to the world..."

"The software industry is binary... you could either be a one or a zero.. alive or dead..."

You do have an option:

Sun Microsystems offers StarOffice for free and it has everything t hat MS Office does and the latest version is compatible w/MS Office in that a StarOffice user can read MS Office created docs and an MS Office user can read StarOffice created docs....

There's graphics and presentation, database, spreadsheet, document editor...all in StarOffice.

Oh really :eek: :o ? hahaahhahahahhahahahah :p :D

I went to download staroffice and they wanted to charge me for it.......



strange?


And I have Koffice installed (comes with redhat 7.2) and its compatibility with msoffice sucks ass.

But I wish to try staroffice.

heheh this news reminds me of the movie "anti-trust".

yeah well other users may have other options.. but like i said.. MS Office is starting to dominate the Office Application industry and its endangering the competition amongst other software companies...

already MS Office and IE is starting to slowly monopolize the whole industry... and if MS wont start making MS Office and IE open source... in few years time.. we'd be all using MS Windows wid MS applications on it..

Unless we all get fed up of it and all move to Linux and StarOffice / KOffice... That way everyone will be able to share their documents with compatible office suites AND there will be a choice of (free) office suites and operating systems on which to run them. That is the only way forward, as i keep saying I only have Windows in order to play games that use DirectX and Windows-only (MS Made) technologies... and to maintain compatibility with my school that uses MS Office 2000.

I don't know of any Office Suite that is free for business use aside from KOffice... StarOffice is free for personal use, but you must pay to use it for business's...

I think Microsoft releasing the full source for its apps is actually a bad idea... look at how much people can exploit problems without the source.. give them access to the source, and there could be a LOT of trouble..

On the other hand, Microsoft making it Open Source would be wonderful... Imagine the document compatibility that StarOffice could give if they could see the source for how it saves the documents, rather than reverse engineering them...

I've used StarOffice.. I didn't like its interface much, it was a while ago though, and I've heard that it has improved a lot.. The thing which really killed it for me was the document compatibility... couldn't read half the notes I wrote at TAFE, which sucked... had to go back to Office....

So my opinion... release some of the source code, rather than make the whole thing open source..... but then again, thats just my opinion... :D

we'll see about them becoming open-source.... i know they are *supposed* to, but i have feeling they will get out of it. they got out of putting windows open-source already. and since they are donating $4 billion to charity... they may just buy immunity... never count out the trickery of bill gates. i've learned all too well not to get excited about these sorts of things since in the past 3 years or so i have heard plenty about them *having* to do something and it never coming to fruition... oh well we will see.

Is this really the news? MS *says* they are going Open Source, or the US Government says that they have to?

Quick note: Star Office is *not* Open Source, and neither is koffice.

I will believe it when I see it, they have weaseled out of similar litigation in the past, and I see no reason why they would not this time. They have all of the non-geeks by the balls. A world full of people that don't know anything about computers outside of `start' -> `programs' etc.

If any of their code was open source it would sure as hell be more secure if they allowed independednt programmers to fix that buggy **** and give it back to them. Might be able to get a security fix out of them before it is a world wide epidemic with a million script kiddies exploiting it on an almost daily basis. :D

But like I said, I don't see it happening.

In reply to the star office I think what you meant was what was on the CD I was able to look at source code no problem. And I got mine free from a Computer Convention that was hosted by Sun. Maybe I was lucky and got an unusual copy but I can't be the only one out there.

As far as using Star Office I think it's great it has everything that I need and since it's compatible with all Microsoft Office programs such as Word, Excel , Access I don't need to go out and buy those programs. Thank you sun. Also the similarity they but into what looks like windows is awsome. Thank YOu Sun.

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Is this really the news? MS *says* they are going Open Source, or the US Government says that they have to?

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well MS is forced to make it Open Source coz they already broke the anti-trust law...

and MS Office is really getting more and more popular especially the MS Power Point. almost ALL the businesses use Power Point for their business presentation. and ALL use MS Word for their documentation although when it comes to spread sheets its a bit more loose since MYOB, and Lotus is competing with Excel...

MS Access is not that much widely used so as the MS Front Page..
the only reason why MS Office is much of a "need" to most businesses is because of the Power Point, Word and Exel. And the only way they can use those Apps is by using Windows...

so MS has both advantage when it comes to the Office Suite and the O/S.

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Originally posted by freeOn
In reply to the star office I think what you meant was what was on the CD I was able to look at source code no problem. And I got mine free from a Computer Convention that was hosted by Sun. Maybe I was lucky and got an unusual copy but I can't be the only one out there.

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I also got a very cheap copy of star office, I just had to pay 3$ for the CD, it had other nice prog's on it too. I got an academic version. When you don't want to pay let's say the 3$ then get it from some ftp site.

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well MS is forced to make it Open Source coz they already broke the anti-trust law...

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granted, they broke the anti-trust law... but they will get out of it. there is already talk that the supreme court may reverse there decision and declare microsoft a natural monopoly, and just regulate the prices (like they used to do with electricity). nothing is definite, and i know that m$ will fight tooth and nail to stop open source. the original ruling was that windows would be open source, and that sure as hell didn't happen, so i doubt this will.

yeah true to that... MS would do anything to stop their softwares going Open Source.. though i cant be sure that they would go open source.. i have a feeling that they will try to BUY their way out of it..

i meanlike.. MS has already LOTS of money... why are they afraid of making just 2 of their softwares an Open Soruce?..