MS Office for Linux - what was said

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

Stephen Ronan provides these interesting transcripts from the Friday
radio program that included Boston Globe technology writer Simson
Garfinkel, with guest appearances by Globe columnist Hiawatha Bray and
someone from Corel.  As an aside, Simon simply mentions that he
knows people in Microsoft working on porting MS Office applications
to Linux.    Jamie

(RealAudio version will be available for a week via:
http://208.208.4.105/con_07.html)

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15:34

Garfinkel: If Microsoft put its Office applications on Linux, it
would simultaneously be the very best thing for the Linux
operating system and the very worst thing for the Linux operating
system, because on the one hand it would mean we could use Linux
on our desktops as our only operating system. The main reason I
use Windows is so I can run Word. But, at  the same time, it
would basically kill the market for other word processors on
Linux, because nobody would buy a word processor that's nowhere
near as good as Word if Word was available.

Bray: Well yeah, I.. I suppose that's possible, but I don't see
that  happpening any time in the foreseeable future.  Microsoft
is obviously not.. I mean this is just not the way these guys
think, and they are not going to be supporting Linux in the
foreseeable future unless they can figure out some way to try to
destroy it like they said "We're going to support Java,"
remember?

Garfinkel: Well actually, I know that there are people inside
Microsoft who are actively working on porting the Office
applications to Linux.

Bray: Well I'm not surprised that they are because you have a lot
of serious hard core programmers in Microsoft who probably love
Linux, but the question is will Microsoft bring it to market?

Garfinkel: That's the question.
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-- 
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
http://www.cptech.org    love@cptech.org
Voice 202.387.8030, Fax 202.234.5176