
Microsoft looking to release Office for Linux in 2014 - lispython
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/147813-microsoft-looking-to-release-office-for-linux-in-2014?utm_source=rss
======
pwthornton
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.

~~~
dhaivatpandya
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).

~~~
InclinedPlane
Inflection points and mind share.

Microsoft no longer has the mind share of either the public or the development
community. The "cool kids" tend not to develop on MS platforms these days by
choice. Look at Jeff Atwood, he was a prominant asp.net mvc dev
(stackoverflow) and he has chosen to use rails for his next project
(discourse). This trend is all the more troublesome because C# is really a
fanstastic language. But the downsides of being tied to the Windows/MSSQL/IIS
platform is like have a boat anchor around your ankle. Similarly, how many
people are excited about windows 8 vs. iOS or android?

Also, look at Microsoft's big pushes, bing and winphone 7+. Both have been at
best partial successes, and they need more than that for a company their size.

The exact moment in time that is the biggest problem for a company facing
potential decline like Microsoft is not when they have ceded the majority of
marketshare to a competitor, nor is it when their revenues and marketshare
being to contract. The key moment is the inflection point in their growth
rate, when the 2nd derivative turns from positive to negative. That's the
point where if nothing is done then eventually the peak will be reached and
decline will set in. That's the point where there is still the opportunity to
turn things around, it's the point where the resources are still available and
the least work needs to be done to make a change.

~~~
leoedin
I would have thought that the primary users of Office are the corporate world.
Large companies use Windows, and will continue to use Windows for at least the
next decade. Fashionable development may have mind share, but corporate
practice isn't particularly fashionable. Corporate licenses must make up a
huge proportion of office income.

Apple's made no real moves to become more corporate friendly in the desktop
space (and things like their recent blocking of Java definitely won't help
them) and Linux on the corporate desktop is miles away from adoption (some
public bodies which did adopt it have moved back to Windows).

People talk about the new era of tablet computing, but tablets are pretty much
useless for a lot of typing-heavy work. Perhaps eventually a descendant of the
tablet (perhaps something like the chromebook) will start to dislodge windows
for lighter-weight corporate usage, but I believe it'll be a long time coming.
Most large companies have piles of weird internal web-based tools which can't
deal with touch, perhaps run on Java or Flash or depend on IE6 technologies,
and the slow and cumbersome process of replacing them will take an age.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Tablets are fine for typing-heavy work, just use a bluetooth keyboard with the
tablet on a stand. This mode of operation isn't common yet, but that's because
tablets are still relatively new.

Edit: to clarify, right now we're at a point where it's rare for a tablet (or
smartphone) to be someone's primary or only computing device, but as they
become more popular that will increasingly be the case, and then people will
develop new habits and new modes of use to fit these devices into their work
or their lives. Meaning that if people are using them at work then they'll
tend to have some way to use a physical keyboard with them for the times when
an onscreen keyboard won't cut it.

------
Xion
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.

~~~
InclinedPlane
It's a smart move. It's the "strategy tax" which is dumb. It is
extraordinarily rare for it to be a smart business choice to not have all of
your products be as promiscuous as possible.

Imagine where .net/visual studio/et al would be today if they'd been shipping
official VMs (CLRs) targeting linux/unix ages ago.

At this point it's questionable whether or not office is really going to be
the breaking point that keeps people from fleeing the MS ship. More so,
there's a strong risk that it could work the other way, that people "building
a life" (or a business) outside of the Windows walls could find that it's not
so hard to live without office, which would hurt MS even more. Also, ensuring
that office remains the de facto business standard for the foreseeable future
means that MS will always have that opening to entice people back to the
Windows platform, the same way mp3 players enticed people to switch to macs,
iphones, and ipads.

~~~
mahyarm
How much money would .NET make them if it wasn't attached to Windows OS sales?
If they detached .NET & Visual Studio, where will they make the money from it?
For Sun, Java at least ran high end server product sales.

~~~
InclinedPlane
It's complicated. The runtime, the libraries, and the web server are all free.
But Visual Studio makes money, and the team foundation system makes a lot of
money. If you take all of that together then on its own it would be a company
with ten figure annual revenue.

In a hypothetical alternate Universe where .net 1.0 launched on linux/unix as
well and they were able to gain a lot more traction in those communities then
one would expect VS and perhaps TFS sales to increase concomitantly. Also,
such an independent company would probably have a wider range of products for
sale if they weren't tied to the Windows/Office ATM, though of course that's
more speculative.

------
xaa
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.

~~~
snogglethorpe
> _Libreoffice is unacceptably broken in a thousand small ways_

Of course, based on my painful experience, MS Word is _also_ broken in a
thousand small ways. Whether this breakage qualifies as "unacceptable" I
dunno; I guess people are used to it and so have learned to avoid much of it.
Yay? ><

~~~
fab13n
In this context, where MS-Word is a de facto standard for various
administration, "broken" means "not behaving like MS-Word". Which is perhaps
the only test which MS-Word passes with flying colors.

~~~
Roboprog
Alas, the post-"Vista-fication" version of MS Office doesn't even behave like
MS Office.

Amusing anecdote: I have 2 teenage daughters. They used to complain about
having to use Open/Libre Office at home. Then the school "upgraded" Office to
the newer Vista/7 compatible version. "See, kids, it _does_ suck, just like
Dad said" (I got the "upgrade" at work about the same time). After which, the
version at school was so different, anyway, that they just kinda got over it
and went "whatever".

------
wildmXranat
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
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

~~~
grimgrin
I'm starting to appreciate Google Spreadsheets more. Hear me out: javascript
in the spreadsheet. Today my boss needed me to make a get request from one of
our spreadsheets when some column is edited. I just love that you can do that.
Maybe Excel does something to this nature, I have no idea.

~~~
mkhattab
Google Refine (now Open Refine) [1] is something that is also useful for data
analysis and munging.

[1]: <http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/>

------
forgotAgain
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
ExtremeTech reporting on a Phoronix rumor is basically the perfect storm of
over-hyped under-sourced tech journalism.

~~~
tadfisher
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.

------
foxylad
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.

------
bhauer
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
If you're using powerpoint as your diagraming tool, you might be doing
something wrong. Try Dia, it's open source and free.

~~~
CJefferson
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).

------
nathanstitt
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
Seconded.

Article is link bait.

I don't see any comments actually thinking through what such a move would mean
for MS.

~~~
jebblue
I just saw several insightful comments, you saw none?

------
noonespecial
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
_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
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
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.

~~~
nsp
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

------
malandrew
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.

------
dmoo
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_system...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems)
So maybe the point is that if you can't keep everyone of these on windows at
least you can keep them using office.

------
notatoad
ExtremeTech re-reporting a rumour from phoronix? Sounds trustworthy.

------
dorkrawk
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.

------
codeka
OK, I'll believe this when I see it.

------
homosaur
Hey, why not? Let the Office division compete on its own. I actually liked the
last Mac version.

------
jonlarson
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
Microsoft doesn't lose money on Windows.

------
prawks
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.

------
rbanffy
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.

------
loeg
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.

------
hamidpalo
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
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.

------
dylangs1030
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).

------
vondur
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.

------
DigitalSea
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
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
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.

------
jiggy2011
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
Well at least it wasn't "an undisclosed source familiar with the situation".

------
damian2000
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.

~~~
jswinghammer
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
For Mac OS X. I remember they created WLM for classic Mac OS back in 1994 or
so.

------
ibrahima
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
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.

------
yum
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.

------
pippy
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/>? 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.

------
nikcub
_"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

------
toddnessa
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.

------
runn1ng
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?

~~~
shriphani
I got bitten by this problem once:
[http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/t7MZYkHnL...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/t7MZYkHnLV8)
. 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).

------
gambiting
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
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.

------
JVIDEL
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.

------
dannywoodz
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]

------
atpaino
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.

------
rhokstar
Never thought I'd see the day that this would happen.

~~~
_jason
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
Yeah, like Steam for Linux.

------
bjoe_lewis
>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 :)

------
saosebastiao
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
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.

------
nholland
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.

------
hooande
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.

------
snambi
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.

------
motiejus
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.

------
itsbits
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.

------
rburhum
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...

------
anoncow
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.

------
taf2
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

~~~
Auguste
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
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.

------
padmanabhan01
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...

------
lucb1e
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?

------
bobsy
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.

------
genwin
I'm not going to increase memory allocated to Linux from 2GB to 4GB+ to run MS
Office, even if it's free.

------
crowhack
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 :).

------
meaty
My arse. Sorry but this is link bait.

~~~
nailer
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
Thanks - that's pretty much what is in my head as well.

------
jpkeisala
That's not going to happen. There is just not market for it, nothing to do
with Windows vs. Linux.

------
randomsearch
If I were making decisions at MS, I would plan for a future O/S built upon
Linux. It makes so much sense.

RS

------
webreac
On my PC, I do not want to see any Microsoft software outside of a virtualbox
jail.

------
easternmonk
Yes. They should also have iOS and Android versions of MS OFFICE.

------
eyko
The big question is... GTK or QT? I'm guessing QT.

------
zoowar
We're doing just fine without them. LibreOffice!

------
paines
So, hell froze over ?!? Goodness ....

------
EtienneK
Awesome news.

Next step: .NET

------
lwat
I don't think so.

