I thought this had always been a MSFT business plan?
Given that very few people in china are going to spend a years salary on a full copy of MS Office the alternatives are:
1, They develop their own local software
2, They adopt and localize some open source software
3, They pirate your software making you a defacto standard
They can't say that outright though. They have to pretend to want piracy to end in China, even if that's not the case. They probably know that there's little that will be done to stem the issue, at least at the present time.
If I were the chinese I wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to say -
"you're right we will introduce the death penalty for software piracy, ban the sale of imported software at below US list price - and we will put 100,000 programmers on a plan to produce OpenOffice for the people"
However, the default font technology in most open source stacks is Harfbuzz and not SIL Graphite. The attitude towards graphite can be summarized thus (http://behdad.org/text/):
This allows for developing fonts for minority scripts and languages without having to update the engine first. For established scripts though, there is not much reason to prefer Graphite over OpenType.
And by minority scripts we mean 1/5th of the world's population, the two fastest growing economies and open source friendly governments.
</end rant>
"Oh and the name "libreoffice" is REALLY, REALLY not working out in Asia. Even for english speaking ones."
Huh, why in the world not? Is is a problem of limited vocabulary? Your double emphasis on 'really' makes it seem like they know what it means, but are actually opposed to the concept, is that it? This is just kind of a pretty weird comment without some supporting explanation.
It's not a question of understanding the meaning of "libre". Its about the pronounciation. I used to be able to tell people to go and download "Open Office" and they remember.
Phonetically, if you use "Librii Office" - they dont. "Libr Office" they dont. I am not sure why - but I have spoken to dozens in India (accountants, lawyers, etc.) and the name just doesnt have recall. Libre also is not a Commonwealth English word.
I'm sure everyone came up with that name with a noble intent - but it simply isnt working in India which is extremely Anglicized as compared to most other Asian countries. That name really needs to change.
On a curious note - in the U.S. have you spoken to a non-geek, say your pizza delivery dude, and have brand recall of "Libreoffice" ?
Given two super powers, one infested with patents and IP laws that limit progress, the other one with zero patent laws where everybody can further develop the work of others, which one do you think will progress faster?
If I was the chinese president I would be flipping the bird to the cameras with a smile in my face.
One more price differential "Western" workers are working against.
I recall when India was starting up its external-facing tech industry. There were a few conversations about how one way they kept costs down was by not paying for any software licenses.
I found and find it ironic, that the same companies that are so gung ho about IP rights in the "West", were (and are) perfectly willing to take advantage of their disregard when seeking lower prices by farming work out to "developing economies".
At this point, I respect IP inasmuch as it can break me financially or maybe get me thrown in the pokey. Morally, though? I'll make my decisions on an individual basis, but I find I have no respect nor regard for a great deal of claimed rights. The claimants are bald faced hypocrites.
There's no security on the client side often even when you connect that client to a server.
Think of a world in which, instead of shipping binary executable code to users, we shipped them full source code. They'd be able to go in and selectively edit out the "licensing" stuff, remove the lines where the app dials home, etc.
This is actually the world we live in, but we call this source code "executable code". Now we pretend that executable code is "obfuscated" or "cryptic" or "difficult to understand" but that's just so we can keep our sanity. Executable code is transparently open, well documented, and perfectly editable on any major OS, including Win and *nix, regardless of what sort of checksums or digital signing you do to ensure local files haven't been changed, all the security experts in the world can't put Humpty Dumpty back together on the client side, or keep him from shattering to a million pieces in the first place.
Even still, assuming ludicrous 100% market penetration in the US and China. Microsoft would still be making 1/3 in China that it is in the US (assuming 0% piracy in the US).
I don't know a single person who has legal copies of Office or Photoshop that didn't come free and I've lived in the UK and live in Canada.
What MSFT has done in the Western world is to ensure that companies (who can afford to pay) can't have pirated copies. Essentially this is because corporations can be sued at the drop of an envelope. I somehow don't think China has the ease in filing suits for small amounts against companies.
Chinese lawsuits are said to be quicker, more document focused, and less witness-testimony focused than US suits.
Downsides? Not as much discovery (don't expect the court to force the company to do a software audit), and low damage (think money back, but no outrage).
A little off topic, but now I'm very interested: How does Google docs make money? I don't recall ever being targeted for an ad by the content, and obviously regular users don't pay.
Business users pay $50/seat/year after the 100th user. That's how they make money. Btw, Microsoft is similar. I bet that legit sales to individuals are tiny compared to corporate sales.
It's $50/seat/year, no matter how many users. The "Standard" version (they've renamed it to something else, now) has lower quotas and no (non-bulletin board) support. It also now has a cap of 50 seats (used to be higher). For a while, you could only do video hosting and some other things on the business/"Premier" plan; not sure about now.
Academic/non-profit is "free", but you have to prove your status somehow.
I still argue it's a bargain for the "average" business, compared to trying to host and manage this stuff yourself. I don't know how good the support is, though -- the rest of Google's individual / customer level support leaves me rather doubtful. I also don't know what happens when the subpoenas start flying.
If they ever establish HIPAA compliance/certification (I don't know whether it is worth their while), they may get a "bazillion" health care providers. Especially if that "whatever is currently their health records management offer" thing works out.
But that would put them in the middle, as the records holder, of an awful lot of litigation. From that perspective, it might be a real loser for them. (Maybe the lobbyists are already working on this vis à vis some favorable legislation.)
It can. But you have the lower space quotas, limited (more limited?) support, and a cap of 50 user accounts. After that, you have to go "Premier" (or whatever it's named, now), and then its $50/year/seat for all seats, as I understand it.
For a small business with limited resources, the free "Standard" version may be fine. Especially if you're backing up and it's not a critical failure point. Of course, for most businesses, this would likely not be the case and it would become so.
But if you are small and only have a seat or three, $50 - $150 / year is pretty cheap for what they offer (including however many 9's of availability).
You can even get a public web site out of it (the property formerly known as Jotspot), as long as you can live with their templates and/or restrictions. And with that, a WYSIWYG editor that a normal mortal might actually manage to use mostly effectively -- especially for smaller changes to text after the site is established.
(And you know a random herd of traffic isn't going to take the host down.)
EDIT: But I would definitely register the domain name somewhere else. Google will sell you a registration during set up, but IMHO that may be asking for trouble if you ever want to move it, particularly at the free/Standard level.
1, They develop their own local software
2, They adopt and localize some open source software
3, They pirate your software making you a defacto standard
Which would you prefer - long term?