[plug] Fwd: IBM to Launch MS Office for Linux

[James Devenish]

IBM to Launch MS Office for Linux
Sverker Brundin
Computer Sweden, Stockholm
16/02/2004 07:50:41
http://www.computerworld.com.au/nindex.php?id=958840751&fp=16&fpid=0

[Read the above for the whole article -- I applied the selective
snippers to this copy...]

    As part of its initiative to put Linux on the desktop, IBM Corp.
    wants to migrate Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite to Linux. Microsoft
    said it's not involved and suggests that IBM might do it by
    emulation.
    [...]
    Many Linux users would prefer to run both Microsoft's Office suite
    and IBM's Lotus Notes. This is actually possible, using so-called
    emulation. Companies such as U.S.-based Codeweavers offer such
    products. But this will not give you applications that are actually
    compiled for Linux.
    [...]
    "The Office package is very good. If there's anything from Microsoft
    that shines, that's it. Frankly, we choose to port all our solutions
    to Office," said Pettersson.
    [...]
    Pettersson is referring to IBM's porting of Microsoft's Outlook
    e-mail client to the Domino server system, which was made possible
    using code from Microsoft. The reason was that Domino is a major
    player in e-mail.

Yay! Can hardly wait to have Outloook for Linux (hope they do Outlook
Express, too -- they did it for UNIX and you can guess what I good idea
everyone thought that was!). BTW given how OpenOffice closely resembles
Microsoft Office, and is so difficult to use, it would seem pretty
illogical to purport Office to be excellent in its current form. But I
can see it's more comfortable for IBM to produce a familiar 'clone' than
to try something better. I think the story was written by reporter from
The Onion!