Microsoft releasing an Office for Linux turns into a defacto "we realize
that Linux is an enterprise ready desktop OS" admission.
The few units of Office for *nix that they would move is not worth the
PR nightmare that Microsoft would have to endure.
The whole idea of Windows is not to make money at the desktop level, but
to provide a platform in which to make other Microsoft software more
appealing to buy.
Harry McGregor wrote:
What MS should have done at the same time they rewrote Office for OS-X
would have been to release Office for Linux (maybe specific
distributions, etc), and use FlexLM licensing (either a license server,
or hardware key per system).
They could have priced it almost the same as Office+Windows, and made a
killing, and kept a lot of people from looking at alternative Office
platforms.
