Interesting stuff! "M$ porting Office to Linux?" http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2224863,00.htmlTitle: ZDNN: MS porting Office to Linux?
   
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MS porting Office to Linux? |
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It may sound crazy, but developers say all the signs -- and rumors -- are there. By Mary Jo Foley, Sm@rt Reseller March 11, 1999 4:34 PM PT |
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Could Microsoft Corp. be doing the unthinkable in porting Office to the Linux operating system?
Rumors concerning the existence of an Office port to Linux have been circulating increasingly in recent weeks.
Developers: Work is underway Another developer active on a number of industry news groups mentioned that he had been in touch with developers working for Microsoft who were working on moving Windows application programming interfaces (APIs) to Linux.
Another developer and Linux advocate, who also requested anonymity, agreed that a decision by Microsoft to port Office to Linux could have the unintended effect of fueling Linux at NT's expense. A Microsoft Office port to Linux "will be good for corporate adoption of Linux," the developer said. "I can tell you that I would be able to move my main workstation over to Linux if I had Office for it, since that is what my employer standardized on."
Hurdles ahead Porting Windows applications to Linux is not easy, especially if the Windows apps are tied tightly to the operating system, notes Scott Petry, vice president of marketing with Cygnus Solutions, a cross-platform Windows-Linux porting tool vendor based in Sunnyvale, Calif. Cygnus is working with Corel Corp. to port WordPerfect to Linux via the WINE Windows-to-Linux translation layer. "Office would be one of the most challenging apps to move to Unix or Linux," Petry notes. "There's the Win32 APIs and Microsoft's implementation of the Win32 APIs, which is what Office relies on. A lot of hand-coding would need to be done to move Office just to the standard Win32 API set, let alone to Linux." Microsoft also will need to create a viable business model, via which the company and its partners can make money from Office running on an open-source platform. While Corel (Nasdaq:COSFF) and Star Divison GmbH have made public their intentions to offer desktop suites on Linux, Microsoft's main rival, Lotus Development Corp., has not announced any intentions to move SmartSuite to Linux. "Customers are asking us about Linux, but we can't make money on it today," says Howard Diamond, chief executive officer of Corporate Software & Technology, a Norwood, Mass., software reseller. "Our challenge is walking the line between shareware and the corporate market. The wrap-around things -- like applications services and support, is what you need to sell." If Microsoft does undertake an Office Linux port -- even if it is only a prototype or test -- it wouldn't be the first time that the company has made sure to cover all its bases with the Office platform. Microsoft historians will remember that Microsoft denied to the bitter end that the company was doing a version of Office written in Java, only to admit officially last year that the company was working on a Java-ized Office project, which it ended up scrapping. Additional reporting by John Spooner, PCWeek.
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