Microsoft to give Office access to rivals

Financial Times ^ | November 21 2005 | Maija Palmer

[Amerigomag]

Microsoft will on Tuesday announce it is opening up access to its Office file formats to competitors, as part of a move to ensure the software giant does not lose lucrative government markets for its Office software.

The move will ensure that computer users will be able to open and work with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents without having to buy the Microsoft Office software to do so.

Had Microsoft failed to act on the issue, the European Commission could have stopped using Microsoft Office for the creation of public documents and advised all 25 national governments in the European Union to do the same.

Governments, especially in Europe and Asia, have been among the most significant adopters of open-source software such as Linux and Sun’s OpenOffice, a direct competitor to Microsoft Office.

[Amerigomag]

The OS community has been chipping away at MS's office productivity dominace and won a recent, favorable recommendation in the State of Massachusettes. OS's offerings still lack the maturity of MSOffice but they've come along way in the last 5 years.

The pressure must have been immense if MS opened up the code on Excel which the OS community couldn't come close to cloning.

[JustAnotherOkie]

I pity the poor guy who has to analyze that.

[Revel]

The free Open office already does this. Although sometimes not perfectly.

[Revel]

Of course I could also go in to all the things that Word does wrong in my opinion. Like how come when you insert a picture in your document it shows up on the screen, but when you print the document the pictures do not print. And how come when you use the space bar to indent and it all looks good on the screen, but when you print it out the indents don't line up on the printed page.

Word is definately not WYSISYG. Word star for Dos was better in that regard.

[dr_who_2]

Exactly. The more I've tried using the advanced functions of Excel and Word in my computer at work, the more I have to fight the urge to repartition the harddrive and put FreeBSD on it. Spreadsheets were a good idea for a while, but I think someone ought to come up with a better tool that doesn't encourage people to use screwdrivers as hammers and visa versa. As for Word, it's just a bloated, brain-dead POS. Before there was "plug and pray" there was WYSIWYG, or rather WYSIAEWYWITFP (...Anything Except What You Wanted In the First Place).

[big'ol_freeper]

*yawn* Who cares.

[goldstategop]

Microsoft still has not made its Access database program compatible with Open Office... hopefully they'll do that as well.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[fso301]

Of course I could also go in to all the things that Word does wrong in my opinion. Like how come when you insert a picture in your document it shows up on the screen, but when you print the document the pictures do not print.

I've never had such experience. Whatever picture or clipart I insert views and prints without problem.

[supercat]

Access allows users to encrypt their databases. I wonder if the encryption is anything worthwhile?

[newzjunkey]

Amazing how the U.S. anti-trust cases couldn't actually accomplished one damned thing and the EU has, too little, too late, shamed Microsoft into opening at least some of its document file formats for smooth interoperability.

Which formats, however, are they opening? I think they've got two now, the "old" ones or the XML-based ones? (No, I haven't read the whole piece.)

[Revolting cat!]

I pity the poor guy who has to analyze that.

[glorgau]

That's the trick - they'll never give a license to OpenOffice. ie. it won't really be available.

[Question_Assumptions]

Regardless of their motives, I think Microsoft deserves praise for this move.