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Goodbye OpenOffice, Hello LibreOffice
40hz:
Some play.
Some lose.
And some just fold their cards and go home. 8)
Hard to feel sorry for them since they were the ones who precipitated the whole situation by trying to get heavy with everybody. Maybe Oracle will finally learn a hard truth: the world is a complex place. You don't get to make up all the rules of the game just because you happen to own the bat and the ball.
Even Microsoft knows that by now.
:)
xtabber:
Even Microsoft knows that by now.
:)
-40hz (June 01, 2011, 05:30 PM)
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In the early days, when there was real competition among word processing and spreadsheet programs, Microsoft Word and Excel were not copy protected, whereas the market leaders, WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 were.
Once Microsoft had demolished the competition, it added copy protection to its office software.
zridling:
Oracle finally gives up
-Lashiec (June 01, 2011, 04:50 PM)
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For the sake of the license, that's good news, especially for IBM. But for now, OpenOffice died the minute LibreOffice released its first update after incorporating. Now if they will just work on making it easier to save a file more accurately to ePUB format, I'll be ecstatic.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/oracle-gives-openoffice-to-apache/9035
40hz:
Once Microsoft had demolished the competition, it added copy protection to its office software.
-xtabber (June 01, 2011, 10:02 PM)
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Can't really fault them for that. The casual theft of Office and Windows was completely out of control for about 20 years. Even normally honorable companies and organizations were pirating copies like there was no tomorrow because nothing was stopping them from doing it. It almost became a habit after a while.
I'm not a Microsoft apologist, but they do have a business to run. And activation and "genuine advantage" aren't too burdensome the way they've implemented it. I only know of one person that had a legitimate tech issue with it. And a simple phone call got it cleared up in less than fifteen minutes. Everybody else I've run into that had problems was playing licensing games with Microsoft.
:)
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Note: It comes as as a shock to most people when they discover that the less expensive OEM copy of Windows and/or Office (which came pre-installed on the brand new PC they bought) is usually licensed for use on that specific PC only, and is not transferable to a different machine. Even if the machine it was originally installed on died. It's up to the PC manufacturer how best to cover you if that happens. If you're out of warranty, you're likely out of luck.
It pays to read the EULAs. (You did read them didn't you? :-\ )
xtabber:
Once Microsoft had demolished the competition, it added copy protection to its office software.
-xtabber (June 01, 2011, 10:02 PM)
--- End quote ---
Can't really fault them for that. The casual theft of Office and Windows was completely out of control for about 20 years. Even normally honorable companies and organizations were pirating copies like there was no tomorrow because nothing was stopping them from doing it. It almost became a habit after a while.
I'm not a Microsoft apologist, but they do have a business to run. And activation and "genuine advantage" aren't too burdensome the way they've implemented it. I only know of one person that had a legitimate tech issue with it. And a simple phone call got it cleared up in less than fifteen minutes. Everybody else I've run into that had problems was playing licensing games with Microsoft.
:)
-40hz (June 02, 2011, 01:20 PM)
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I think you missed the point. Microsoft could afford to allow piracy 20 years ago because Word and Excel were not their main source of revenue and were not major players in the office market. They winked at unlicensed users because they knew that would get them a huge share of the market among those who could or would not pay for WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 or other programs that typically cost $300 and up per user at the time.
Microsoft later bundled free or very low cost copies of Office with computers running Windows 3.1 and 95, which further undercut the comptetion. The approach was purely predatory, and it was successful. Microsoft Office became the single standard in the workplace, after which they were able to raise prices and institute draconian anti-piracy measures, both techonolgical and legal, to preserve their position.
Microsoft continues to provide free or very low cost legal copies of Office software to students and academics, not out of generosity or social conscience, but because they know that keeps new workers entering the job market from bringing other, lower cost alternatives into the corporate workplace.
You are right, of course, that they have a business to run, and while bare-knuckled, these practices were not necessarily abusive, unlike some of their others (e.g., IE vs. Netscape). But it does illustrate the importance of preserving a competitive marketplace in software, as in any other product.
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