On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Sunder wrote:

Oh get over it. There are other formats. You ever heard of XML? HTML? RTF?

Yes, as a matter of fact. RTF is an MS format, BTW. They do change it sometimes, breaking various attempts at interoperability. They don't do it much; it seems like something they forget to break much of the time.

If the day comes where MS Office DRM only works with MS Office DRM, how many people will switch to it? If your company is willing to switch to it, then they'll give you a PC with it on it. If they don't, then they can't expect you to interact with them via such formats and can't require you to do so.

You sound like someone's holding a gun to your head and requiring you to have MS Office.

No, there's no gun to anyone's head. However, as part of negotiating my current contract (I'm a partner in a small software development company), we recieved lots of MS Word/Excel docs. When you're negotiating new business, saying "erm, I don't do windows. Can you give me something else" is a bit of a show stopper. By comparison, if you're selling someone a car, are you going to stop them mid-sale and ask that they please haggle in Euros? (And in case you're curious, our project is entirely open source driven.)

Microsoft is not the DMV. You don't need to use their software.

For that matter, one can drive without a license. I see your distinction, however it is very difficult to do business without MS software. I'm typing this on a Linux-running laptop, which is my primary user-level machine, and in order to do business, have to run Crossover. (And I do own my MS Office license.) All of my proposals are written in plain text and sometimes, done in Postgres when I need spreadsheet-like behavior. They have to be rendered in Word format for client consumption. (Open source spreadsheets still suck, in my opinion.)

And no, I will never be part of your problem because the documents I will create for non work use will be made with Open Office or will be plain text, html, or xml files.

That's a rather fine point to put on it. There isn't much difference between work and non-work for me. Rather, there is, but nonwork choices directly impact my work choices. You seem to offload a lot of your choices onto your company.

If I'm required to use a DRM'ed Office for work, then fine, my company owns those documents anyway and they can do whatever the fuck they like with them either way. It doesn't matter to me at all -- it's their call, it's their company, it's their documents.

Just workin' for the man, eh?

Either way, how much a revolt do you think there will be if Microsoft decides to lock down their tools (such as word) to the point where they can no longer export to HTML, plain text, RTF should the author wish it to do so and provides whatever passphrases or ID's needed to unlock the document and export it out?

Honestly, this is supposition, entirely unsupported by anything other than my intuition about how companies I've worked for in the past behave. Feel free to ignore. I think they'll lap it up. Along with expensive and annoying licensing terms, companies get no-forward emails and expiring spreadsheets. Think about what Enron would have done with that. Hell, I suspect MS probably evaluated what they did wrong in the antitrust trial in order to avoid similar outcomes in the future. There's a market there.

Who would buy such a dog of a product? Do you think businesses are so stupid that they'd put up with a product that jails them in? Get real son, you're howling at the moon!

Um. Who owns the market in "desktop productivity software"?

You want to make a difference? Go ahead, wipe every bit of Microsoft wares off all your machines and burn the CD's you've installed them from. Go all open source and show others the right way. At least I'd have some respect for you for voting with your wallet and practicing what you preach.

Right now all you're doing is bitching that you're forced to buy and use Microsoft Office. I say that's bullshit, and you know it.

I use MS software for interoperability testing (much like I use Quickbooks, some Oracle wares, etc.), and for client communication. Everything else in my company is open source. Everything we deploy is open source, unless the client asks for something else. They typically pay for that choice, not only because I'm frequently not familiar with the software they choose, but also because it's a bitch to work with (anyone else ever have to deal with Adobe Distiller under unix?) It isn't bullshit that to operate as a business entity, one needs MS software. I can certainly dick around with my personal website and write my memoirs without it, and 98% of what I do for a living is MS free, getting business without it (read aloud as "public interfaces") is nearly impossible. Perhaps you can ignore that, becuase you're just working for the man, and it isn't your fault that you write MS Word docs. DRM is going to be another cost. I'll have to have a real MS box on hand again, and the problem will be how it worms in to other parts of the business, diverting me from my favored platform. You can say you're not forced to use it. You're also not forced to do anything but swear at other people in public. -j -- Jamie Lawrence jal@jal.org "In my little way, I'm sneakily helping people understand a bit more about the sort of people God likes." - Larry Wall.