The Linux Thing

01/09/02

Russell Pavlicek of Info World is really sure that Microsoft won’t port Office XP to Linux http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=625507 but I’m not nearly so sure.  Some of my Unix friends and I have been having an ongoing conversation about how much work it would take to go from the Macintosh X version of Office (which is, after all, Unix) to a Linux port (which is, after all, open source Unix).  They agree that it would be a matter of a few months for a smart team to do the port.  Of course, Russell may be right when he concludes that customers might not choose to trust their business to a Microsoft Linux port.

But there are other choices.  The Lindows crowd is also busily accommodating Windows to a few carefully selected Windows applications (Office, Intuit’s Quicken, AOL, and just a few others), as Dan Gillmor mentioned in his San Jose Mercury column http://www0.mercurycenter.com/ business/top/072186.htm recently. So customers might be able to use Office without a Microsoft-to-Linux port, but rather courtesy of the layer of translation software Lindows will place between Linux and Windows, catching and interpreting the applications API’s.

There’s more than one way to get where you want to go.  Legally, Microsoft probably can’t care (they’d get paid for an Office license either way), but it makes a big revenue difference since a Linux license carries no OS revenue toward Redmond.

Will this work?  Maybe.  If Microsoft frequently changes the Office API’s (whether to spite the Lindows folks or to add function to their own products wouldn’t matter), it would be hard to keep things working.  On the other hand, they’d also be frustrating their developer partners who they’ve worked hard to convince that Office is a good development platform.  Microsoft just had in mind that they development would occur ON TOP OF Office and not UNDERNEATH!

In the meantime, a host of office software upstarts are appearing.  None of them are exactly new, they’re just getting better and more visible.  We’re going to look at StarOffice, Gobe Productive, and ThinkFree shortly.  If you have others you think should be included, make your nominations ASAP.

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