IBM Throws Our M$ Office

[Dexter1979]

Check this out -> Linux Magazine

Another small victory for Open Source altho it is their own product

[ken_yap]

That sounds nice, but I have doubts about the veracity of the article in some respects, especially as it seems to be repeating second hand news. The original German article makes no mention of a 10 day deadline that I can see. One has to be careful about sloppy journalism whatever the source.

[Confuseling]

Hmm...

I'm not sure what I think of that. I can see very good reasons for forcing your employees to use open formats, but I don't like the idea of forcing them to use your own software - it smacks of lack of faith in it, and seems to commit the very sins of distortion of free decision that people hate Microsoft for in the first place.

I guess you can fight fire with fire, and I guess they could make the case that by forcing their employees to use it, it will rapidly improve (who better to report bugs?), but still... if you've got a few bob lying around (IBM aren't who they used to be - but they're no upstart either), then just stump up the development, make it work so people *want* to use it...

Heck, you could offer cash incentives to all staff that submit patches or report legitimate bugs / well thought out wishlist items...

That'd get 'em using it (and make it work!)...

ETA - re patches, I didn't actually realise it wasn't open source. But there are reports they're intending to incorporate later open office code into it. That must mean they're opening the source, no?

[john_hudson]

It doesn't sound like IBM which generally works over long timescales. From some recent figures, I understand that only about 7% of their desktops run Linux - but of course this could simply mean they are not 'upgrading' to MS Office 2007 on any desktop.