Microsoft has been fighting free and open source software in court on a patent issues for quite some time. It is no secret that Microsoft had funded SCO’s lawsuits against many major players in the Linux market which Bill Gates used to slow Linux’s growth. Now, nobody cares about SCO anymore? Why? SCO filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in May of 2009. Microsoft used SCO to do ligation five years ago but lately it is has been taking matters into its own hands. First they extorted Novell into “partnering” with them. Now, I personally like Novell products, especially SUSE Linux, therefore I hope Novell stops being a willing victim in Microsoft’s patent warfare. Microsoft has bullied smaller companies too, most notably, Tomtom into settling out of court over patent issues. All three cases, Microsoft was the aggressor where it tried to hinder suing those who wish to be in the business of open source software over patent issues.
This week a small company sued Microsoft under a patent it holds and won. Microsoft was beaten at its own game. A US federal judge ordered Microsoft to stop selling Microsoft Word 2007. Should this stick, for sure this will be the end of Microsoft Office.Growlaw is following it, so we should be able to tell if Americans can buy Microsoft Word two months from now.
And I thought it would die off to technical irrelevance.
In any case, I’m sure there would be a long line of folks at this funeral. Not mourners though. These are people who want to pound another nail in this coffin.
If you are a Microsoft Office user asking yourself “What will we use?” I suggest you download Open Office for Free. It’s not complicated to install or use. With the Open Document support, you will never need to worry if your documents will open when you upgrade versions or share files with your friends. Did I mention that Open Office is Free?
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I’m also amused that M$ have been beaten at their own game.
However, I’ll only celebrate if this causes a rethink of the entire nonsensical software patenting issue.
This article offers an informative opinion on the injunction. Ignoring appeals and assuming this injunction is the end of the argument, Microsoft could still sell Word with the infringing functions removed. Furthermore, the injunction does not mention the several other applications that comprise the Office suite. A bit too soon to suggest it may cause the demise of Microsoft Office.
In regards to Word’s death by technical irrelevance, perhaps one day in a post-print future. Hopefully by then, we’ve slaked the world’s unquenchable thirst for .doc and ODF is as well supported as you described. Before that day, Wiki software would have to become as usable and functional as Word. Is anyone making something like this?
PS: I like the new site layout.
The injunction also only mentions future versions of Word.
It says:
and from the article linked before:
So, future sales (onward of 10th of October) of these products if I’m reading it right.
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Beth, listened to your talk on TLLTS radio, episode 314.
I believe Windows has internet ability integrated at its file system level, so a user can type in an address in a window url address box and obtain the firefox site or what ever location they want. I believe the ruling in the EU would be to remove IE as the default browser application, not the core file system functionality of internet, else it would require a major rewrite.
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