[KLUG Members] Re: Calling all Linux novices: -- standards, proprietary standards and neither ...

[Robert G. Brown]

>Quoting "Robert G. Brown" <bob@acm.org>:
>> Pick any proprietary file format, and you can
>> build a case study of how it effects (distorts?) the market.
>> ... and cases made in the second thread can be based on many
>> formats and their associated packages or package families.
>There are proprietary software with standards,
>Then there are proprietary software with proprietary standards.
>Microsoft Office is _neither_.

IMO semantic hairsplitting. I do understand your point, mostly that
MS Office file formats are in essense whatever MS says they are, this
week. Thus, they don't hit any standard at all.

In my view, this, combined with the market share factor, make Word, Excel,
whatever, BETTER case studies. 

>People ignorantly state, "Microsoft Office is an industry standard."
And Bill Gates invented the Internet, Or Personal Computers.
Abe Lincoln Freed the Slaves.
And The epistles were the wives of the apostles.

It's not clear to me that "People" are on this mailing list. It might be
more effective to talk about what standards do exist (primarily), rather
than thrash the dead horse of what isn't.

Lets please PLEASE not generate exigesese on my other examples of popular
myths from above. They are merely examples of similar degrees of misinfor-
mation, produced by gross oversimplification of the topic, or (in one case)
amusing but complete misunderstanding.

>It's _extremely_humorous_ that we just had this thread yesterday....
The irony is not lost on me, or many of us, I'm sure.

>..."mission critical" Access 97 database...
An oxymoron, to be sure. How did it get there?
Please note: Another rhetorical point. The answer I'm looking for is not
a technical history, but a recognition of something else. It is, to a great 
degree, non-technical, but a CULTURAL event... who said "mission critical" 
anything is going to reside in Access?

>So will someone please remind me what would be so "great" about an 
>MS Office for Linux?  [ Especially those who haven't used the MacOS 
>ports ;-> ]

By far the greatest thing about running MS Office on Linux is that when
I'm talking to someone about Linux and they ask a question like "Does 
Office run on Linux", I can say "yes", and CHANGE THE SUBJECT, probably
back to whatever I was saying in the first place. I would interpret the
question as part of the users need for that general kind of software.

I share your sentiments about a prospective port of MS Office to Linux,
the question being more an indication of the relative technical ignorance
of the questioner, both in terms of what it really takes to run Office,
and what Linux (or office software already on Linux) can do.

Frankly, I'd like to see comments from anyone running MS Office on Linux
or other non-MS platforms, regarding how well it runs, based on your
actual experience with it and whatever run-time environment you're using.
I'm not interested in specualtion about how well it MIGHT run, or even 
articles are citations about it. If we have some actual experience and
stories from people on this mailing list, it would be interesting, for 
a number of reasons.

                                                     Regards,
                                                     ---> RGB <---