Novell: Hubert Mantel Returns, Jeremy Allison Resigns

December 22, 2006 Leave a comment

Quite a bit going on at Novell over the last couple days. We have Hubert Mantel returning and Jeremy Allison resigning. For those that don't remember, Hubert is one of the Suse founders and had resigned from Novell a little over a year ago, saying: “”Too late for me. I just decided to leave Suse/Novell, this is no longer the company I founded 13 years ago.” Jeremy, who is a core Samba guy, joined Novell a bit over a year ago and resigned over the recent Microsoft Patent agreement, saying:
I know you don't want to hear this, I know *nobody* wants to hear this but I'll not be able to live with this if I don't say it publicly at least once.
Whilst the Microsoft patent agreement is in place there is *nothing* we can do to fix community relations. And I really mean nothing.
We can pledge patents all we wish, we can talk to the press and “community leaders”, we can do all the right things w.r.t. all our other interactions, but we will still be known as GPL violators and that's the end of it.
For people who will point out to me we don't “technically” violate the GPLv2 here's an argument I recently made on the mailing lists.
“Do you think that if we'd have found what we legally considered a clever way around the Microsoft EULA so we didn't have to pay for Microsoft licenses and had decided to ship, oh let's say, “Exchange Server” under this “legal hack” that Microsoft would be silent about it – or we should act aggr[i]eved when they change the EULA to stop us doing this?”
The Microsoft patent agreement has put us outside the community, and there is no positive aspect to that fact, and no way to make it so. Until the patent provision is revoked, we are pariahs.
When asked about that deal, Mantel said:
6. What do you think about the Microsoft/Novell deal?
I think it is a good thing especially for the users. If you think some years back, Linux was not taken seriously. Now even Microsoft acknowledges that it exists and will not go away. I understand that many people don't like it as Novell is collaborating with the “evil empire”. But I don't like this way of thinking; we are not working against somebody, but we are working FOR Linux. Fundamentalism always leads to pain. What's important is that Linux is free and will remain to be free. The source code is open to everybody, this is what counts for me. Some people seem to be torn in an interesting way: On one hand they want “world domination”, at the same time they don't like the feeling that Linux has grown up and needs to deal with the real business world out there. We have a saying here in Germany that goes along the lines of “wash me, but do not make me wet”. If you want Linux to succeed, you cannot live in your own separate universe.
One thing is clear, a rift is definitely forming on this issue. Was that one of the goals of the agreement from the Microsoft side? Some are speculating that, but I'm still unsure what the motives were. It took Jeremy about 30 seconds to find a job as he seems to have landed at Google. Regardless of what you think of the patent agreement, you have to applaud Jeremy for sticking up for what he believes in. He put his money where his mouth is and gave up a job he clearly enjoyed because of it. You have to respect that kind of conviction. It will be interesting to see what direction Novell heads in over the next 6 months or so. Meanwhile RHT seems completely unaffected by this or the recent Oracle news. Today they beat analysts expectations handily and the stock jumped over 25%.
–jeremy
, , , , ,

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Novell, Open Source, Oracle, Red Hat

All Expenses Paid Press Junket from Microsoft… to Rob Limo

December 13, 2006 Leave a comment

It looks like Microsoft decided to send Rob Limo on an all expenses paid press junket to Redmond. As you may have guessed, many of his hard hitting questions weren't answered, but there are a couple interesting observations in there and he did get a free Zune for a Linux developers out of the deal. From the article:
“Well, that's not really anything I can comment on,” he replied. “I'm a product marketing guy.”
This was the kind of answer I got to all the hard questions I asked, including several suggested by Pamela Jones of Groklaw. None of the Microsoft people I met had anything to say about their deal with Novell, working with the Open Document Format (ODF), acceptance of the GNU General Public License (GPL) as a legitimate software license, how DRM built into Vista may anger users, or other topics I thought might interest you.
I came away with a sense that Microsoft doesn't currently have a clear sense of what Microsoft should be and where Microsoft should be going. I had time to buttonhole a number of employees who were not part of the planned presentations. The “Microsoft Campus” is not closed off from the world with gates and guards, but is a series of bland office buildings on ordinary public streets, so it was not hard to find employees I could question by buttonholing people near the entrances to several buildings, especially the company store (an employee-only facility where they sell Microsoft software at academic prices and Microsoft-branded hardware at a deep discount).
While I do not want to quote any Microsoft employees by name here — they really weren't supposed to talk to me — I picked up a sense that Ballmer is not universally loved, and that at least a significant minority (if not a majority) of actual software developers in the company are hoping he retires soon and that Ray Ozzie takes over. And if not Ozzie, at least someone who doesn't act as if the whole rest of the world can be divided into two groups: Microsoft customers and those who thwart Microsoft's plans.
Microsoft is not short of smart, hard-working employees. I'm sure that in many ways it's a great place to work. I also think, from what I heard during my visit and what other Microsoft employees and customers have told me at other times, that it has degenerated into a series of disconnected fiefdoms that aren't all moving in the same direction.
I agree that Microsoft has definitely lost its way in many regards. I'm not even sure that's arguable any more. I'm still surprised that Ballmer hasn't stepped down yet, but it can only be a matter of time. A Microsoft under Ozzie would be would be a whole different animal and the progression would definitely be an interesting one to watch.
–jeremy
, , , ,

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Microsoft wins industry standard status for Office

December 11, 2006 Leave a comment

Looks like ECMA International has approved Office Open XML as an official industry standard. From the article:
ECMA International, a group of makers of both hardware and software based in Geneva that includes Microsoft, designated the Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats of Microsoft's Office Open XML as official industry standards.
Governments and businesses are often limited to buying software designated as industry standards.
Microsoft sought a standards designation for its new Office file formats after OpenDocument, a competing set of formats backed by International Business Machines, Sun and other companies, was approved in May by the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, also based in Geneva, which sets global standards.
Jan van den Beld, secretary general of ECMA International, said IBM alone among the 21 members voted against approving the Microsoft standard. Van den Beld said ECMA's general assembly, which met in Zurich, agreed to petition the ISO to declare the Microsoft format as a global standard.
Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president for open source and standards, called Microsoft's Office formats technically unwieldy – requiring software developers to absorb 6,000 pages of specifications, compared with 700 pages for OpenDocument.
“The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft,” Sutor said.
Van den Beld of ECMA International said the standard recognized reality. “The vast amount of data in the world is in Microsoft format,” he said.
A couple comments. First, kudos to IBM for standing up on this one. Next, it's clear that once again, Microsoft is only doing this because they were forced to. The success of ODF is the real driver here, not Microsoft wanting to adhere to a standard. One thing I don't like about the standard is that (at least as I read it), you must implement everything in the standard and nothing not in the standard to get a license. The only one that doesn't need to do this is Microsoft, which means that it is way too easy for them to make Office incompatible with the standard. Next, 6,000 pages of specifications does make it seem overly complex. You don't have to believe IBM though, just look at what one of the Word developers has said:
If we had to add support for Open XML to Mac Word 12 without being able to port code from Win Word, the read/write estimates shrinks down to about 8.5 man/years (44 weeks x 5 devs x 2 for read+write). Doing the work for PPT and Excel isn’t strictly a multiple of Word, because about 30% of the XML elements are shared between the three apps. So, for all of Mac Office, I’d estimate it would take a total of about 5 devs over the release cycle to add full Open XML support starting from scratch, as part of the larger project.
Read the entire post for more details, but that's a lot of work to implement when compared to the relative simplicity of ODF (which no single company controls in the way Microsoft controls OO XML). Lastly, the comment by the secretary general of ECMA International worries me a bit. It makes the process seem more like a rubber stamp than anything else.
–jeremy
, , , , , , ,

Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

It Takes a Monopoly

December 9, 2006 Leave a comment

In a post entitled “For reasons that have little to do with the product, itself, Windows Vista simply can't lose”, Robert X. Cringely points out why Vista will be a winner. From the article:
Windows Vista is finally here, a shadow of what it was once supposed to be, but here nonetheless, and now the pundits are holding forth on whether or not Microsoft's new operating system will succeed. What a waste of good punditry: of course Vista will succeed, and those who think it will fail simply do not know what they are talking about.
There have been good operating systems from Microsoft and bad operating systems from Microsoft, but of those only one that I know of can truly be said to have failed — Bob, the so-called social interface operating system I always figured was really named after me.
Bob was a functional failure, a user catastrophe, but Microsoft had weathered those before. Remember DOS 4? What might have made Bob fail was its design, which was flawed to say the least, or as my mother would put it — crappy. But what ALLOWED Bob to fail was something much different — the fact that the operating system wasn't strategic for Microsoft OR for users. Nobody needed Bob and nobody was forced to use him against their will, which sounds a lot like my old dating life but is actually more profound than that. Microsoft practically guaranteed that Bob would fail by creating no artificial situation (say the forced retirement of the last pre-Bob OS) that forced people to use Bob whether they wanted to or not.
Microsoft — a company that eventually learns from its mistakes — will not make that particular mistake again, certainly not with Windows Vista, in which they have a $5 billion investment.
What we'll see for ourselves and read about over the next six months, then, are users complaining about Vista instability, an inevitably emerging vulnerability to hackers, and applications that don't work as well as they do under XP. Enterprise customers will hold back in droves. But does any of that make Vista a failure? Nope.
He contends that since Microsoft basically has the ability to force Vista on the market, it simply can't lose. You know what – he's right, at least for certain definitions of win and lose. Because most people simply go to the store and purchase a new PC without even knowing what an Operating System is, they will almost assuredly get Vista with the next PC they buy. While many corporations make slightly more educated decisions, for other reasons including compatibility and the perception that choosing Microsoft is safe they will also eventually go to Vista in many cases. You can be certain though that we won't be seeing droves of people upgrading for some whiz bang feature that Vista holds. In a way, while from a market share perspective that makes Vista a winner, I think it will still be a loser in the grand scheme of things. There is a very real chance that this upgrade cycle is the last one where Microsoft is the 100% default choice. With both Apple and multiple Linux distributions gaining traction, if I were Microsoft I would have seen this as a chance to get a fabulous release out to solidify mindshare in the market. Instead you have a product that has been stripped of almost all of the promised innovation and interesting features, but still way late to market. You end up with a loser that will still make tens of millions of dollars of profit.
–jeremy
, , , , , ,

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Stallman Comments on Legality of Microsoft Novell Patent Agreement

December 5, 2006 Leave a comment

As promised, here's an update on the official word regarding the FSF's opinion on the legality of the patent portion of the recent Microsoft Novell deal.
However, there's another way of using software patents to threaten the users which we have just seen an example of. That is, the Novell-Microsoft deal. What has happened is, Microsoft has not given Novell a patent licence, and thus, section 7 of GPL version 2 does not come into play. Instead, Microsoft offered a patent licence that is rather limited to Novell's customers alone.
It turns out that perhaps it's a good thing that Microsoft did this now, because we discovered that the text we had written for GPL version 3 would not have blocked this, but it's not too late and we're going to make sure that when GPL version 3 really comes out it will block such deals. We were already concerned about possibilities like this, namely, the possibility that a distributor might receive a patent licence which did not explicitly impose limits on downstream recipients but simply failed to protect them.
Well, now that we have seen this possibility, we're not going to have trouble drafting the language that will block it off. We're going to say not just that if you receive the patent licence, but if you have arranged any sort of patent licensing that is prejudicial among the downstream recipients, that that's not allowed. That you have to make sure that the downstream recipients fully get the freedoms that they're supposed to have. The precise words, we haven't figured out yet. That's what Eben Moglen is working on now.
So there you have it: definitely legal under the GPLv2 and they'll do everything they can to make sure it's not legal under the GPLv3. How this will impact GPLv3 uptake remains to be seen.
–jeremy
, , , , , ,

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Novell, Open Source

How Microsoft & Massachusetts played hardball over open standards

December 5, 2006 Leave a comment

A great article based on over 300 emails obtained under the Massachusetts Public Records Law (which looks like a state variety of the Federal Freedom of Information Act). The article contains a ton of information and if this is a topic that you're interested in (NOTE: it should be!), then I suggest you read the whole thing. A couple of snippets:
Less than a week after he became CIO of Massachusetts last February, Louis Gutierrez sensed a serious threat to his power — one that was being promoted by a seemingly unlikely source. Within a matter of days, Gutierrez confirmed that Brian Burke, Microsoft Corp.’s government affairs director for the Northeast, had been backing an amendment to an economic stimulus bill that would largely strip the Massachusetts Information Technology Division of its decision-making authority.
For Microsoft, the call to arms had sounded several months earlier, when the state’s IT division surprised the company with a controversial decision to adopt the Open Document Format for Office Applications, or ODF, as its standard file format. Even worse, from Microsoft’s perspective, the policy stipulated that new desktop applications acquired by state agencies feature built-in support for ODF, a standard developed and promoted by some of its rivals — most prominently, IBM and Sun Microsystems Inc.
The amendment Burke was promoting had the potential to stop the ODF policy dead in its tracks by giving a government task force and the secretary of state’s office approval rights on IT standards and procurement policies. Gutierrez, who resigned last month over a funding dispute that appeared to be unrelated to the ODF controversy, clearly was rankled by Burke’s involvement with the amendment. Yet he made no attempt to shut the door on Microsoft. On the contrary, he did the opposite.
Does it worry anyone else that a company, Microsoft or not, is lobbying to strip the decision making power from a state IT Division? How this isn't stirring monopoly rumblings is beyond me. Also from the article:
“I am certain that Brian was involved,” Yates wrote to Gutierrez in response to the CIO’s March 3 message about Burke’s role in lobbying for the amendment. But Yates claimed that Burke’s intention was “to have a ‘vehicle’ in the legislature” to address a policy that Microsoft viewed as “unnecessarily exclusionary.” Burke’s aim was “not specifically to transfer agency authority,” Yates wrote.
He also asserted that the Morrissey amendment “was developed and is promoted by others who were/are very inflamed by your predecessors’ handling of many things.” The predecessors Yates referred to were Kriss and Peter Quinn, who was CIO before Gutierrez and had cited the Morrissey amendment as one of the contributing factors when he resigned last January.
During his interview with Computerworld, Yates was adamant that neither Microsoft nor anyone on its payroll had authored the amendment. In response to questions about the company’s lobbying activities, he said, “At the time, our public affairs people were — you can call it lobbying — but they were in fact trying to educate people to the real issues in the mandate for ODF. And we were, yes, arguing against it — absolutely.”
Having a Microsoft representative claim a policy was “unnecessarily exclusionary” after some of the moves that Microsoft have made is ironic at best. It should be clear to everyone that Government documents being in a proprietary format that is controlled by a single corporate entity is not in the best interest of that Government or its citizens. An Open format should be mandatory for all Government documents, and I hope some day it is. If Office supports that format than I have absolutely no problem with it being used, as long as it's not being used because Microsoft has the most lobbying dollars. It's my hope that the USA is finally sick of the corruption that is currently rampant and back door deals that are not in the best interest of the citizens carry such a negative stigma that they stop.
–jeremy
, , , , ,

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Novell Boosts OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office Interoperability

December 4, 2006 Leave a comment

The previous post covered an article about Open Standards that ended with the following:
When Gutierrez announced his resignation as Massachusetts CIO in early October, he cited the legislature’s failure to pass a bond bill that included funding for key IT projects. Since the bill also would have funded non-IT projects, the stall didn’t appear to be directly tied to any remaining opposition to the ODF policy.
Ironically, on Nov. 2, Gutierrez’s last day as CIO, Microsoft announced an agreement with Novell Inc. that included a pledge to cooperate on development of translation software to improve the way ODF and Open XML work together.
What a difference nine months had made.
Here's some more information on that Novell announcement:
Novell today announced that the Novell® edition of the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite will now support the Office Open XML format, increasing interoperability between OpenOffice.org and the next generation of Microsoft Office. Novell is cooperating with Microsoft and others on a project to create bi-directional open source translators for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office, with the word processing translator to be available first, by the end of January 2007. The translators will be made available as plug-ins to Novell’s OpenOffice.org product. Novell will release the code to integrate the Open XML format into its product as open source and submit it for inclusion in the OpenOffice.org project. As a result, end users will be able to more easily share files between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org, as documents will better maintain consistent formats, formulas and style templates across the two office productivity suites.
“Novell supports the OpenDocument format as the default file format in OpenOffice.org because it provides customer choice and flexibility, but interoperability with Microsoft Office has also been critical to the success of OpenOffice.org,” said Nat Friedman, Novell chief technology and strategy officer for Open Source. “OpenOffice.org is very important to Novell, and as our customers deploy Linux* desktops across their organizations, they're telling us that sharing documents between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office is a must-have. The addition of Open XML support reflects Novell's commitment to providing enterprise customers the tools they need to be successful, from the desktop to the data center.”
Some are calling this an OOo fork, which seems a little bit disingenuous. The add-in is BSD licensed, so OOo would be more than able to merge this upstream if they so desire. As more details get released on the recent Microsoft/Novell deal though, it's becoming clear that Microsoft got a bit more than was at first obvious. They have a lot of lawyers, so this should come as no surprise. The last article showed how important it is to Microsoft that OpenXML be considered an “Open” Standard. The ability for them to keep a large amount of Office installs may actually depend on it. This move will almost certainly lend credence to their claims, especially in the eyes of legislators who are unlikely to understand the finer points of the issue. That could end up being loss, not only for Open Source, but for the push for Open Standards. This issue is too important for it to be decided for the wrong reasons. It's an issue I'll definitely be keeping a close eye on.
–jeremy
, , , , , ,

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Novell, Open Source

Q&A: Novell CEO gives behind-the-scenes account of deal with Microsoft

November 30, 2006 Leave a comment

In a previous post I wondered what was on the mind of the execs at Novell after the recent Microsoft agreement. Computerworld has just posted a Q&A with CEO Ron Hovsepian. From the article:
How did the agreement with Microsoft come to pass? Who approached whom, and when? This past May, I picked up the phone and called Kevin Turner, the COO at Microsoft. I knew Kevin when he was the CIO at Wal-Mart. I said, “Kevin, I'd like to have a conversation about what the customer needs. If you could put back on your old hat as a customer, if I came in and started talking to you about virtualization on Linux, and this Microsoft guy showed up and started talking to you about virtualization on Windows, what would you say to us?” Kevin, being a good ex-IT executive, said, “I'd want both of those things together. I don't want the fighting; I don't want to deal with it. I'd tell you two guys to go figure out how to make it work.” I said, “Well, that's why I'm calling. How do we make that work around virtualization?”
My point of view is that customers are going to have J2EE stacks and .Net stacks in their shops. If I'm a CIO, that's what I'm dealing with: “What are you guys doing to make my life easier to make those things work together?” I saw virtualization as a key to us being able to do that in a different manner than we have in the past. That was the genesis of the whole conversation: calling up an old customer and having a conversation at the customer level. And then it took a lot of twists and turns.
and
What was your reaction when you heard about Ballmer's “undisclosed balance sheet liability” comments? Did you feel like you'd been blindsided? You don't want to get caught off-guard on any of those things. I do know things can be taken out of context, so I never overreact too far one way or the other. Obviously, I was disappointed, because the heart and essence of the deal was around the technology collaboration and what we want to get done for the customer. I know they're very committed to that — we've been having our regular conference calls with Bob Muglia [senior vice president of Microsoft's server and tools business]. We're right on our schedule to get all the details out in a reasonable time period.
We do not see any infringements, and we are not going to agree to any. Their desire to do some things around IP [intellectual property] came up as one of the things they wanted to talk about. We said, “Sure, we'd be happy to talk about some of those IP things,” because we have our own portfolio of IP, and we saw that when you look at the math, the balance of trade was $108 million to us and $40 million to them.
We never changed our position. All I cared about was, I lost a deal with a large retailer to Microsoft for the first time about 12 or 18 months ago. It was going to be an all-Linux deal, and I lost it because they were unduly influenced, in my opinion, to be fearful of these [IP and indemnity issues]. From my point of view that was really too bad, because Linux lost. Then I watched it happen three more times.
I think it's clear that Novell had good intentions going into this. I still question, from a business perspective, doing a deal like this with a company who has the record of Microsoft when it comes to business partnerships. It could be that it was perceived that this was the best way to keep Novell going. You can't fault anyone for that. I'm not sure this deal would have prevented them from losing the deals he mentions, and that's really the problem Novell is facing. We'll have to watch and see if they can turn things around.
–jeremy
, , , , ,

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Novell, Open Source

Credit Suisse Writes Off Novell

November 29, 2006 Leave a comment

A quick follow up on Novell. While I expected them to take a bit of punishment from the Open Source community for the recent patent deal some previous coverage, I didn't expect them to take any punishment from Wall Street. If anything, I expected them to get rewarded by the street. It looks like at least one analyst has actually downgraded them as a direct result of the deal though. From a sys-con article (which is an absolutely horrific site that very consistently crashes my browser):
Credit Suisse analyst Jason Maynard took down Novell on Monday grading it an “Underperform.” He reckons the flurry in its stock after its alliance with Microsoft was based on a “one-time event” – Microsoft paying Novell $308 million net – and that the 10% appreciation in the stock isn't sustainable.”
“Rather than provide a growth engine for the company,” he wrote in a note. “We think Novell's Linux patent deal with Microsoft will hurt the company's standing in the open source community. We don't see Microsoft providing a sustainable lift to Novell's distribution woes. With Oracle entering the market, we doubt there will be enough room to support needed Linux market share gains. Finally, Novell's legacy NetWare business continues to decline, and the level at which revenue can be sustained is unknown.”
Maynard figures Novell will spend Microsoft's money on acquisitions, both to diversify and to support its systems management and identity interests. He also figures Novell will restructure again but without any material upside.
Now it's clear that Novell is having some business issues. It's the reason they have a new CEO. To see “will hurt the company's standing in the open source community” in an analyst downgrade though is a first for me I think. I wonder what the C-level execs at Novell are thinking right about now?
–jeremy
, , , , ,

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Novell, Open Source

The French Say Au Revoir to Microsoft Software

November 29, 2006 1 Comment

The article title is a bit dramatic, but it looks like the French parliament is considering moving to Linux on both the desktop and server. From the article:
Starting in June of next year, French deputies will use desktops and servers running Linux, Mozilla's Firefox Web browser, and OpenOffice.org, a free open-source alternative to Microsoft's Office software.
For day-to-day documents, French members of parliament and their staff will use OpenOffice.org, currently in version 2.0.4 and designed to compete directly with Microsoft's Office System.
Why the change? The French parliament, composed of an upper chamber (le Senat, or Senate) and a lower chamber (l'Assemblee Nationale, or National Assembly), believes it can save money using open-source software, despite the near-term costs of switching from Microsoft systems and retraining all employees.
But that is a matter of some debate.
“The evidence on the cost savings attributable to a switch to Linux has been mixed,” according to Chris Swenson, director of software industry analysis at research group NPD. “There has been some evidence that companies have to spend a good deal on training and support after you deploy the operating system.”
The information is non-specific enough and far enough out that you have to wonder if they're just trying to get a better deal on Microsoft products. That being said, it's becoming clear that in the Government sector it's going to be the EU that leads the charge in Open Source adoption. The arguments for Open Source in Government are extremely compelling and something I've covered before. When you are controlling the data for an entire nation it's critical that you use Open Standards to ensure you have access to your own records in perpetuity. Controlling your own destiny in this context is critical. It's not a luxury, it's a requirement and it should be fairly obvious why being beholden to a single corporation is undesirable. If they do decide to move ahead on this, you have to assume that Mandriva (a French company) will make a very strong push. National Governments typically like to spend in their own country if it's at all possible.
There is one argument against leaving Windows and Office that I think is a bit over hyped these days. That's the issue of training. Yes, if you switch to OpenOffice.org and Linux you will have to retrain some users, especially the non-technical ones (which in almost any business are the majority). But looking at the upcoming versions of Office and Windows, they are sufficiently different from the older versions (especially in the case of Office) that you'll need to retrain those same users anyway! The incremental difference in training costs in this case is likely negligible and possibly nil. If you're looking to migrate to an Open Source solution, your next Windows and Office upgrade iteration is a perfect time to consider it. Keep in mind that staging the upgrade will likely gain you much better results with much less pain. OOo runs just fine on Windows. A switch from IE to Firefox and Office to OpenOffice.org will get your users comfortable with Open Source. Switching to Linux will then be much less of a change. After all, most people don't really “use” an operating system – they use the applications.
–jeremy
, , , , ,

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

← Older posts

Newer posts →