Microsoft Pulls Office From Its Own Online Store 127
CWmike writes "Microsoft has pulled almost every version of Office from its own online store to comply with a court order requiring it to remove custom XML technology from its popular Word software that starts on Monday. As of mid-day, the only edition available from the Microsoft Store was Office Ultimate 2007, a $670 'full-version' suite. All other Windows editions, as well as Office 2008 for Mac, were accompanied by the message: 'This product is currently unavailable while we update versions on our site. We expect it to be available soon.' Microsoft confirmed that the disappearance of Office was related to the injunction that came out of a patent infringement case the company lost in 2009. 'We've taken steps to comply with the court's ruling and we're introducing the revised software into the US market," said Michael Croan, a senior marketing manager, in an e-mail. He also downplayed the move. 'This process will be imperceptible to the vast majority of customers, who will find both trial and purchase options readily available.'"
wheres the news (Score:3, Informative)
I'm always up for a good bashing, but eh what? It was already decided in court that MS was violating the patent (which imo is stupid, btw). They were required to stop selling Word, and now they comply. Whats the news here? That MS complied to laws and judge orders?
Also, how is that "downplaying the move"? They probably worked on non-infringing Word version for long time already and are replacing it soon. In fact;
Microsoft has posted updates for both Word 2003 and Word 2007 to its download site and told customers in accompanying support documents that those updates are mandatory "only if you have been instructed to do so in a separate communication from Microsoft." The company has also committed to revamping Word 2008 for Mac and Word 2004 for Mac, even though those versions were not named in the injunction.
In the meantime, Microsoft also told potential customers that they can download the free beta of Office 2010, the next-generation suite slated for a June release.
Patent Compliance Tuesday (Score:1, Interesting)
From all system administrators, thank you Microsoft for the decision to coincide Patent Compliance Tuesday with Patch Tuesday [wikipedia.org].
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I'm impressed that Microsoft is finally taking the security of their Office suite seriously. We've been waiting for this patch for years.
Re:wheres the news (Score:5, Funny)
MSFT has selective legal hearing (Score:3, Insightful)
M$ complying with the law is news.
Not really. MSFT just picks and chooses when to do so. MSFT doesn't believe in rules restricting molopolistic business practices--it has been a belief deeply ingrained within their executive team, including Gates and Ballmer. That belief extends to their resistance to conform with the spirit, if not the letter, of rulings pertaining to those practices including its attempts at tight integration of application-level programming into its OS (Internet Explorer, Media Player), lack of interoperability/closed
Re: here$ the new$ (Score:2, Interesting)
MS complied with the EU ruling, and note... immediately took full vengeance on: the USERS. $670 for an Office Cocktail to burn down your desktop. Smallchange, maybe to those driving a Veyron. I think it is finally time for those users (and their bosses) to "move on" to Open Office, even on the MS platform, and ultimately migrate to Linux desktop.
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Did you also think that food stores pay off the stealing users from their own pockets, and don't increase prices to get it back from users?
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A food store, like any other store, sets the price of the food it sells to the point that brings it the most profit. Rising the price will decrease, not increase, profits. So yes, it pays for any stolen items out of its own pockets, since it has no other options.
I wish people stopped perpetuating the PR-invented myth that companies are somehow impervious to fines becaus
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Actually, the stolen stuff comes directly out of its pockets, in the form of paid invoices for the items that were nicked.
From an economics standpoint, there is no difference between a fine and a theft. If the thief is never apprehended it hurts their assets just as badly as a legit fine.
The only blame that is deserved is upon the thief, who got away with it.
Much like spammers freely exploit stolen computing resources...and get away with it.
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That is wrong. They have the trial version availble while the other versions are updated and re-released.
What, surely you don't think they would offer a trial version just to try to lock you into to their products?
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That is wrong. They have the trial version availble while the other versions are updated and re-released.
I'm guessing the trial version has no infringing features.
As for lock in via a trial version, is there seriously anyone left on the planet that does not know about OPENOFFICE.ORG ?
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I wrote the above as a joke, but..
The type of people that would use the trial version of MS Office are probably not the type people that would have heard of openoffice (or even better AbiWord.)
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I disagree. The kind of people who would use the trial version are the kind that don't have 600 bucks for the full package and no corporate backing. Those people are used to digging for bargains, and free is a good price.
AbiWord on the other hand is pretty lame compared to OpenOffic or StarOffice. I look at it every three or four years to see if it has improved, and it is a perennial disappointment.
Re: here$ the new$ (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you work in an IT related field? Because I do not. And I do not know anybody (at work) that has even heard of openoffice. In fact, I do not think it would even occur to most of those people that there might even exist another "office" solution.
I know when I tell people that I don't use MS Office they are shock and almost immeditely assume that I must not view any documents at home.
Brain, meet mouth (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey. Here is a radical idea. Maybe instead of telling people at work that you don't use MS Office, you should tell them about Open Office. Then you would know lots of people who have heard about Open Office!
Contractual Silence (Score:1, Informative)
I know from experience at least one training firm that had a contractual requirement in their dealings with Microsoft to not mention free software.
They are afraid of the news from great free software.
Personal pref is Open Office but Abiword is worth your attention too.
Re:Contractual Silence (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds more like an illegal monopolization tactic to me.
"We won't give you MS stuff unless you agree not to support free software."
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Keep telling them otherwise. I know a dude who's loved him some Microsoft (as long as somebody would copy a disk for him) and has insulted my use of open source for the last decade. This month he loves OpenOffice.org and has been emailing me about how great it is like he's the one who discovered it. Looking into other open source programs and musing about whether Yellow Dog would revitalize his old Powerbook so I guess hell froze over. It can be amazing how slow people are to contemplate change
b
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I think it would probably depend more on what you actually use an office package for in your work.
I, along with my colleagues, have either a .doc, .xls or .ppt file open all day to work on. Most of us are self-employed as well - the PP got it right that many
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I know a lot of people not in the IT world that have asked me about OO.. "can i use this instead, i cant afford 'office'?".
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WTF kind of bullshit is this?
You're the biggest apologist Microsoft has! If Ballmer himself stood up and admitted they were selling Win 7 backdoors to the Russian mafia, you'd have a first post touting it as a feature!
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So anyone that makes good points that are a bit more level headed than the usual hate based anti-Microsoft drivel is an apologist?
The problem with Slashdot (which really is a problem that stems from the FOSS community) is that it often has a zealotry to it that does it more harm than good in the eyes of anyone looking for objective comments. You read some of the anti-MS stuff here and if you were an outsider it'd give you the impression the site is full of nutjobs.
Microsoft have done a lot of things wrong,
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My feelings are the same for Apple. I won't buy Apple or Microsoft products until they start to embrace and support free standards that can be used by anybody. That's re
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I can understand where you're coming from, but I take things a bit more practically. We spent three years trying to make a Server 2003 network do what we need for it to do before going over to Apple. Now we're slowly making the transition. Just getting a Mac server made things work WAY more smoothly. Setting it up was a breeze, except for making the Windows machines play nice with it. Every person I've put on a Mac, I never hear from them unless they need a new user added or something of that nature.
Re:wheres the news (Score:5, Insightful)
Recognizing that Microsoft is a bad corporate citizen is not "hate based anti-Microsoft drivel".
They have a long history of using other people's innovation without permission, and this case is no exception. I4i is no patent troll, they produced, sold and still sell an XML editing tool. They have a very specific patent, specific enough that other implementations (like ODF) don't infringe.
Sopssa is an apologist. He participated in the original discussion, and has to be aware that this patent suit is fair and valid, and yet is still dismissive of i4i's efforts. That isn't reasonable behavour, it's fanboism or worse.
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They have a long history of using other people's innovation without permission, and this case is no exception.
Heh.. If you think inventing something trivial to do with XML tags is "innovation" you have a diminished capacity of thought or creativity.. or something.
They have a very specific patent, specific enough that other implementations (like ODF) don't infringe.
This makes no sense. Just because ODF doesn't infringe, doesn't make the patent valid or specific. Looks like you haven't even read the patent. The language is extremely general and broad. Or maybe you just agree with everything a judge says? Ofcource, that might make you a racist too ;)
and has to be aware that this patent suit is fair and valid, and yet is still dismissive of i4i's efforts
What if he thinks it isn't fair and valid? Is he not allowed to have a
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Apple gets a free ride? Not likely. (Score:3, Insightful)
You must be new here. Any Apple-related story draws 10x as many Apple-hating comments as it does Apple-friendly comments.
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It's certainly not that simple. Whilst I agree that's true in the odd Apple article, there are plenty also where it's not the case and where Apple gets defended, sometimes even illogically so. For example, I've seen companies like Apple and Valve defended over DRM in the past, by the very same people who attack DRM when it comes from the likes of Sony.
Perhaps more interestingly though is that I recommend you look through a few Apple related articles here without filtering out any comments based on their sco
Oh please. Not the same bullshit again. (Score:3, Interesting)
"Microsoft have done a lot of things wrong"
Like breaking the law in pretty much all major localities around the planet.
What are you? A masochist?
If you hear a chorus of disapproval maybe, just maybe, there is a frigging reason of why people feel so aggravated.
Google and Apple now have quite a dominance in the markets that will matter in the future and people are far more cool about them because they are not complete and utter unethical bastards.
Do I need to clarify the point any further?
Re:Oh please. Not the same bullshit again. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Like breaking the law in pretty much all major localities around the planet."
You realise a lot of companies have too yes? Facebook has been guilty of breaking privacy laws across the world, Apple has been guilty of price fixing in the UK due to it's higher pricing of songs to the rest of the EU, Google has found itself guilty of breaching copyright across the world through it's books quest. But you single out only Microsoft's cases?
"If you hear a chorus of disapproval maybe, just maybe, there is a frigging reason of why people feel so aggravated."
This argument is stupid, by the same logic you could argue that Microsoft's dominance in many areas is because most people prefer them. The fact is, you can't infer anything about the validity of the problem from numbers when there's clearly other factors involved like bias in this case, or monopolistic practices in Microsoft's case.
"Google and Apple now have quite a dominance in the markets that will matter in the future and people are far more cool about them because they are not complete and utter unethical bastards."
Huh? Is this the same Apple that although improving, is still one of the worst offenders when it comes to pollution caused by manufacturing and disposal of it's products? The same Apple that uses child labour? The same Apple guilty of price fixing? The same Apple guilty of being one of the most prolific pushers of DRM over the last decade? The same Apple that simply blames the user when their iPhone explodes in their face? The same Apple that leverages a combination of iTunes, the iPhone and it's app store for anti-competitive practices?
What about Google? Is this the same Google that wants to farm all your data? The same Google whose CEO doesn't believe you need privacy unless you have something to hide? The same Google that would happily pander to Chinese censorship and so on?
Look, I'm a fan of some of Apple and Google's products as much as the next guy, but that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend they don't do much wrong as well, clearly they can be quite evil themselves, arguably just as much so as Microsoft. In reality Microsoft seem no less evil than other major players like Facebook either. In the grand scheme of things Microsoft couldn't even come close to many manufacturing firms, many mining firms and so forth. Really in terms of being evil, Microsoft as a company, are pretty much par for the course. The difference is, they're the main opponent of the open source movement and as this is largely an open source supporting community then that is why you see such a focus on them here, not because there is some reality in them being evil enough to stand out from the rest of the world.
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I feel like I have eaten from the tree of knowledge. My eyes are opened. Please mod parent up. I'm serious here. This isn't flamebait and I'm not trolling and I'm not trying to be funny here. But the above comment represents a very well-written argument and if I had some mod points he'd certainly get one.
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Whats the news here? That MS complied to laws and judge orders?
If you're conforming to Slashdot's usual biases, then yes.
Yes, "MS complies with the law" is the news (Score:5, Insightful)
Whats the news here? That MS complied to laws and judge orders?
Yes, that's exactly it.
And that's not meant to be a smartass comment about how often Microsoft does and doesn't do that.
All I'm trying to say is that this Microsoft/XML/Patent story is of interest to the slashdot crowd, and we would like to be informed about how the sequence of events unfold.
Getting confirmation that Microsoft complies with the law and court orders is an important event in this story---perhaps even the most crucial.
That's the reason it's on slashdot.
Why do you ask.... (Score:2)
"Whats the news here? That MS complied to laws and judge orders?"
if you know the answer?
Perfect opportunity for Open Office to gain... (Score:4, Funny)
Bad comparison. (Score:1)
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The copy that Debian provides has a spell checker. (Is there a woosh here I am missing or does the windows version not come with one?)
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You need your reading glasses too, if you haven't found the spell checker in OpenOffice.org.
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Press F7, click options, select your dictionaries, check boxes for spellcheck as you type.
I think your experience with OO is PEBCAK related.
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And you also get Java as a bonus!
First joke (Score:1, Funny)
I've had this problem for a long time:
$ bash microsoft
bash: microsoft: No such file or directory
$ bash office
bash: office: No such file or directory
$ bash word
bash: word: No such file or directory
The news I'm waiting for. (Score:3, Interesting)
What I want to know is what will i4i do with its 300 million from Microsoft.
And will Microsoft pay-up?
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"What I want to know is what will i4i do with its 300 million from Microsoft."
Retire I would imagine ;)
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Haven't they pulled the offending code yet? (Score:4, Funny)
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Yes. It slowed them down by exactly enough time to make sure they get press stating that the new version will be available for download in a few days. Funny how that just happened to work out that way for them, isn't it?
Inside job? (Score:1)
Aren't they supposed to use XML to be compliant and open? And what if they can say: 'Hey, we tried, but this one bad small company threatend de poor liddle MicroSoft with a patent lawsuit and now we have to take XML out, sooo sad!
The truth is, MS wants it's formats to stay proprietary and I figure they'd welcome any reason that holds to keep it that way. I wouldn't be suprised if this XML-patent thing was staged.
My 2 cents.
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Huh? Don't worry, 99.9% of the .x XML stuff is sticking around. It's only one particular, apparently rarely-used feature that is covered by this injunction.
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And don't believe me? The older, non-XML formats haven't been updated to include Office 2007 features. This is especially apparent in PowerPoint.
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It's probably a similar scenario to the Uniloc case [wikipedia.org]. i4i offers a licensing deal for their patent, Microsoft says bugger off, then implements it anyway.
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It is most similar to the "spreadsheet as database table" patent in the sense that in both cases the patent covered something pretty obvious, about something which users were starting to need, something that was hanging in the air so to speak. In both cases the patent covered *any* thinkable solution to something users might want, that was easily implementable by any competent programmer, which is probably why Microsoft said bugger off in the first place. (The spreadsheet patent was also reality-denying by
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i4i have stated that OO.org does not implement the functionality covered in the patent, so OO.org (and thus Star Office, and by impliccation ODF) is fine. The same will go for other ODF-based office suites like KOffice.
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Nope. Microsoft's attempt to stop their own use of XML being open is patenting their XML document format (designed with extra patentability in mind...)
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Another harrasment to free software (Score:1)
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What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
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Ultimately the tricky problem is who do you actually sue with open source. Technically every person on the planet owns the code and is free to use the application that the code creates. So sue the planet, you can't really sue companies providing service and support, nor companies providing manuals, not even companies that supply you with a copy of the completed application that you technically already owned before you even approached the company.
I am trying to imagine the patent cops trying to enter ever
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Ultimately the tricky problem is who do you actually sue with open source
Identify the infringing source. Then cvs annotate or equivalent, track down the author and sue them
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The infringing source is of course a composite, with thousands of contributors, rather than one. The underlying reality of that, is that it is a composite of code modules that creates the perceived infringement (only in countries with software patents) not any of the individual modules, as each module has a specific range of non infringing functions and it is only when combined, in effect compiled and the application assembled, that infringement occurs. Whilst I made not have contributed any code, does tha
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Pulling it from the store isn't enough ... (Score:5, Interesting)
... they should also have to deactivate every (legal) copy that's currently out in the wild. After all, the software industry has been telling us for years that we don't really get to buy software, just rent it. So surely it can't be legal for Microsoft to continue to rent out software that violates someone else's patent!
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Re:Pulling it from the store isn't enough ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... they should also have to deactivate every (legal) copy that's currently out in the wild.
A large part of the damage award is to cover those copies. That's why they don't have to be disabled. They pay damages to cover the copies already out there, and have to stop selling new copies that infringe.
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They pay damages to cover the copies already out there, and have to stop selling new copies that infringe.
It's still weird, though.
There is a period until the infringement can be fixed. These infringing new copies could be included in the settlement, which is only a temporary situation. Instead they actually pull Office from their online store, which I think is strange. There is more going on.
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Would you want to do business with someone who just sued you? They are using this to encourage people to test drive the 2010 beta, and have no reason to throw any more money at i4i.
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Would you want to do business with someone who just sued you?
All big corps seem to be doing that all the time, no? MS, Apple, IBM, Sun - if you dig around, you'll probably find all possible combos of X suing Y taken from the list above, yet not only they do business with each other, they have various partnership deals and such (which were often in place while the lawsuits went on!).
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... they should also have to deactivate every (legal) copy that's currently out in the wild.
A large part of the damage award is to cover those copies. That's why they don't have to be disabled. They pay damages to cover the copies already out there, and have to stop selling new copies that infringe.
What's funny is that most of the users of those 'infringing copies' probably don't even know about or use the infringing functionality.
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Well maybe they have to do that but what would that do to business? Practically every business in the western world would grind to a halt if suddenly denied Microsoft Office, even the business of managing patents.
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I would have that that the $300 million covered this?
How convenient... (Score:3, Insightful)
How convenient that the $670 edition should be the one that remains available.
I can only think of three explanations for this:
1. MS are quite happy to put some of the revenue from Office to paying damages, provided the revenue is from the most expensive version.
2. They're holding back on making the cheaper versions compliant intentionally to see if only having the expensive version available dramatically affects sales.
3. They're not as well organised as I'd like to believe - packaging every different edition of Office is a major undertaking which requires a lot of work.
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How convenient that the $670 edition should be the one that remains available.
I can only think of three explanations for this:
1. MS are quite happy to put some of the revenue from Office to paying damages, provided the revenue is from the most expensive version.
2. They're holding back on making the cheaper versions compliant intentionally to see if only having the expensive version available dramatically affects sales.
3. They're not as well organised as I'd like to believe - packaging every different edition of Office is a major undertaking which requires a lot of work.
How about:
4. Each SKU has to be built and tested by the same group, and each SKU takes a certain amount of time. MS decided to concentrate on some combination of the biggest volume/biggest revenue SKUs and leave the lesser used ones to the end.
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How about:
4. Each SKU has to be built and tested by the same group, and each SKU takes a certain amount of time. MS decided to concentrate on some combination of the biggest volume/biggest revenue SKUs and leave the lesser used ones to the end.
I thought that, but seeing as each SKU is a superset of the one beneath it it seems odd that the packaging and testing isn't to a greater or lesser extent automated. It's not like Microsoft couldn't manage the resources to do that.
Having said that, seeing how anti-automation everything Microsoft has historically churned out is (powershell notwithstanding), perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised.
I am sympathetic to Microsoft on this issue (Score:1, Troll)
Compliance (Score:3, Funny)
Your Honor, Microsoft will comply with the courts wishes, I give you my Word.... bundled with Excel and Powerpoint and....
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Patent evil ideas (Score:1)
It appears there's a very twisted opportunity here: patent as many evil ideas as you can then wait for companies to pursue those strategies by patent trolling them. How about starting by patenting violations of net neutrality like "a system and method for filtering internet content to prevent civil unrest." Or protecting an emerging tech like SVG: "System and method to extend svg-format files with any non-svg content."
In Bill Gate's own words (Score:2, Informative)
AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS
By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the init
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Nothing would please me more than being able to [...] deluge the hobby market with good software.
Wow, talk about a dream denied...
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Who frigen marked this off-topic? It is very much on topic.
Information please (Score:2)
Let us say this patent claim can potentially hurt all ODF vendors, but right now the patent troll is going after Microsoft. Can Microsoft pay some huge award and thus validate the patent claim and use it as a weapon against other competitors. Remember how the Automobile Manufacturers' Association in 189
in the mean time.... (Score:2)
In the mean time, we would rather you pop on over to your favorite torrent site and get a virus infested pirated copy of our lovely office suite rather than trudging over to the damned dingy open office site and use that... thanks, Steve
Ultimate remains? (Score:2)
.I find it interesting that they keep a copy of still infringing software available to purchase, AND its the most expensive version they offer.
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You ackowledge your post is redunant. Good for you.
It did not need to be restated. If you wanted to simply voice your support to his thread, then you should have replied to his thread rather than starting a thread whose sole purpose was to agree with the previous thread.