USA states' proposal to force port of MS Office to free platforms

[Andy Tai <lichengtai yahoo com>]

Hi, several states of the USA, in trying to resolve
the Microsoft antitrust case, has proposed, as part of
the settlement, to force Microsoft to port Microsoft
Office to GNU/Linux (or Linux). If Microsoft is forced
to do this, Microsoft as well will gain significant
dominance on the application markets on top of free
platforms (even at the expense of Windows' dominance
in the OS market), given the fact that Microsoft has a
lead in the office software technolgy over free
software, and Microsoft's dominance in file formats
favors people to use their office products even for
people not running Windows as the OS.  

The entry of Microsoft Office, even a "forced" one, to
free platforms, will form a major obstacle to the
adaption of free desktops like GNOME and free office
applications. Free desktop software needs time to
mature and to establish itself. Microsoft's entry into
the desktop on free platforms results in free Unix
become a vehicle for running proprietary software.

In short, porting Microsoft Office to GNU/Linux will
create more problems for the free software community
and is not the right solution.  Maybe the GNU Project
and the GNOME Foundation can issue statements opposing
the states' proposal?

(Microsoft is big enough so it probably will not use
any GNOME or KDE components but port their own
Windowing system so no need to discuss the issues of
GPL vs. LGPL with regards to Micrsoft) 

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send your FREE holiday greetings online!
http://greetings.yahoo.com