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

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 04:25:53PM -0800, Andy Tai wrote:
> 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?

It is irrelevant if this will be good or bad for us.  I don't think it is the
foundations job to issue statements like this.  We are here to make and
promote GNOME.  Availability of MS Office on Linux is completely orthogonal
to what we are doing.  We are writing a free software desktop, including an
office suite.  MS Office would likely stay proprietary, and thus is not
something we should worry about.  Windows didn't seem to kill Linux, nor
GNOME for that matter even though it provides the same functionality.  If
people didn't care at all about free software on desktop, they would be
running windows with ms office already anyway.  Not to mention that
availability of MS Office on windows doesn't seem to be stopping the windows
port of abiword.

In any case, even if it did affect us.  I think it's the wrong way to go
about 'winning' on the desktop.  We want to win by doing better software.
That is, we want to make better software.  Freedom is good because it
provides better long term results (and that's not just in software).  So
we should win by providing better long term results and not throwing a
tantrum fit everytime someone does something we think might threaten our
goals.

Of course the above is all just my own opinion and I'm probably full of shit.
Come to think of it, I AM full of shit, please disregard the above.

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   You have the right to food money providing of course you don't mind a little
   humiliation, investigation and if you cross your fingers rehabilitation.
                       -- The Clash