A modest proposal

["Steve Poling" <sdpoling attbi com>]

Hi,

I fear you may find this note annoying. But I had a brainstorm just now
as I installed AbiWord on my work laptop. Why can't all the gnome apps
be ported to Win32? Yeah, I know the technical aspects are daunting, but
hear me out.

Why doesn't everyone on the planet use
Linux/Gnome/GNU/Free-as-in-freedom software? Work. 

I've got all my work files under MSOffice, and getting them to Linux is
painful enough that I don't want to bother. But if I had Gnumeric and
Evolution running under Win32, then I could wean myself of the dark
lord's software one app at a time. And perhaps others would tire of the
Microsoft upgrade treadmill (or the XP you're-only-renting-software
license), and switch over to free alternatives. To do the switch it has
to be: 1) painless, 2) easy, 3) incremental. I'm stressing incremental.
Incremental because work is cautious. I can weasel them into baby steps,
but if they see me rubbing my hands and yelling, "The storm is at its
peak! Bring me the brain!!!" They'll nod, smile, and slowly back away.

Work bought my laptop with Win2k on it. Switching it to Linux would be
painful, but installing AbiWord was easy and I hope to using it for all
my docs. When it does everything (tables) that Word does, I'll erase
Word everywhere and install AbiWord in its stead.

Then comes the other programs I use every day: Outlook and Excel. If
Gnumeric ran on the Win32 platform, I'd take a 2nd baby step away from
the dark lord's thrall. 

Am I making any sense to y'all?

Thanks in advance,

steve