Novell Releases OO–OOXML Translator

Tookis writes in with news that Novell has released an Office Open XML (OOXML) translator for OpenOffice.org. The article argues that, though this move may represent a nail in the coffin of the franchise known as Microsoft Office, and therefore a Good Thing, what is truly needed is a fully supported Evolution on Windows.

15 Billion Dollars A Year At Stake

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the yearly revenue for Microsoft Office is about 15 billion which is about one third of the total revenue Microsoft makes every year. Correct me if I'm off. Over the past five years or so Microsoft's stock has been essentially stagnant. And Microsoft has had to make huge cuts over many of the preceding quarters to hit their street expectations and keep the stock from tanking.

Even a modest hit to the Microsoft Office revenue due to the upgrade treadmill from the format lock-in would have a massive effect on the company. Over the years Microsoft used their rapidly growing stock to keep salaries down and attract people with the lure of huge gains from their option grants. If office software revenue starts falling and Microsoft exec options start turning worthless I think you will start to see dramatic cuts at the company - the multi-billion dollar Xbox fiasco, the Zune mess, and many of the other let's throw money at new markets to try to get the stock moving attempts that Ballmer and others have tried since the stock peaked back around 2000.

I have to imagine that Microsoft will fight this move to open office formats with a fury never seen before. This isn't just extra billions that Microsoft won't miss, it is the multi-million dollar retirement money for a whole lot of execs up in Redmond under direct assault by a bunch of dirty hippies.

Microsoft lawyers are licking their chops

[puppetluva]

1. Naive programmers implement patented microsoft CLR/C#
2. Novell buys liability nightmare language/runtime implementation
3. Novell does patent deal with Microsoft
4. Novell releases patented information for Office translator
5. Microsoft starts raising legitimate lawsuits against both Novel (mono) and everyone else (using Novell precedent of signing patent protection agreement)
6. . . .
7. Loss!!!

Wake up, little Suse. . .

Re:Visionaries

[Goalie_Ca]

This MS blogger [msdn.com] seems to think differently as well.

From the blog:

If we ever were really in a war, it's now over, and both sides are winners.

Re:Evolution for Windows?

[julesh]

Isn't that what SuSE OpenExchange is?

Thunderbird

[iamacat]

Evolution may be trying to clone Outlook, but it's not great as a standalone e-mail program. There is nothing really wrong with Thunderbird. For a calendar, try Palm Desktop. There is a little program to sync it to iPod.

The worrying thing is Novell's reputation

[jkrise]

Throughout it's existence, Novell has never been a credible threat to Microsoft over a reasonable lenth of time. Their agreement with Microsoft further reinforces the suspicion that Novell might not be realy competing, rather they might be collaborating with Microsoft to further extend the monopoly situation and exclude genuine choice, and freedom of software. Some concerns:

1. Does Novell's translator work well with OO.org, or Novell's version of Open Office only?
2. Like Mono's port of VB, is the usage of the translator covered by the patent deal between MS and Novell?
3. Why did Novell abandon the Netware range of products?

This does not appear to be a nail in the coffin of Office, it seems to be an extended lease of life for a dying format and bloatware from the 800lb gorilla.

-

Re:Who didn't know this?

[slashbart]

People expect their documents to always look and work *exactly* the same, even though they do incredibly boneheaded things that end up relying on every feature and bug Word has ever had

Dude, there has never been this pixel perfect rendition between different Word versions, not even on Windows, let alone if you also include the Mac versions. I absolutely don't buy your argument as a valid reason for all the renderAsWord1OnMacintosh1984 attributes

What I need more..

[rockypg]

..is an evolution plugin that connects to Microsoft Exchange server Outlook Web Access through a proxy.

My job requires me to program on Linux, and I also prefer using Linux full time as ITservices here has draconian policies here for Windows users (Everyone is a restricted user and they cannot even change their own wallpaper). On my linux box, I have root access, my own wallpaper and mp3 player. There are so few linux boxen here that ITS let me have root access. They aren't well versed enough, and they don't want the extra hassles.

I don't get to choose what Mail server my employer uses. I can choose my client though. IT services refuses to support POP or SMTP as they have had to deal with Viruses before.I work on a Dual Boot FC6/WinXp box, and am forced to forced to boot into WinXp just to manage my email. Outlook Web Access does not work that great with Firefox, and does not provide for a way to pull email off the server and store them locally. Our web access is through an authenticated Proxy and the evolution plugin cannot deal with that (yet). What do the other folks out there with linux boxen and M$ mail servers deal with this?

Real-world test - Fails with OO.o

[AYeomans]

It's fascinating how slashdot still prefers opinions to facts.

I downloaded the odfconverter-1.0.0-2.oxt file and tried to install into OpenOffice.org 2.1.0 for Windows (as downloaded from openoffice.org web site, not the Novell version).

I had to use Tools -> Extension manager (not Package manager), and when installing, had several pop-ups stating "This media-type is not supported: application/octet-stream". OKing these showed the odfconverter installed into "My extensions". And "Microsoft Word 2007 Document (.docx)" was added to the list of files in File -> Open.

But trying to open a .docx file (the Windows Vista Product Guide [microsoft.com] failed, with nothing happening or displayed.

Anyone want to try the other options of Linux, OO.o 2.0.4, Novel OO.o 2.0.4 [novell.com] and report back?