Microsoft Office for Linux 'inevitable'

OSDL expects low-cost ‘Linux Office’ to keep Sun’s OpenOffice at bay

Microsoft will release a version of Office to run on Linux within the “next couple of years”, according to the chief executive of the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL).

“They did it once with Apple; they will do it again with Linux,” Stuart Cohen said during an interview with vnunet.com at the LinuxWorld conference in San Francicso.

OSDL aims to advance Linux and open source. The consortium employs Linux founder Linus Torvalds, and is funded by IT vendors including IBM, HP and Intel.

Cohen argued that Microsoft will be compelled to create a Linux version in a move to pre-empt the further rise of Sun Microsystems’ open source OpenOffice productivity suite.

“Microsoft will fight the total cost of ownership [issue] with a very inexpensive office solution,” he said. “I do not think that they will open source Office, but they will make it available to run on Linux desktops.”

Full article: vnunet.com