Oracle now charging US$90 for ODF-Office plug-in
Oracle has imposed a fee of US$90 per user on a plug-in for Microsoft Office that was available at no cost under Sun Microsystems' ownership.
Oracle has imposed a fee of US$90 per user on a plug-in for Microsoft Office that was available at no cost under Sun Microsystems' ownership.
Confirming recent comments by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, an independent study released Friday found OpenOffice.org's free office suite to be five times more popular among adult US internet users than Google Docs.
The OpenOffice.org group has updated its open-source suite of desktop applications, saying the new release enhances the ability of users to create charts and other graphics from spreadsheet data.
News that the New Zealand Automobile Association is to throw out Open Office in favour of Microsoft’s software is a blow to open-source ambitions. But it shouldn’t surprise. The AA cites interoperability as the major issue here and says, whether we like it or not, Microsoft Office, and its document formats, are a de facto industry standard.
Let’s cut to the chase in the Massachusetts-Microsoft brouhaha over office document formats. One possible outcome is that Microsoft Office gains support for the OASIS OpenDocument format, either from Microsoft or from the open source community. Another scenario is that Microsoft tweaks its Office XML licensing to conform to the definition of openness that governments are rightly insisting on.