That's what I never understood about Microsoft. They're a software company. And some of it is absolutely horrible (Sharepoint), and some of it is the best in the business (Visual Studio).
There's a significant mindshare in Linux and Open Source. That being said, I don't understand why MS didn't provide Visual Studio, Office, and similar for Linux at a premium. For example, if Office was $499 for Windows, charge $999 for Linux. That way, they get the best of both worlds (use their software, pay them money). And their mindshare is significant as well, and this would increase it.
Maybe finally they are coming to their senses, doing just this. It's about time.
Technically speaking, Office already runs on a Linux platform -- Android. In fact, if you subscribe to Office 365, they almost* don't care where you run it, they're still being paid.
* = I suspect the reason behind not creating Office for Linux desktop is that: non-Android Linux desktops have too little market share to be worth the engineering effort / risk of cannibalizing Windows desktop sales. Whereas Android has huge market share and people were perfectly comfortably using Android even without Office. So in that narrow case it made sense to go where the users are.
And they can say that on Linux desktops, you can use a very compatible version of Office inside a browser.
Comments
That's what I never understood about Microsoft. They're a software company. And some of it is absolutely horrible (Sharepoint), and some of it is the best in the business (Visual Studio).
There's a significant mindshare in Linux and Open Source. That being said, I don't understand why MS didn't provide Visual Studio, Office, and similar for Linux at a premium. For example, if Office was $499 for Windows, charge $999 for Linux. That way, they get the best of both worlds (use their software, pay them money). And their mindshare is significant as well, and this would increase it.
Maybe finally they are coming to their senses, doing just this. It's about time.
Technically speaking, Office already runs on a Linux platform -- Android. In fact, if you subscribe to Office 365, they almost* don't care where you run it, they're still being paid.
* = I suspect the reason behind not creating Office for Linux desktop is that: non-Android Linux desktops have too little market share to be worth the engineering effort / risk of cannibalizing Windows desktop sales. Whereas Android has huge market share and people were perfectly comfortably using Android even without Office. So in that narrow case it made sense to go where the users are.
And they can say that on Linux desktops, you can use a very compatible version of Office inside a browser.