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Eric Harlow — It’s a funny world: Or why Microsoft’s reign is over

“It took me until this evening to realize the significance
of the announcement that Sun is releasing StarOffice for free and
releasing the source code to the office suite.”

“Why pay royalties to Microsoft when a few bucks can be saved by
shipping a pretty darned good alternative office suite?”

“Imagine a computer that only performs office functions like
word processing, spreadsheets, email, and web surfing. Imagine it
costs $100 less than the Microsoft OS computer and it doesn’t
crash. It also has the same StarOffice that consumers are used to
using on Windows – of course, it’s all on Linux. The operating
system will matter less to consumers as the operating systems
perform the same functions. The StarOffice on Windows looks and
behaves just like the StarOffice on Linux. Consumers will want the
cheaper and better operating sytem. Why pay more for less?”

Complete
story
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