Back in 2000, M$ (Microsoft) had a policy of sueing businesses which used openoffice like applications such as LibreOffice. One way to get around this was to purchase licenses for office from M$ (which is highly criminal if you ask me).

Does M$ still have the same policy?

Cheers,
Jono.

A few corrections:

1. LibreOffice was forked in 2010
2. OpenOffice was released in 2002
2. I think you are referring to rumors dating back to 2004 (MS deal with Sun?)
3. It seems like it was FUD - Nobody actually got sued. They probably just wanted to discourage people from using OO.


To answer your question, I really doubt MS would ever sue anyone over and *Office. If they have ever had any real case (valid patents), they would have done it by now.

Hmmmmmmmmm. I guess it was some argument I got into at work about how much money the business could save if we used linux/BSD . But I do recall mentioning openoffice at the time. Maybe I was illinformed, however what is the legal status of LibreOffice with M$?

Cheers,
Jono.

Hi,

Go to: http://www.libreoffice.org/

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I'm not a lawyer and it's my layman opinion. Even if there's some gray area that leaves some space for MS suing companies over using LibreOffice, I believe there's no genuine danger of them doing it. I think LibreOffice is slowly gaining ground (especially when companies are trying to save money). The French government, for examples, is trying to promote LibreOffice. IIRC recently the German administration have been flirting with the idea of open-source (including LibreOffice). I don't think they would even consider it if there were any real danger.

Having said that, I am not a lawyer and don't know much about a rather complicated software/formats patent system.

You might also like this presentation. That's a very recent presentation about LibreOffice situation in Finland
http://conference.libreoffice.org/pr...administration

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Thankyou friends for the links. I'll have a look at that finland link later. This is absolutely wonderful.

Everyone should drop M$ products like a bucket and use real open source software and operating systems. Bill Gates has enough money as it is. (I hope that doesn't get this site sued).

What I'll do is email both LibreOffice and Microsoft and get their policy on litergation (see I'm no lawyer either... I can't spell it). I'm not sure whether to close this yet as it would be interesting to compare the replies.

Ciao for now,
Jono.

MS didn't like Linux eg you could look up the SCO debacle where the effectively gave SCO money to continue its case against IBM, Novell etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2..._controversies

Also compare this from 2006 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11...ms_linux_code/ vs this from Apr this year 2012 http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...cal-linux-2632

They're gradually coming round to the idea that they can't destroy Linux.
I'm sure that they'd like it to go away, but it isn't going to happen.

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Well, lawyers do that. But, the fact of the matter is, you can't sue someone else for producing a word-processor application.

You also can't sue them for choosing to provide the application for free.

You might, on the other hand, be able to obtain a United States Patent for ... 'method of arranging printed characters in horizontal or vertical or arbitrarily-placed regular placements on a piece of paper, computer display, or other media.'

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That's probably what the OP was thinking of. It was SCO that was threatening to sue Linux users. Not Microsoft.

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Hi,

Look at: SCO-Linux controversies - Wikipedia

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Thank you for your contributions. I'm pretty sure I'll be in the clear here at my level of operations.

Here's a funny anecdote. When I contacted M$ via their ultrafriendly website, they wanted to charge me $75 to ask a the damn question about the office suite. So naturally I didn't proceed.

But as SCO is behind it all, it's one of those rumours that seem to circulate amoungst ill-informed IT professionals.

I'm going to stick with the this quote from the libreoffice website....
Thank you for your input,
Jono.