OStatic

When Microsoft announced it was planning to offer lightweight, web-based versions of some of its Office components, there was some speculation that maybe it could be used with alternate browsers. It seemed Firefox would be a likely candidate beyond IE, and some ventured to wonder about Safari.

Even if Firefox was supported, it didn't seem likely this suite would be specifically web based, so it would need Windows, right? According to a few sources it seems as if that might not be the case. Though the source is a Microsoft Community member blog (and not a pronouncement from corporate sources) the concept of this service on Mac and Linux is fascinating because it suggests so much about what Microsoft might be thinking.

The rumors were true: Microsoft is opening up its Office 2007 suite of productivity applications to full support for other formats, including Open Document Format (ODF). Earlier this year, Microsoft was under fire for pushing its own Open Office XML set of formats as an international standard, when many people in the open source community wanted support for the more strictly open ODF standard. Microsoft officials have now also said that Office will fully support PDF format and XML Paper Specification (XPS). The new formats will arrive in Service Pack 2 for Office 2007, early next year, and some translators will arrive before then.

This is a 1.0 that I wasn't sure would ever come. No, I'm not talking about the Duke Nukem game that's been vaporware for the last decade or so. I'm talking about Wine 1.0, which is slated for release on June 6th of this year. That's a mere 15 years after development was started.

Wine, if you're not already familiar with it, is an application that allows Windows apps to run unmodified on Linux and other *nix operating systems.