Art Alexion on 26 Apr 2010 09:08:17 -0700


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[PLUG] Oracle charging consumers for ODF converters


I thought these were an open standard?

Here is a blurb from Woody's OfficeWatch, a pretty balanced newsletter
re-MS Office which has recommended OOo favorably in the past.  We pay
about $65/seat for charity licenses, and I believe student licenses
are even cheaper.  If the following is accurate, the "open source"
converters cost 150% of a commercial MS Office license!

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Oracle charges for ODF – MS Office converter
Oracle, the new owners of Sun, are now charging for the previously
free ODF plug-in for Microsoft Office.

The plug-in lets MS Office read and write to the ODF file format which
is a rival to Microsoft Office 2007/OpenXML document standard. It
works with Office 2007, Office 2003, Office XP and Office 2000.

Up to now the plug-in has been free but now it’ll cost and is
effectively only available to organizations. Oracle is charging a
steep US$90 per application with a minimum purchase of 100 copies.

If you can’t afford a minimum $900 for the plug-in, what are your choices?

Office 2007 with Service Pack 2 and Office 2010 support ODF formats
internally so you could switch to one of those.

Office 2003, Office XP and Office 2000 users can try the ODF Converter
available on Sourceforge.

Microsoft is quietly delighted with Oracle’s decision, the high cost
of an ODF converter is yet another reason for organizations to pay for
Office 2007 or Office 2010.
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-- 
artAlexion
sent unsigned from webmail interface
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