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http://zerolinesofcode.wordpress.com

According to a recent tweet, Oracle (the company which recently acquired Sun Microsystems) has started to charge a license fee for its popular open office compatibility plug-in for Microsoft Office. Is this a signal for other open source and free software vendors to start charging for commercially valuable applications?

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Marcin's picture
Created by Marcin 12 years 7 weeks ago
Category: Business   Tags:
akf's picture

akf

12 years 7 weeks 11 hours 57 min ago

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confused

There seems to be a big confusion here. The ODF-Plugin for MS-Office was never Free Software. Yet, still I think, this is a very bad move.

akf's picture

akf

12 years 6 weeks 6 days 20 hours ago

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monetizing Free Software

Okay, this article is not about Free Software. But to answer the question: it would not be wrong to monetize Free Software. The FSF even encourages to do so.

knowing-card's picture

knowing-card

12 years 6 weeks 6 days 1 hour ago

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Open formats are part of FSDaily's scope

Even though this is about a company charging money for a proprietary plugin for a proprietary office suite, it might be of interest to the free software community for several reasons:

* It relates to ODF an open format and standard.

* It illustrates how Companies behind proprietary software can (through vendor lock-in) squeeze their customers.

* It gives the FOSS community an insight into the possible future other Oracle software: MySQL, OpenOffice.org etc.

* It can be used to convince to use a free software office suite instead of MS Office.

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