"The MS/Novell deal specifically excludes patent protection for "clone products." In the agreement, a clone product is broadly defined as "a product (or major component thereof) of a Party that has the same or substantially the same features and functionality as a then-existing product (or major component thereof) of the other Party ...

Whenever people thinks of a free operating system (if they do), the odds are that they will think of Linux, a clone of UNIX from 1991. They also might think of one or more of the BSDs, UNIX-derivatives dating back to the early ’80s. Let’s face it, though—UNIX is pretty boring. It was great for a PDP-11, and it gets the job done now, but it’s not exactly exciting.

"Microsoft is trying to push new file formats that are using ZIP and XML. Are those new file formats any good for Office developers ? In other words, should anyone feel safe to make direct access to file parts, and start getting free of running instances of Microsoft Office and its COM object model, usually through VBA ?"

The OpenOffice.org Project developers have announced that future Linux and Unix versions of their open source office suite will use the popular GStreamer multimedia framework for audio and video content playback.

If you need an office suite there are plenty of free software alternatives to MS Office. But, if you absolutely must use MS Office for whatever reason, that doesn't mean you have to stick with using Windows. You can install MS Office on GNU/Linux and this article will show you how. Some freedom is better than no freedom.

Open Office 3.1 final has been released today. The Open Source alternative to Microsoft Office can be downloaded from download portals like Betanews but not directly from the Open Office homepage as it has not been updated yet to reflect the release of the new version.

When you think about office suites, two names come to mind: Microsoft Office and OpenOffice. Although the vast majority of Linux users depend upon OpenOffice for their office needs, the alternatives should not be overlooked.

How does the current version of OpenOffice.org (OOo) compare with Microsoft Office in its ability to produce slide presentations?

The Novell-backed Moonlight project announced a beta of Moonlight 2.0, an open source Linux/Unix clone of Microsoft's Silverlight media framework. Moonlight 2.0 offers improved media streaming enabling media codecs like Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora, and BBC Dirac, via a runtime for its sister project, .NET clone Mono.