[Wolves] SugarCRM & Microsoft

[Peter Cannon]

On Wednesday 15 February 2006 10:12, Simon Morris wrote:

> Mm, what a fantastic site!

Yeah, big thanks to LugRadio. I heard about him on there I added his RSS feed, 
most of the cartoons are hilarious.

> I think it is good - at the end of the day Microsoft have come up with a
> Free Software licence (more aligned to the Mozilla Public Licence than
> the GPL) so we shouldn't hold back on giving praise where it is due.

I have no beef with MS apart from its package integration policy.

> Of course Microsoft aren't going to start releasing their main products
> as Open Source as that is completely incompatible with their business
> model but if we want to see a world where open standards is the norm
> (and we have a level playing field) we shouldn't be too guarded when the
> occasional bit of good news comes out of MS.

An ideal situation would be for MS to work on stuff (mostly to their advantage 
of course) then re-releasing it under GPL with some sort of cross platform 
pollination.

> SugarCRM is a great application anyway - if we get more features and
> better integration with office suites (both OO.o and MS Office) out of
> this deal then that is good news. As long as it remains free - that is
> the big question.

H'm, the 'Free' topic was touched on in the latest LugRadio IMO just because 
its free doesn't make it good, as (I Think) Jono said everyone is used to 
getting it for 'free' if they have to start paying they may stop using it.

For me paying isn't an issue so long as its not ridiculous I just paid £20.00 
odd for CrossOver which is not too bad although I would have said £15.00 is a 
fairer price. The subject of payment is a Hackle raiser but IMHO its the 
defining line between hobbyist on progressive user.

As an example if there was two versions of oOo say Standard (as in free) and 
Pro (Paid for) version that guaranteed seamless intiration with MS Word then 
I'd probably pay for the pro version given that it would be of benefit to me 
for work and my girls for school work. However if I was just 'Doing Linux as 
a hobby' and it had no bearing at all on my work life I'd probably go for the 
standard version.

PS. On a different matter but similar 'Games for Linux', again Jono or Aq said 
there are no games for Mac! not true Age of Empires is available for Mac. I 
think it only goes up to AOE II but even so.

-- 
Regards
Peter Cannon
Fedora Core 4 & Suse 10.0
Jabber:highwayman.turpin at gmail.com

"There is every excuse for not knowing,
There is no excuse for not asking!"
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