Re: M$ @ it again!!!

Subject: Re: M$ @ it again!!!
From: Dick Margulis <margulis -at- fiam -dot- net>
To: Solena -dot- LEMOIGNE -at- fr -dot- thalesgroup -dot- com
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 09:49:14 -0500



Solena -dot- LEMOIGNE -at- fr -dot- thalesgroup -dot- com wrote:

List members,

Tech writing tie-in: do you have a voice to express your concerns about the
tools you use to do you job?

I guess it's time to reprise my little ditty about getting your company to buy the tools you need.

From time to time you will find yourself the recipient of a memo or the reader of a statement in a company policy manual that states, "Microsoft Office is our corporate standard office suite." Someone in your company--the comptroller, your division VP, or some other PHB--will elaborate on this statement to the effect that installing any other office suite is against company policy. Then your manager will point to this statement as an explanation of why you cannot have Frame, Interleaf, OOo, or whatever else you may wish to use.

Here is what is really going on. Microsoft has offered your company a price discount in exchange for assurance that MS Office will be licensed for everyone in your company who uses a word processing, presentation, or spreadsheet application. That's all. MS gets their money. MS does not care what _additional_ applications are installed on anyone's desktop, as long as they get theirs. As part of this "program" MS asks companies to circulate a memo that says MS Office is the corporate standard office suite.

Everything that happens after that is based on misreading or misinterpreting the meaning of "corporate standard office suite."

With reasonable people in reasonable companies, you can generally explain this to everyone's satisfaction and get whatever software you need to do your job, as long as you agree not to uninstall Office. In the case of OOo, which is free, the argument is never about money, so it's just a matter of getting them to apply a little logic. If you cannot successfully make that argument, then either you are dealing with unreasonable people or you need to work on your approach to persuadive argument ;-)

Dick


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