[ILUG] ms word not needed to write word documents

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Fri, 09 Jan 2004, Nick Murtagh wrote:

> One of the reasons people stick with Word is that it's "easy" - it's
> probably installed on their computers already, and they become familiar
> with it. 

Absolutely.  Some are even under the impression that it's an inherent part
of a computer.  (Using MS Office)==(Using PCs)

> DRM makes things "difficult" - and people won't use it unless they are
> forced to. 

Perhaps.  Lots of quoted features of MS Office that stop people moving away
are "difficult" to use though, eg VB Macros.

> The introduction of DRM into Office won't force people to use it, and
> won't stop Office users from being able to read non-restricted files from
> OpenOffice users (and users of older versions of Office). 

But the lack of it will basically shut the corporate world off using
OpenOffice.  It's the perfect "but what if", nice and vague, probably
hasn't much real effect but if OOo can't support it and anyone in the
company is using it, OOo cannot be relied upon to read files.  Of course an
IT manager choosing not to use DRM will be accused of risking company
security.

I don't know how MS Office DRM is supposed to work but I presume keys will
be available to groups within the company and you click "DRM encrypt for
this group" which will "guarantee" it unreadable to anyone else.  Actually,
I can see lots of power users going for that.  Like the macros, it's got
enormous lock-in potential, despite few people really making much use of
them.

Would built-in GnuPG support be a nice equivalent feature for OOo?

> And like most DRM schemes it will probably be cracked by some Norwegian
> bloke fairly quickly ;)

Perhaps, but it'll almost certainly be DMCA illegal and so OOo won't
package it.  That will make using OOo too hard for most people just like
DVDs on linux.

Gavin