I used entirely open alternatives until I started working for a company that uses .docx files.
Luckily they offer a program by which employees can get a copy of Orifice for ten dollars, so I went that route.

Skype was available for Linux before Microsoft bought the company.

But I’ve recently paid for Skype because a) I needed the n-way video conferencing and b) it runs on Linux. So, I stand by my statement.

I hope Microsoft is turning over a new leaf when it comes to playing well with others.

But, I’ve been working in the computer industry for over 20 years, and they’ve spent the entire time trying to stifle anything that is non-Microsoft through maneuvering and by selling to managers and OEMs rather than by appealing to customers. It’s possible that they’ve decided to embrace the new reality but, if history is any guide, it’s probably only a matter of time until they kill the Linux- version of Skype (and loose me as a paying customer). They refueled to engage me about making their products more appealing for over 20 years, so I’m not exactly holding my breath for a kinder, gentler, more user-focused Microsoft that actually meets my needs as a customer.

If anyone at Microsoft wants to talk to me, I’ll be more than happy to make specific technical suggestions on how to improve their products. The last time I had a chance to sit down and talk with a Microsoft engineer about a problem with “Product A” that was a result in a design flaw of “Product B”, engineers for “Product A” dismissed my concerns with a silence that indicated that the engineers for “Product B” were about as likely to listen to them as they were to me. That’s not the kind of engagement that I expect from a serious enterprise software vendor when talking to the kind of potential multimillion dollar customer in a market they were trying to “penetrate” that I was representing at that time.

What I want from Microsoft:
1) Interoperability. I use Linux to do my job. My employer chose Exchange and Lync as “enterprise” communication tools. Exchange and Lync don’t really work from Linux. Therefore, Exchange and Lync are broken for me and my company.
2) Listen to actual users of the product. Microsoft sells to managers and OEMs. I’ve spent my career actually running and using Microsoft products, and the design of their products lacks flexibility. For instance, how the ^^#&* can Exchange web access only provide full support for IE, and not allow wildcards or regular expressions in filter rules? Yeah, yeah, people who don’t know what those are don’t miss ‘em, but procmail has the worse user interface in the world but is way easier to use, because it has a few basic features that are required to make e-mail filters work properly that Exchange does not have. There are are also hundreds of minor GUI tweaks that would make Windows easier to use — for instance, you can’t resize a lot of the common dialog boxes on Windows, but their content is bigger than the box. I’ve got thousands of pixels available on my screen to display the information, but I can’t use them because it hasn’t occurred to MIcrosoft to fix the problem since the dialog box was written in 1999, and because there’s no way to tell them that there’s a problem.

Anyway, I apologize but I’m just getting started. I’ve got 20 years of frustration with Microsoft’s products, and I’m hoping someone at Microsoft reads this article and can act on this suggestion. Because this is the best communications channel I have. If someone were actually listening, I could provide proper bug reports on all of this. But, after two decades of being ignored, I’ve found it’s easier just to contribute code to Open Source than it is to get things fixed on Windows.

I have a lot of respect for the ideals of the open source community.

But I’m also pragmatic, and I’d be happy to buy Microsoft’s products if they would solve my problems. But they won’t sell me what I need, and what they sell to other people creates more for me. They could fix this easily by putting more emphasis on serving users and removing emphasis on to forcing people onto their platform.

Suppose a full Microsoft-platform user spends $1000 over 5 years. With Microsoft’s “you’re with us or you’re against us” strategy, they get $0 from me. By selling me Office and Skype, they could get $400 from me, AND get me to stop badmouthing their products at every opportunity. What’s it gonna be, Microsoft?