They have to...
Apple (that I use most) has no competing "Office Suite" - they have "skinned" an old version of Open Office, and made no effort to integrate anything. I cannot email from "Pages" - like I can in Word, I cannot the address book in Mail, just pick email addresses from it... so that sucks.
But on Linux there are tons of "Integration scripts" and patches that allows LibreOffice to access my Contacts and appointments in Thunderbird or Evolution or SeaMonkey or whatever. These are documented, source available, and a competent consultant can make the changes I need. Except for one:
I run MS Office here in Wine (Excellent Windows emulator) - but this still stores in MS native files, that are limited to the 32 bit FAT. I have 30+GB of emails on my laptop, and need to search what was done 8 years ago on a similar project, so archiving is impossible. MS also need full 64bit repositories for emails and documents and drawings and media, and what is easier than to can Win8 and move to Linux, say Mint? Then they have aqcuired Skype that needs the full tcp/ip stack, they have invested in commercial channels, and can end their venture into acquiring operating systems. bear in mind, none of the OS they sell have been developed from scratch by them ( ok maybe Windows 3.1). They don't have to pay for Linux, Steve Ballmer loves freebies. What they should fear is that someone, like Canonical comes up with a real killer solution - better than Unify, maybe in conjunction with the Linux variant "Android" that is spreading like wildfire.
