Do we look like Pirate Bay?
Oh, FFS. Okay, as a quick reminder, I work for an FTP server space hosting company. We rent space and static IP addresses which allow for file transfers and that's it. No Web page hosting or such.
So today, I got an Official Stupid Luser question. "I have some people who need to open Excel files but they don't have Excel. If I upload the Excel program, can they open the files on the site?"
Now, let's go in order of ascending obvious stupidity.
Least obvious: You don't actually open files ON the server. You download files FROM the server and open them on your end. You also can't RUN files ON the server. You'd have to download a program to your local (client-side) computer in order to run the program.
More obvious: The Excel program is fairly large, at this point, especially when you include all the libraries you'd need to run the thing. Even then, you'd have to install it before you can run it, and the installer is even larger as it's for the whole Office suite. It probably wouldn't all fit on the allocated server space.
What ought to have been completely obvious to anyone but a true moron: THAT'S FUCKING ILLEGAL. Uploading a commercially-sold program like Microsoft Excel is file sharing and is a direct violation of copyright laws and of the Microsoft End User License Agreement that you entered into when you bought and opened a copy of Office. You could get sued if you tried it and we could definitely get sued if we told you that it was okay to do that using our service.
In other words, NO.
In the end, I could have pointed him to the free-to-download file viewers Microsoft has put up for just this purpose. However, I pointed him to OpenOffice instead. The more people using open source software, the better. Fight the power, beeyotch.
So today, I got an Official Stupid Luser question. "I have some people who need to open Excel files but they don't have Excel. If I upload the Excel program, can they open the files on the site?"
Now, let's go in order of ascending obvious stupidity.
Least obvious: You don't actually open files ON the server. You download files FROM the server and open them on your end. You also can't RUN files ON the server. You'd have to download a program to your local (client-side) computer in order to run the program.
More obvious: The Excel program is fairly large, at this point, especially when you include all the libraries you'd need to run the thing. Even then, you'd have to install it before you can run it, and the installer is even larger as it's for the whole Office suite. It probably wouldn't all fit on the allocated server space.
What ought to have been completely obvious to anyone but a true moron: THAT'S FUCKING ILLEGAL. Uploading a commercially-sold program like Microsoft Excel is file sharing and is a direct violation of copyright laws and of the Microsoft End User License Agreement that you entered into when you bought and opened a copy of Office. You could get sued if you tried it and we could definitely get sued if we told you that it was okay to do that using our service.
In other words, NO.
In the end, I could have pointed him to the free-to-download file viewers Microsoft has put up for just this purpose. However, I pointed him to OpenOffice instead. The more people using open source software, the better. Fight the power, beeyotch.