This user refuts a typical slanted review of openoffice.org.
The reviewer says "business users typically want the best and they don't mind paying for it.". Which we know is not true - business users want what they know and what is cost effective. Otherwise OS/2 would have won over win 3.1 and business people would never fly coach (or southwest airlines). They are focused on the bottom line - which hopefully translates to a higher share price.
Why do most mid sized law firms that I've seen have their users on windows 2000 with office 2000 or 98? It is good enough and the partners would rather keep the money in their own pockets. The story around Office dominance is more about learning curves and file format lock-in than it is about loading speed.
The problem is that OpenOffice.org is 10 million lines of code and it is quite hard for part time developers to get involved. Hopefully this is changing and the development cycle will speed up. My concern is that Sun is using oOO as a negotiating tool or something to push more Java to people's desktops. IBM really needs to step up to the linux desktop plate and put some resources behind it. Currently they are non committal - focusing on IBM workplace.
Posted by Anthony at September 23, 2005 10:54 AM