IBM, Sun, and OpenOffice.org

[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for this link. ]

"By most measurements, OpenOffice.org has been a success, with downloads reaching into the hundreds of millions. But still, it can be argued that OpenOffice.org has not yet achieved what it set out to do, to break the mould and disrupt the hegemony of Microsoft Office.

"OpenOffice.org may lack the more esoteric features, but is more than adequate to the needs of the 95 per cent of users, in the office and in the home, who need to write documents, keep spreadsheets, make presentations, and filter information throughout the organisation in a standard format - Open Document Format (ODF) - which is freely available to others. OpenOffice.org and its derivatives such as StarOffice, NeoOffice, Lotus Symphony and Red Flag's RedOffice are popular with Linux users and in Asia.

"Nonetheless, OpenOffice.org has not entirely fulfilled its early promise, and it is interesting to speculate how IBM, or Sun itself, might change that reality."

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