"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."
