On Sat, 2005-05-14 at 10:08 +0100, Mark Harrison wrote: > Patrick, > > This is my personal take, and not the "party line". > > Sun Microsystems are sponsoring the project and committing key developers > for two reasons: > > 1: Because they sell a similar product called "StarOffice" for money. > StarOffice has one key advantage - that you can buy a support contract from > Sun Microsystems for it.
Sun will sell you a support contract for OOo too. > This may not be of much interest to many users, but > to large corporates, it can be of tremendous interest. For example, a client > of mine, of of Europe's 100 largest companies is at the early stages of > product evaluation - the candidates Star Office and Microsoft Office (the > next generation.) The reason for rejecting OpenOffice.org? - no single > support provider able to cover all of Europe and parts of Asia with a single > support contract. I bet if they insisted on OOo, Sun would do it. But it would probably be academic because I doubt there would be a financial advantage just different ways of accounting for the money. > 2: Because, IMHO, they want provide a production-quality Office Suite for > sound commercial reasons. An increasing number of decision makers in IT have > increasing concerns about the near-monopoly of Microsoft. The market problem > is that no single vendor, not even one as large as Sun, is positioned to > offer a joined-up solution across the board. When they bought SO, they could have kept it proprietary but it would have been yet another office suite and would have at best made the progress of Lotus, Corel etc. The reason there is such global interest in SO/OOo is that OOo is FLOSS. So OOo is absolutely essential to global take up without it SO would be nowhere. Star Office might or might not be important because of corporate perception and brand value. Obviously Sun believe it is or they wouldn't bother with the additional overhead of maintaining two products. > However, the "rest of the > world" - a loosely coupled mix of both individuals and organisations - CAN > provide such an alternative that not only equals but excels (sic) the > Microsoft solution on functional grounds (let alone price.) Both MSO and OOo overshoot the market for the vast majority of users already. Overtime they will become more and more similar in function so other factors will in the end be decisive. Cost, convenience of installation, cross platform compatibility, open document formats etc. All of those factors favour OOo. MS need to make 80% profit margins on billions of turnover from MSO to sustain their business. The OOo community can sustain its business on breakeven on a few million total turnover at most spread across the whole world. > An IT strategy > based on either "Best of Breed" or "Best of OpenSource" is looking more and > more convincing, and Sun hardware plays a major part of that strategy for > many organisations. Certainly if I go to any of the big Internet hosting > firms these days, I see LOTS of Sun kit, as web hosters (either ISPs or > corporates) choose to go Sun's route. You have to sell an awful lot of hardware these days to feed all the mouths in a large corporate. Sun's dependency on hardware sales on things that are becoming commodities makes them as vulnerable as MS being dependent on software that is becoming a very low cost commodity. Sun should be doing acquisitons to shift itself to become a service company that incidentally supplies hardware and software. If they don't I think they will be out of business in 5-10 years. They have enough capital reserves to last a while, but not for ever. > Why might third parties choose to contribute: > > There is a superb book called "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by a guy called > Eric Raymond (who is responsible for another OpenSource project, and > consulted to Netscape about their OpenSourcing of the Netscape browser a few > years back - a decision that ultimately led to the FireFox browser gaining, > at least in my markets, a larger share than Netscape Navigator ever did.) > > If you want to understand independant developer motivation, then I'd > strongly recommend you read his book. I don't agree with all the CONCLUSIONS > he draws about "the future", but I think that he's spot on about the > present. > > For the record, I am NOT a contributor of code to the OpenOffice.org > project. However, I do run an OpenSource project in an unrelated application > space, and both use and promote OpenOffice.org to both collaborators in that > space and commercial IT clients. > > Regards, > > Mark Harrison > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Patrick Headley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 11:00 PM > Subject: [Marketing] Confused about the price of OpenOffice > > > > Hi, > > > > > > > > I am testing various aspects of OpenOffice v2.0 beta and see that it is a > > high-quality product with a lot of potential. My confusion is how software > > of this quality be produced for free. How do the developers of OpenOffice > > make a living? How does Sun Microsystems tie into OpenOffice? Is there > > eventually going to be a fee for licensing? > > > > > > > > Please help as I would like to begin using OpenOffice but don't want any > > surprises with regards to licensing and upgrades later on. > > > > > > > > Patrick Headley > > > > Linx Consulting, Inc. > > > > 10491 Hyacinth St. > > > > Highlands Ranch, CO 80129-5412 > > > > (303) 916-5522 > > > > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > <http://www.LinxCo-Inc.com> www.LinxCo-Inc.com > > > > Communications Director - Denver Area Access Users Group > > > > www.DAAUG.org > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMSL --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
