On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 19:04 -0400, Chad Smith wrote: > Show me some evidence - and it should be more than just "download numbers" > since I have personally downloaded OOo about 75 times.
And I have downloaded it perhaps 10 times but burnt and given out hundreds of discs. There is always going to be uncertainty in statistics but one thing is for sure, year on year there are more OOo users. I know you have a problem with rates of change, but really they are much better predictors of the future than raw numbers. Rates of change involve a time dimension and the future is time related. Take up follows predictable patterns. These are well docmented. Slow but accelerating start followed by a sustained more linear rate follwed by saturation and then decay. MSO has followed this pattern in terms of market share, particularly if you look at rate of take of new product rather than installed base. The rate of take up of new product is slowing because people are not upgrading from previous versions. The interesting thing to know would be to what extent OOo users are people moving from older versions of MSO and other products or people who would have bought new licenses for Office2003. If its the former, MS sales figures will not be affected much buy OOo in the short term but of course the confidence in OOo will grow and grow storing up a very sudden and nasty surprise for MS some time in the future when suddenly people realise what everyone else is doing. If OOo is taking new users from Office2003 MS will see lower than predicted sales. My guess and its only a guess is that its probably a combination but very difficult to be sure where the balance lies. Still life would be boring if everything was predictable with absolute certainty. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMSL --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
