Hi Ash
Your product was recently recommended to me be a nice chap at PC World.
I had never heard of it before. Upon looking at what it offers I am
very tempted to download it. However, call me an old cynic, but I keep
asking people, why is the product free? What's in it for the producers
of the product? What am I missing?
I understand your skepticism and concern - many things on the internet
that are free are suspect, including spyware and adware. OpenOffice.org is
not like that.
There is a whole area of thought about computer software that is decades
old and world-wide that you are just discovering. The thought is that
software should be free - not so much free of cost, but free from the
excessive restrictions that encumbers so much software today.
This is a movement led by the Free Software Foundation and Open Source
Initiative. Probably the best introduction you can have is to read the
material from these two groups at their web sites:
http://www.fsf.org/
http://www.opensource.org/
This movement is much bigger than OpenOffice.org, and has inspired other
groups such as the Mozilla Foundation (who produce the Firefox web browser
and Thunderbird email client) and Linux (a free operating system). Large
computer/software organisations like Sun, IBM and Novell have bought in to
the open source way of thinking, believing it is a better way to produce
software and do business.
Please write back with comments and further questions. I'd be especially
interested in hearing your feedback about what you learn.
Adrian
www.tryanotherangle.org.
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