Symphony is a beta at present. It is, however, a free product, beta
or not.
The current beta of Symphony is based on an old version of OOo, but
has had real development done on it by IBM. Some of IBM's changes to the
UI are distinct improvements that I would like to see applied to regular
OOo.
Only testers, etc., will normally have both OOo and Symphony on their
systems. Symphony registers the ODF file extensions because, for Joe
User, if he has Symphony at all, Symphony will be /the/ program he uses
to manage ODF files with. I don't hear anyone complaining about OOo
"stealing" the ODF formats.
(I do wish, however, that Symphony would do it properly, during
installation, and not every time you start the program. IBM was made
aware on Day One that this is viewed as a fault.)
Do not lose sight of the fact that there are large businesses that
now refuse to install OOo (because it's hippie-commie-nerdy open-source)
but which will happily install Symphony (because it's from IBM). This is
a Good Thing.
For me, I'm sticking with OOo now, because the current beta of
Symphony has some old bugs that I was glad to bid farewell to. But maybe
I'll switch in the future. Let's see what happens.
--
John W. Kennedy
"Give up vows and dogmas, and fixed things, and you may grow like That.
...you may come to think a blow bad, because it hurts, and not because
it humiliates. You may come to think murder wrong, because it is
violent, and not because it is unjust."
-- G. K. Chesterton. "The Ball and the Cross"
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