Syed Zillay Ali wrote: > Hi, > I have been working in Open Office org and MS Office as well, since > long. I however still wonder, what are the benefits that companies get > by offering a free software? Or it is just a community effort, no > company behind? There are other open source applications also > available, like Sun Office, but they are not free. I'm interested to > know about the free ones..
OpenOffice came about because Sun decided to open source StarOffice. As a result, the two suites are almost identical. Companies use open source software, because it has a lot of advantages. Instead of everyone duplicating the efforts of others, the software can be shared. So, OpenOffice is a community effort, working with what Sun made freely available. There are many advantages to open source. Suppose you need an application, but what's available doesn't quite meet your needs. You can then make changes as necessary, because the source code is available for you to do so. It also means bugs are more likely to be found, as more people are looking at it. (This is extremely important in security software, such as encryption). Also, you don't have to worry about what happens if your software supplier goes out of business, as you can take the software to someone else for them to maintain it. -- Use OpenOffice.org <http://www.openoffice.org> --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
