Submitted by “Quoting an inside source, the German economic newspaper, ‘Handelsblatt’ reports that staff at IBM have been given ten days to change to Symphony, IBM’s in-house Lotus software. The use of Microsoft Office will in future require managerial approval. With immediate affect, the Open Document Format (ODF) will rule at IBM with the file ending .doc soon belonging to the past… IBM’s management have obviously decided to practice what they preach. 330,000 IBM workers already use Symphony, reports the newspaper. The motive for the migration appears not to be the saving of license fees, and according to an IBM press officer, the move is a clear statement in appreciation of open source standards.”
This puts some serious credibility into ODF. For a major player in the IT industry to make this switch, speaks volumes. I am not saying ODF did not have credibility before, as it did. This should make all the difference in adoption around the world.
ODF doesn’t lack credibility. ODF is a perfectly non-controversial, capable, interoperable document format. Even Microsoft voted for it’s standardisation.
Surveys would indicate that OpenOffice has perhaps reached about 20% penetration into even the business market.
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Market_Share_Analysis
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Major_OpenOffice.org_Deplo…
http://www.solidoffice.com/archives/654
Edited 2009-09-18 00:35 UTC
20%?
I found it hard to believe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
There is no penalty (apart from the disk space used) if one installs both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office on the same machine at the same time.
OpenOffice is free (apart from the cost of a large download).
OpenOffice has been downloaded from the OpenOffice.org website more than 100 million times. Any given download can easily end up being installed on multiple machines.
Microsoft estimate that there are about 400 million installations of Microsoft Office.
OpenOffice is included on most Linux installations without having been downloaded from the OpenOffice webiste.
From these facts alone one would guess that OpenOffice has an installed base of perhaps 20% to 25%, with Microsoft Offce accounting for most of the rest of installed Office suites. (It is probably a fair assumption that there are not too many people who have completed a large download such as OpenOffice only to subsequently not bother to install it).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openoffice.org#Market_share
What exactly is there about all this that you find hard to believe?
Edited 2009-09-18 03:23 UTC
On a modern internet connection it isn’t a particularly big download.
I’ve probably downloaded versions of OpenOffice at least a dozen times, both to test it myself and to provide free office software to other people. Some of those downloads are still installed, but none of them are in regular use.
I’ve had an OpenOffice installation on my PCs for years, but while I still have to deal with MS Office documents 99% of the time, OO sits there unused.
I installed OpenOffice on a charity’s office PCs, thinking that it’d be fine as they said they only wanted it for letter writing. In the end OO Writer had trouble with grant application forms in .doc format, and the tech support guy they called got them a copy of MS Word instead.
I’ve encountered quite a few other examples of small businesses and individuals trying OpenOffice then going back the Microsoft software.
I’m not going to argue with the claimed market share figures, but just going on downloads/installations doesn’t tell you much.
Agreed. Even OpenOffice themselves would agree.
http://marketing.openoffice.org/marketing_bouncer_faq.html
However, counting downloads is likely to give a very CONSERVATIVE indication.
As already stated, most Linux distributions and quite a number of new PCs will get you a copy of OpenOffice without having to download anything.
Then, aside from Linux repositories and distribtion via OEMs, there are other methods of distribution:
http://distribution.openoffice.org/
As has also been pointed out on this thread, one can leaglly install a copy of OpenOffice on as many machines as one wishes. There are examples of 20,000 seat installations (OpenOffice installed on 20,000 machines) from just one download.
Edited 2009-09-18 11:06 UTC
I’ve encountered quite a few people who like OpenOffice far better than Microsoft Office, and they simply cannot believe that OpenOffice is free.
It is a pretty good deal, after all.
One thing not mentioned there…
Base is also excellent for recovering corrupted MS Access databases. It has saved the day on numerous occasions for me.
Not really. Hiev simply stated that he found those numbers hard to believe – but he didn’t attempt to draw any wider conclusions from his “personal incredulity.” It’s difficult to use a fallacious argument when you aren’t actually presenting an argument in the first place.
You’re nitpicking. Context decides what words mean. Note that you’re on a forum. Note that that was a reply to what Lemur said. It’s harder to believe that it was merely expressing some trivial bias than it is that it was expressing (mild) disagreement (thus, trying to make a point).
Hiev’s statement was characterized as a fallacious argument – yet it’s not really an argument in the first place (if the statement was meant as a contention, it’s an implicit one at most).
I’d say that’s a substantial nit.
Or, the third possibility: that he was simply making an observation that he found the 20% figure hard to believe. That’s the impression I got – it’s not as if he wrote something like “post proof or STFU.”
>> You’re nitpicking.
>>
> Hiev’s statement was characterized as a fallacious
> argument – yet it’s not really an argument in the
> first place (if the statement was meant as a
> contention, it’s an implicit one at most).
>
> I’d say that’s a substantial nit.
Of course it was implicit. That’s my point, too. Now, failing to address some argument just because it’s implicit is unfair. It’s that unfair advantage that cunning politicians often benefit from.
> Or, the third possibility: that he was simply making
> an observation that he found the 20% figure hard to
> believe. That’s the impression I got – it’s not as
> if he wrote something like “post proof or STFU.”
I noticed that this was the impression you got. That’s why I wrote my previous post. (Are you noticing anything “unfriendly” but implicit in the current paragraph?
)
Note: reedited because preview and posted version didn’t match.
Edited 2009-09-22 19:10 UTC
PS: I know several people who have purchased netbooks with Windows XP recently … and all of them came with a version of Star Office or OpenOffice pre-installed.
It is, after all, a free value-add for an OEM to include a full-featured powerful office suite with the machines that they sell.
http://why.openoffice.org/
http://why.openoffice.org/why_great.html
It is not only that it is free, it is good software too.
http://why.openoffice.org/why_free.html
OpenOffice 3.0 has passed the 50 million downloads mark alone.
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&p=1…
OpenOffice 3.1 is at 29 million.
The current rate is about 300,000 downlaods per day.
http://marketing.openoffice.org/marketing_bouncer.html
Edited 2009-09-18 03:53 UTC
OO 3.2 with OpenType should help even more.
This makes a lot of sense.
Its called “Eating your own dogfood.”
They will get more bug reports from people within the company (even, and maybe especially those that hate it and think it sucks). They will gain a staff that knows about it and can promote it in the broader marketplace.
And they won’t be buying a competitors product.
Serious question… IBM has owned Lotus for how many years now? How is it that They ever allowed MS Office to be used by their rank and file?
Something I never understood as well. Even in the days of OS/2. You walked into the IBM offices and everybody is using Windows 95 – yet they created and marketed a product for the desktop computer – called OS/2! Go figure!
Edited 2009-09-18 07:14 UTC
This is exactly what I was thinking. What kind of surprised me though is that they are just now eating their own dog food. I thought they have been doing this all along.
While it’s going to be tough for the employees, I think it will make OO much better!
Symphony is a great piece of software – its amazing to see how there are pie in the sky ideas being put about by Sun programmers regarding an Office 2007 GUI clone when the GUI with Symphony addresses the short comings of the existing design whilst ensuring they don’t isolate large numbers of users.
I hope that IBM makes all these changes available to OpenOffice.org – as far as I remember they aren’t required to do so but it would provide a great lift to OpenOffice.org on the average user desktop especially Linux on the desktop and netbook.
I agree with you that the the Symphony interface is the way OOo should go rather than some attempt to copy the repulsive productivity killing counter intuitive Office 2007 Ribbon. I like the tabbed interface and find it helpful in keeping track of all the documents, spreadsheets and presentations you have open while working on a project.
However the Symphony UI is built on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform which is why Symphony is so bloated. I would not want the OOo developers to add this additional this extra bloat to OOo. The current Symphony is built on the OOo 2 tree. IBM is working on updating it. Therefore as a working office suite OOo 3.1 is far superior but the Symphony interface is nice even if it insists on using Windows like widgets on Linux.
So I use OOo 3.1.1 in preference.
I’ve got nothing wrong with the Eclipse Rich Client Platform if the net result is something that is easier to port to other platforms; the complaints you made seem to centre on the need to optimise the JVM more than anything else. I hope with the work on OpenJDK that improvements with optimisation will occur although I’d prefer to see the focus put on adding Java support to LLVM
I agree completely. The ribbon interface is awful – it’s the Vista disaster all over again. I’ve heard loads of reports from long time Office users about how they simply can’t find things with the ribbon UI.
Symphony is much better (as much as I loathe IBM). But having it inside the eclipse RCP is a disaster. OOo does so much more than Symphony does, but uses half as much resources.
OOo should just follow the Symphony UI design, but keep OOo much lighter.
About 25 years ago (wow, I must be getting old), I recall running Lotus Symphony on my 7.14 MHz 8086-based Leading Edge PC with 256MB RAM and a 10 MB HDD. It wasn’t fast. Haven’t tried the new and improved Lotus Symphony, but I do use Open Office. What a difference 2793 or so MHZ and 3940 or so extra MB of RAM (not to mention 499 or so extra GB of HDD space) make! The word processing functionality is actually usable now. 🙂
Something tells me it was on your 512KB (or perhaps 640KB if you were lucky) machine.
Yes, 25 years ago mainframes didn’t even have that much RAM. I remember doing system disk backup/restores (for defragging) with the giant dinner plate-sized disk stacks. What a hoot. If you had 300 MB disk space for 10 or more users you were styling.
It’s better to have a standardized way of document handling and document format across the enterprise. Imagine that IBM has documents in MS Office 97, MSOfficeOpenXML, Lotus Word Perfect and ODF. For such a big corporation going with MSOffice would not be a wise choice.
Effect is the word you want.
Odd to me that they were using MS Office, because they were still forcing people to use the mainframe’s OfficeVision even years after there were really good word processors for OS/2. They could have been using OfficeVision for OS/2, even.
This is a step in the right direction. If more companies resist the claimed compatibility imperative, it’s likely 2 things will happen: Microsoft will learn a new sense of compatibility and they’ll be selling Office for similar prices to the competition.
Well, somebody has to use it, since nobody else does.
Are you enjoying living in your own world – “population of one”.
I don’t see anybody using Lotus Symphony here. Everybody has Office 2003 or 2007 on their machines. Symphony has been pushed to all machines as a compulsory package instalation and you’ve to comply. That doesn’t mean you’re using it.
Besides, Symphony is based on OpenOffice 1.x which sucks. I downloaded OpenOffice 3.x to work with ODF now that we are required but I won’t be using the old Lotus Symphony anytime soon. And it’s slow as hell… OO3 loads a lot faster.
IBM is the king of BS.
I forgot, what was your employee number again?
I really enjoy using OpenOffice and Symphony and/or Abiword / KOffice suites. I never had any problems with ODF [odt in particular] and it’s really great to have that much level of consistency in your own files. They remain accessible and I don’t have to pay for some ridiculously engineered Office suites like the newest MS Office suites, ’cause I really hate the interface [ribbons, d’oh!] and activation routines + incompatibility between different versions of the same and one MS Office suites.
So our quasi-governmental institution will quit mandating use of that crappy unintuitive product.
I am only surprised that they have not standardized in house applications before.Support and security are much easier that way.
Nice to see that after all these years, for a serious work, one can run a word processor with GBs of RAM on a PC with a processor running at some GHz and do a job that is worst than a LaTeX can do, running on a machine with 1/20 of that RAM and clock.
Good to see that 97% of people “need” to run these resource hog word processors to do nothing more than what Abiword or Wordpad can do.
Well, at least ODF is open.
Right now I see a few problems with IBM forcing their employees to use it. (1) It’s not on OO 3.X technology which is a vast improvement over 1.X technology. (2) Alot of IBM users are probably using older Lotus or Microsoft technology which won’t convert to Symphony. (3) Project managers would probably need a tool to work with Symphony otherwise they would have to use either IBM’s own product or something else entirely. (4) With Win7 coming up they would need to make sure that this is fully compatible with this OS.