Patrick, This is my personal take, and not the "party line".
Sun Microsystems are sponsoring the project and committing key developers for two reasons: 1: Because they sell a similar product called "StarOffice" for money. StarOffice has one key advantage - that you can buy a support contract from Sun Microsystems for it. This may not be of much interest to many users, but to large corporates, it can be of tremendous interest. For example, a client of mine, of of Europe's 100 largest companies is at the early stages of product evaluation - the candidates Star Office and Microsoft Office (the next generation.) The reason for rejecting OpenOffice.org? - no single support provider able to cover all of Europe and parts of Asia with a single support contract. 2: Because, IMHO, they want provide a production-quality Office Suite for sound commercial reasons. An increasing number of decision makers in IT have increasing concerns about the near-monopoly of Microsoft. The market problem is that no single vendor, not even one as large as Sun, is positioned to offer a joined-up solution across the board. However, the "rest of the world" - a loosely coupled mix of both individuals and organisations - CAN provide such an alternative that not only equals but excels (sic) the Microsoft solution on functional grounds (let alone price.) An IT strategy based on either "Best of Breed" or "Best of OpenSource" is looking more and more convincing, and Sun hardware plays a major part of that strategy for many organisations. Certainly if I go to any of the big Internet hosting firms these days, I see LOTS of Sun kit, as web hosters (either ISPs or corporates) choose to go Sun's route. Why might third parties choose to contribute: There is a superb book called "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by a guy called Eric Raymond (who is responsible for another OpenSource project, and consulted to Netscape about their OpenSourcing of the Netscape browser a few years back - a decision that ultimately led to the FireFox browser gaining, at least in my markets, a larger share than Netscape Navigator ever did.) If you want to understand independant developer motivation, then I'd strongly recommend you read his book. I don't agree with all the CONCLUSIONS he draws about "the future", but I think that he's spot on about the present. For the record, I am NOT a contributor of code to the OpenOffice.org project. However, I do run an OpenSource project in an unrelated application space, and both use and promote OpenOffice.org to both collaborators in that space and commercial IT clients. Regards, Mark Harrison ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Headley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 11:00 PM Subject: [Marketing] Confused about the price of OpenOffice > Hi, > > > > I am testing various aspects of OpenOffice v2.0 beta and see that it is a > high-quality product with a lot of potential. My confusion is how software > of this quality be produced for free. How do the developers of OpenOffice > make a living? How does Sun Microsystems tie into OpenOffice? Is there > eventually going to be a fee for licensing? > > > > Please help as I would like to begin using OpenOffice but don't want any > surprises with regards to licensing and upgrades later on. > > > > Patrick Headley > > Linx Consulting, Inc. > > 10491 Hyacinth St. > > Highlands Ranch, CO 80129-5412 > > (303) 916-5522 > > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > <http://www.LinxCo-Inc.com> www.LinxCo-Inc.com > > Communications Director - Denver Area Access Users Group > > www.DAAUG.org > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
