Stimpy said:
Microsoft Office costs hundreds of dollars.
Yes, but most of your largest corporations don't pay for licenses, they
pay for support contracts, which were signed as early as 2001, shortly
after the release of Windows XP. These companies are audited and are
required to purchase enough support contracts for every employee. In
exchange, the company gets discounted prices, automatic security and
version updates, and upgrades.
Which makes it nearly impossible to count. We know how many copies
were downloaded from mirrors that report the downloads. Unfortunately,
this could be 1/2 to 1/4 the number installed. We know that there were
over 100 million copies of OpenOffice 2.0 loaded. But were there 100
million copies deployed? Or 400 million?
The good thing about OpenOffice being free is that it can be easily
distributed and shared with many people and installed on multiple
systems. The downloaded software can be installed on Windows and Linux
So why are people still paying hundreds of dollars to purchase
the latest Microsoft Office?
Most people don't pay retail. They don't pay out of their own pockets
at all. Some CIO tries to balance the risk of getting sued, the
feasibility of eliminating Windows entirely, and the duration of the
next support contract, to determine the lowest possible amount he can
spend to get the service and licenses that are actually needed, but
balance those licenses and costs against the minimum commitments and
"all or nothing" terms offered by Microsoft. He may even be rated,
promoted, and get bonuses based on how much his IT organization spends.
Since it costs nothing to download and install OpenOffice, there is no
approval required, therefore no tracking of actual usage. Even if 95%
of the staff is using OpenOffice, there are no records in the expense
reports, no auditors demanding an accounting, not even the threat of an
invasion by the SPA, BSA, or some other "Software Nazi" organization.
It just does not make sense.
The problem is that you are making three assumptions, which are totally
incorrect.
One, that each individual is making the decision to spend their own
money. The decision to deploy MS-Office is not theirs, it is that of
the Corporate Information Officer. In some cases, the administrators
are required to install it. Even if it is never used, it is counted as
if it was.
Two, that no one who uses Microsoft Office ever uses Open Office. The
decision to use Open Office is often that of the individual end-user,
who can download, install, and configure the software, and even share
it with coworkers in a workgroup, department, or division, without
having to download, register, or report another copy.
Three, that use of the two are mutually exclusive. There are probably
hundreds of millions of users who use a both OpenOffice and MS-Office,
much the same way that people use both firefox and IE. For much the
same reason. There some documents written by and for MS-Office which
don't display well on OO. On the other hand, many users prefer
OpenOffice to MS-Office for general use. It's faster, simpler, and
easier to share documents.
Rex
