IBM To Join Sun In Open Office Development
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IBM today announced that it will join Sun in development of Open Office. The resulting additions are expected to work with the remains of the software IBM markets under the Lotus name.
The announcement stated that IBM would contribute to the Open Office product, and that the Open Office product will be contributing to IBM products. This could work in much the same way that Star Office and Open Office benefit each other.
Asked why the IBM and Sun teams have not worked together on this endeavor before now, the IBM spokesman said it was a way to do something heroic.
“The reality is that a chance to break an industry monopoly that generates $15 billion in revenues a year comes only once in a generation - when it comes at all.”
Clearly an assertion that Microsoft’s time to sit in the seat of power is coming to an end, if the cooperation between the two companies only enhances the current Open Office, the computing world will be benefited greatly.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, as Sun and IBM together have an amazing amount of talent available, and perhaps IBM will be donating some of what was SmartSuite to the open source community. I remember SmartSuite as being very capable, and complete. If only small sections were used to fill in gaps in Open Office, it would make the software formidable.
Due to the Open Office product being offered on every major platform, this will be a boon to anyone who uses a computer today.
[tags] IBM, Sun, Open Office, Star Office, Lotus SmartSuite, collaboration, open source projects [/tags]
3 Comments
GurusBlog » Blog Archive » Lecturas recomendadas: 11-09-2007
September 11th, 2007
at 11:22am
[...] 1 - IBM To Join Sun In Open Office Development ~ Revelations From An Unwashed Brain Nuevos movimiento para poder arañar parte del negocio al monopolio actual de Microsoft… (tags: Office Open Sun IBm) [...]
VitaminCM
September 20th, 2007
at 9:49am
My two biggest problems with Open Office are The Speed and the Flaky Interface.
Now Lotus, of all people is going to “help out”. Have you ever used Lotus Notes (Bloats)? It is the slowest, crappiest, buggiest, busted up interface that I have ever seen. I am forced to use that P.O.S. at work and it is the worst.
Open Office, save yourself and step away from the Lotus.
the oracle
September 20th, 2007
at 10:23am
Vitamin, the speed issue can be fixed by going into the options and fixing the defaults for memory usage, both total and per process. When that is done - it is very fast. (I am working on a dual core machine, but before I say something is fast, I always go to a K7-900 MHz machine running XP SP2 to compare before and after. If it makes a noticeable difference on that hardware - then I know I can recommend something as faster and better. It does make that difference!
The OpenOffice is very good for most things, but I do quibble with the menuing system - it could be better - 2 things, it’s free, and I wonder how much of it is because I’m used to Office. BTW, I have taken Office 2003 off my machines to force myself to become more proficient with OpenOffice. I do remember liking Smart Suite - back in the days of Windows for Workgroups it was IMHO much better than Office. I have always liked Lotus 1-2-3 better than Excel, and I liked dBase IV or Approach better than any MS database offering.
My general opinion of Microsoft is that they should stick to operating systems, both operating systems and other software would benefit. Even there, thinking back to OS/2, Warp beat the snot out of Windows 95. It was faster, more robust, and better thought out. Just another case of Betamax - VHS syndrome!
I have not used Lotus Notes, but there are those who would take issue with what you say - I know people who love it.