The rise and rise of OpenOffice.org
I went to a party this Saturday evening for a friend’s 40th birthday.
Nothing remotely interesting about that in itself, but I was rather struck yesterday whilst remembering some of the conversations I’d had the previous night…
There were many people who I did not know at all or as only a “face” from the school run and such like. And it was a typical party with a wide mixture of individuals and couples from all sorts of backgrounds [i.e, NOT all in IT], and quite a few were from Australia. When the conversation turned to “what do you then?” and I told them, almost everyone of the replies included a comment along the lines of “Oh, you mean like Open Office?”.
I was questioned in-depth about Open Source in general, the business model(s) that surround and support it and on how one should go about getting or using it.
Another common thread to our chats was the: “There’s no reason to go out and spend hundreds of pounds of Microsoft’s Office. OpenOffice does more than enough and is free”.
The general interest level in Open Source and specific familiarity OpenOffice.org was very encouraging indeed.
On the downside, the evening was less like a party and more like a sales pitch… But hey – that’s fine by me 😉
Tags: Open Source, OpenOffice.org
