The EU has just published an enormous tome on the economic impact of open-source software in Europe. Information Week cuts to the chase:

And one of the report’s findings is that users of Microsoft Office are no more productive than users of OpenOffice.

Read that again slowly, and think of all the millions of dollars spent annually on MS-Office licences. A complete waste of money.

Well, maybe not a complete waste. If you’re a big corporate customer, then you’ll get the services of a Microsoft account manager with an expense account. Free fact-finding trips to the US can be quite attractive. If you’re a suitably subservient Prime Minister you may even get a photo-opportunity with Bill Gates.

But in terms of saving your corporation – or your taxpayers – real money? Forget it. Just download OpenOffice.org.

And if you want to read about the power of free software to transform the world, see this article on OpenOffice.org in PeaceJournalism.com 

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 20th, 2007 at 3:35 pm and is filed under OpenOffice.org. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.