Back at last year’s OpenOffice.org Annual Conference, I polled some of our contributors on why they devote so much time and energy to working on OpenOffice.org. One of the common themes was the inspiration provided by the enthusiasm and creativity of their fellow contributors. A good example popped a week ago, where a suggestion from Alexandro Colorado in the Marketing Project kicked off a discussion that led to our open letter to Dell on Monday.

This story was picked up by the media and “followed the sun” around the globe, with typical reports from India, the UK, the US, and round to Australia. Most of the stories have been straight reporting on the open letter, but one commentator had a poke at Michael Dell’s wealth; the F/OSS chattering classes on Slashdot gave it their usual robust scrutiny; and the Inquirer provided a typically jaundiced view.

So, will this media interest be enough to get OpenOffice.org on Dell’s agenda? Time will tell, but as European governments start getting the open-source message, the outlook for F/OSS is increasingly encouraging. Good news helps inspire more contributors, which in turn creates more ideas, and we kick off a virtuous circle where today’s question: Why OpenOffice.org? turns into tomorrow’s question: Why not OpenOffice.org?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 7:02 am 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.