OpenOffice.org in internet cafes threat to Microsoft
January 12th, 2010Another week, another example of how Microsoft is being forced to react to the increasing adoption of OpenOffice.org as the 2010 office software of choice. Clearly worried by OpenOffice.org’s increasing market share, Microsoft has been forced to change its licencing terms in an attempt to hold on to its internet cafe business. Directions on Microsoft analyst Paul DeGroot admits that Linux and OpenOffice.org are a perfectly viable alternative to Microsoft Windows and MS-Office for web cafes.
Internet cafe business is important for Microsoft – one open-source cafe can demonstrate to thousands of customers every year that there is a viable alternative to Microsoft’s products. The freedom from licence fees means the cafes can offer better value to customers, flex their business in response to customer demand, and don’t live in constant dread of a visit from a licence enforcement team.
January 13th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
A real power play for openoffice.org would be to education establishments. Students need to use these tools at school, on their lap tops, and at home on their home PC’s. Open office is free, rather than pirated versions used at the moment.
An even larger user base is the voluntary sector. How many charities need the office suite? How many of their volunteers need it too? How many of these use un licensed versions?
January 14th, 2010 at 9:18 am
I’ve been noticing more internet machines in Australian hotels which are running OpenOffice.org and other open-source programs, but I haven’t seen one yet with Linux on it. I keep looking!
January 14th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Openoffice is not the threat to Microsoft. Both of them will be irrelevant soon. The threat is Google Docs, Zoho and the likes. If Openoffice does not get webified it will soon loose its value too.
January 15th, 2010 at 12:25 am
[...] and OpenOffice.org adoption [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. One of the people from OpenOffice.org has just responded as follows: (also [...]
January 17th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
I personally tend to favour SSuite Office’s free office suites. Their software also don’t need to run on Java or .NET, like so many open source office suites, so it makes their applications very small and efficient.
http://www.ssuitesoft.com/index.htm
January 20th, 2010 at 4:18 am
My neighborhood in New York used to have a cafe called Freeze Peach, which offered free use of one of its Ubuntu Linux machines with every purchase (there were four or five in total). They lost their lease and are closed now, unfortunately, but the website’s still up: http://freezepeach.org/