Comments on: The future of OpenOffice.org http://steves.seasidelife.com/2004/09/27/the-future-of-openofficeorg/ I'm Steve Richards a strategist and all round tech enthusiast working on enterprise desktop, application delivery and collaboration solutions. I work from home by the coast in the North West of England. All the views expressed in this blog are my own. Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:43:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Anonymous http://steves.seasidelife.com/2004/09/27/the-future-of-openofficeorg/comment-page-1/#comment-62 Anonymous Tue, 28 Sep 2004 08:47:33 +0000 http://steves.seasidelife.com/2004/09/27/the-future-of-openofficeorg/#comment-62 The GOSIP comparison is interesting, but not that appropriate, GOSIP at the time did not have 95% market share. I think perhaps OpenOffice.org's simple XML file format, by comparison with Microsoft's very complex XML file format with support for custom schema's may be the better example. Already there's discussion on making the OpenOffice.org format an ISO standard and competing Open Source office tools are planning to adopt it as their standard format as well. The EU in a recent study favoured the MS Office XML approach, but their track record in picking winning technologies is not that impressive! The GOSIP comparison is interesting, but not that appropriate, GOSIP at the time did not have 95% market share. I think perhaps OpenOffice.org’s simple XML file format, by comparison with Microsoft’s very complex XML file format with support for custom schema’s may be the better example. Already there’s discussion on making the OpenOffice.org format an ISO standard and competing Open Source office tools are planning to adopt it as their standard format as well. The EU in a recent study favoured the MS Office XML approach, but their track record in picking winning technologies is not that impressive!

]]> By: Anonymous http://steves.seasidelife.com/2004/09/27/the-future-of-openofficeorg/comment-page-1/#comment-61 Anonymous Mon, 27 Sep 2004 23:42:33 +0000 http://steves.seasidelife.com/2004/09/27/the-future-of-openofficeorg/#comment-61 Reading about OpenOffice (and OpenSource at large) and 'marketing plans' I often wondered whatever happened to the development strategy and marketing plans of that network back in the 80s ...I think it came to be known as The Internet :-) Some unplanned things (e.g. The Internet) just ...happen; some planned things (e.g. universal B-ISDN) just ...don't. If the Federal Government decides to buy OpenSource products, it might as well drop any anti-monopoly actions against Microsoft - they will be unnecessary. TCP/IP was anathema to both IBM and the big network companies at a time; it was NOT in GOSIP; it was untouchable. It only took a couple of major procurements which 'bent' GOSIP for TCP/IP to become de facto standard, despite its known technical shortcomings, before anybody had a marketing plan for it. Reading about OpenOffice (and OpenSource at large) and ‘marketing plans’ I often wondered whatever happened to the development strategy and marketing plans of that network back in the 80s …I think it came to be known as The Internet :-)

Some unplanned things (e.g. The Internet) just …happen; some planned things (e.g. universal B-ISDN) just …don’t. If the Federal Government decides to buy OpenSource products, it might as well drop any anti-monopoly actions against Microsoft – they will be unnecessary.

TCP/IP was anathema to both IBM and the big network companies at a time; it was NOT in GOSIP; it was untouchable. It only took a couple of major procurements which ‘bent’ GOSIP for TCP/IP to become de facto standard, despite its known technical shortcomings, before anybody had a marketing plan for it.

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