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OpenOffice.org Storms Away – on the Continent
April 18, 2008
Posted by: Glyn Moody
Some people get sniffy about OpenOffice.org, calling it mickey mouse in comparison to the “serious” and “grown-up” Microsoft Office. That may have been a vaguely plausible jibe for version 1, but I've found version 2 to be incredibly fast and powerful – it really does everything I need in an office suite, and it does it well. And yet OpenOffice.org rarely gets the respect it deserves.
Maybe that's going to change soon – at least on the continent:
If we look at OpenOffice.org, the three markets where the open source office suite is competing most successfully with Microsoft Office are probably Germany, France and Italy, followed by other European markets like Spain and the Netherlands. In Italy, where I have the updated numbers, we are hitting today - maybe while I’m writing this post - one million downloads since January 1st, 2008 (over 350.000 since the announcement of OOo 2.4 in late March). Although we don’t have Microsoft figures for Office 2007, we estimate a maximum of 1.8 million licenses sold in 2008.
I already know the reply: “You can’t compare licenses with downloads…”. Of course, gentlemen, but do you really think that one million downloads in slightly over one hundred days (at an average of over 9,200 downloads per day) still equals to a few thousands users? Do you really think that a small bunch of people, just the same small bunch of people, can get all these downloads? Come on, we’ve other stuff to do. Please, be realistic. We’re eating your pie, quickly. We’re hungry.
These are serious numbers, even if you need to reduce them by a factor to allow for overcounting. Alas, I fear that the numbers are not so good here in the UK, which for historical reasons has always been in thrall to Microsoft, in terms of operating systems, browser and, I suspect, office apps. Maybe we'll learn to be as wise as our continental cousins one day. Meanwhile, if you haven't already done so, do try OpenOffice.org 2.4 – you won't regret it.
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About the author
Glyn Moody Glyn Moody's look at all levels of the enterprise open source stack. The blog will look at the organisations that are embracing open source, old and new alike (start-ups welcome), and the communities of users and developers that have formed around them (or not, as the case may be).
Comments received
zaine_ridling said on Friday, 18 April 2008
OpenOffice is also attractive to those looking for an upgrade to MS Office 2003, but not wanting to buy into the problems with Office 2007 (ribbon UI, MS-OOXML, unformed ODF support, Excel calculation errors, etc.).
And when you consider that some apps are effective, mature solutions today -- archive, renamers, office suites, email -- then you have to reconsider whether MS Office is your best choice any longer. Besides, if users want a newer, tabbed UI on top of OpenOffice, they can try IBM's Lotus Symphony.
Glyn Moody said on Friday, 18 April 2008
The trouble with Symphony is that it seems to be a fork of OpenOffice, which probably doesn't help very much.
mal said on Friday, 18 April 2008
The download numbers work both ways. We downloaded 1 copy of OO and put it on 400 PC's
:-)
M
Glyn Moody said on Friday, 18 April 2008
Indeed - which makes it all very hard to track.
David Thomas said on Friday, 18 April 2008
You also have to take into account all those Linux users that use Open Office every day, I would say that there are a few million of those users too.
anon said on Friday, 18 April 2008
Don't Forget that most linux users will download OOo from their distro's repository and not directly from the website. So 1 download could infact be used by several thousand linux users.
The Open Sourcerer said on Saturday, 19 April 2008
This is interesting. I note very recently (tonight actually) senior chaps in my local pub discussing how the secretary at their golf club should use OpenOffice.org rather than Microsoft Office 2007 as most do not own, nor wish to purchase it.
Now that's what I call progress.
Cheers
Al
mmmm said on Saturday, 19 April 2008
like someone said it is difficult to estimate. i've downloaded 4 times, but stopped using it every time after a few days. preferred the lighter apps like abiword etc...
Teebs said on Saturday, 19 April 2008
I am sure that a clever mathematician could devise a way to accurately predict how many installs there are taking into factors such as one download for multiple installs, Linux repositories, etc :)
exploder said on Sunday, 20 April 2008
OpenOffice 2.4 is very competitive, the fonts look great,it starts up quick and uses far less memory that Microsoft Office.
I genuinely think that OpenOffice's popularity will grow at a much faster pace.I have been a fan of OpenOffice since 2003.
Unmukt said on Sunday, 20 April 2008
Yes, OpenOffice.org is good one. It is very popular in India too. ???? ???? ?? ??????? ????????? ?? ?? ???? ??? ?? ???????? ??? <a href="http://esnips.com/web/unmuktMusicFiles/"> Unmukt</a>
Bob Harvey said on Sunday, 20 April 2008
A little superficial, perhaps.
There have been many high-profile adopters, such as police forces and local governments. A quick namecheck would add depth.
The Gendarmerie Nationale's 35,000 users, for example. Or the local government in Extramadura with 80,000. Or even 5,000 in Bristol city council.
mikebartnz said on Sunday, 20 April 2008
How many of those downloads were loaded on more of one PC which I think would more than account for the number of errors in the downloads. I will often download something and load it on several PC's
Stomfi said on Sunday, 20 April 2008
For long time users of MS Office doc and xls files, it's all about embedded macros. I know OO reads a lot of them, but their are still complicated ones that have been developed and added to over the years, that only open in word or excel.
For anyone else OO is a better choice, partly for cost reasons, partly for it's open standards, partly because it is backed by one of the big three UNIX system suppliers, and partly because the biggest one also uses it as a base for their office suite.
For long time users of Access, it's all about reports and forms. Translating these is a pain. Access itself is probably similar to OO base. It's easiest enough to convert databases from one to the other, but easily reproducing the layout, look, and feel of the support docs is a completely impossible exercise.
I have a database that needs to be translated, and the easiest solution is to convert the whole caboodle to a web page solution using HTML/XML bypassing MS Access and OO completely.
So
Phill Rogers said on Sunday, 20 April 2008
Although some users may download it more than once, I would have thought that there are at least as many, if not more, who download once & install on many machines like I do.
dajomu said on Sunday, 20 April 2008
Just wish they could add a bubble-chart already
ConfusedInJapan said on Monday, 21 April 2008
I must mention that I count for at least 6 OOo downloads, but MS would count them the same... I have downloaded it 6 times, once into each of my 6 machines running it... Actually MS would sue me because I used the portable drive to copy the install to two other machines... So license doesn't equal downloads... but then again, license doesn't equal users either... many corporations buy MS in bulk (50 users at a time, etc.) Companies I worked for did this, even when we only had 10 users... because we might have 2 machines each AND need to be sure we had licenses readily available for new employees... So MS' numbers are ALSO inflated... they should be talking about actual users vs licenses sold and actual users vs downloads... we know which will win that breakdown...
tmc said on Monday, 21 April 2008
I am looking forward to the next release. We'll see what difference having 30 IBM programmers on the project will have made.
I've been using it since ver 2 and it does everything I need. Like 90% of the people out there I used less than 20% of the features in word/excel etc so it works for me.
Sum Yung Gai said on Monday, 21 April 2008
OpenOffice.org is terrific. I haven't had to touch Microsoft Office in four years. As for OpenOffice.org 1.x being a "toy", I must disagree there, as well; I was using it in 2003-4 in an all-Microsoft shop. And OpenOffice.org 2.x is really slick.
Glyn said on Monday, 21 April 2008
OK, if not a toy, at least a bit clunky....
Sum Yung Gai said on Tuesday, 22 April 2008
I can agree with a little clunky. However, I also found the same thing of MS Office XP, which is what I was using at the time I migrated totally to OpenOffice.org 1.1.
Addressing one of the more common criticisms of OO.o, there was definitely a startup-time difference in favour of the Microsoft Office apps. No question, and there still is today. It must also be remembered, though, that, like with Internet Explorer, MS Windows pre-caches parts of MS Office to make it "start faster" at the expense of greater login time ("Applying your personal settings..."). It's one major reason why startup times for both Windows 98 and Windows 95 + Active Desktop so drastically exceeded those of vanilla Windows 95 ten years ago. OpenOffice QuickStart (ooqstart) helps even this out to a good degree.
--SYG
wally said on Tuesday, 22 April 2008
The apps are OK. Not great, not perfect, but OK.
For instance, the word processor: try to insert an address into a letter: poor, poor, poor user experience. Try to print an envelope and letter: poor experience. Insert an envelope into a doc: where is the address? The program also opens more slowly than the M'soft one. I've saved as .pdf, opended to another machine and had letters disappear out of words.
JackBassV said on Wednesday, 30 April 2008
I know that I only download once per update, as does my son.
I started using this way back, when StarDivision was making StarOffice 2. Why? Word97 decided that a 50000 word document I had produced wasn't a Word Document. StarOffice2 Opened it with minimal changes (image sizes were wrong).
Haven't used MS office at home since, and to be honest, haven't missed it at all.
OOO2 is much quicker than StarOffice was, and more reliable. And I still prefer it to any version of MSOffice (though I haven't used 2007 yet.)
JBV^_^