Re: IBM investment in i - can open source software help sales?

I've used OpenOffice for several years, starting back when it was Star Office on OS/2. I've had almost zero compatibility problems. Less, in fact, then clients that use Microsoft and have problems when ever a new version comes out and the boss gets his brand new machine and sends memos to his staff that they can't read.

I am curious: have you (or anyone) compared Symphony to OpenOffice?



Aaron Bartell wrote:

And now they are giving away Lotus Symphony (OpenOffice based) :-)

I think this will be a VERY attractive avenue for businesses as most users
don't use more than 5% of the functionality of their Microsoft Office
tooling. I have been using OpenOffice for about 1 year now and will never
go back to buying Microsoft Office.

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com

On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 3:11 PM, Pat Barber <mboceanside@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

This reminds me of the first demo IBM/Lotus gave us a
few years back on Lotus Notes.(AS/400 BP's)

The guy opened the session by saying...

"You folks can NOT make money selling Lotus Notes,
so you will need to plan on selling service agreements to
make your revenue stream."

I think every single IBM pc ever sold after that had a
free copy of Lotus SmartSuite.

I often wondered how in the world did they plan on
getting those billions of dollars back on the purchase of Lotus
giving the software away for free.

They are still working on that plan.

I'm sorry I misinterpreted you. FWIW, I think that this move toward
selling support/services rather than selling software is a trend that
will only continue to increase. If IBM i doesn't play well in this
area, it can only be harmful to the i community.

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