Letters To The Editor
: Correction From OpenOffice.Org
Nick Richards of OpenOffice.org wrote to say that we had
slightly misstated the number of copies of StarOffice and OpenOffice
in our LinuxWorld wrap-up in the last issue. We also thought that
OpenOffice was using Ximian’s Evolution. We stand corrected.
Hi Amy:
You said, “Sun
tells us that StarOffice and its open source counterpart
OpenOffice.org
have enjoyed more than 6 million downloads (plus
millions
of copies
given out with all of the Linux distros and downloaded from
mirror sites).
Even filtering that number with an analyst's jaded eye,
we'd have to
assume that a few million users must, by now, have tried
the product.
"
You
can be assured that this number has already passed our jaded eyes.
The
OpenOffice.org numbers do not include localized
versions (25
languages
so far), our global network of mirrors, Linux Distributions, magazine
cover mounts,
white box PC vendors, community CD distributors
or
friends passing on copies. These are the number of downloads from our
main servers. We're actively trying to improve our distribution data
to give a truer idea of the potential market to 3rd party ISV's
and
other integrators who might be interested in our soon to be
released
SDK.
I
think we can safely say there's a fair few more copies out there
than
we're
talking about. Also a quick pricing note, Sun's StarOffice is free
to all academic institutions (cost of media) and I'm told they offer
substantial educational discounts on their support and training packages.
Although
Ximian has been doing some great work in the OpenOffice.org
community
we will not be shipping Evolution as our groupware package. It's
a fine application and I use it myself on my Linux box but it doesn't
support all of the platforms we cover such as our most important
one, by number of downloads, Windows. Whilst Sun may be
shipping
Evolution alongside StarOffice in their Linux Desktop product
and Ximian
will ship an integrated OpenOffice.org in Ximian Desktop2 we won't
be bundling them, yet.
As
ever it's a pleasure to read your newsletter.
Nick
Richards
Marketing
Project Lead, OpenOffice.org
nedrichards@openoffice.org
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