Welcome to the OpenOffice.org Blog: Why This 2,456,912,987th Blog Might Be Interesting to You

 

I've got a fever, and the only prescription is to tell people about OpenOffice.org and StarOffice.

Here's the story.

In 1999, I was working at Sun when they bought StarOffice. A couple years later when I left, no one outside Sun had heard of StarOffice. I had finished a book on StarOffice but couldn't really recommend it as a great replacement for Microsoft Office for everyone.

A year later at BEA, a few people had heard of StarOffice, and OpenOffice.org was just beginning. And with OpenOffice.org and subsequent dot releases, the program got better. I got to the point of being able to recommend OpenOffice.org to most people.

And now I can recommend OpenOffice.org without qualification, 99% of the time, as an excellent replacement for Microsoft Office, WordPerfect or, god help you, Wordstar. I really wish I could also say that now everyone I talk to has heard about OpenOffice.org and StarOffice and at least knows to consider it as a replacement.

Not so much.

Here's this great product, absolutely free, that hardly anyone has heard of. This is frustrating to me, not just because professionally I need to work hard to just inform potential clients that there is a great product out there for them. It's frustrating because I've got a jones to get good free software out to everyone, to show people how powerful it is, and there's very little information flowing about it.

Sun is spectacularly bad at marketing so it's really no surprise, in the end. Disappointing, but not a surprise. The OpenOffice.org community is doing its best but as a group of volunteers, against the mighty PR machine of Microsoft Office, it's also not surprising that more people know Kato Kalin's middle name than about either StarOffice or OpenOffice.org.

But then a few things happened.

Along came Google. A somewhat successful company, shall we say. They announced a partnership with Sun to do various things with Java and OpenOffice.org. The details are still fuzzy on OpenOffice.org, but if Google has anything to do with getting OpenOffice.org out to the masses, I believe it's going to change everything about how we create documents.

My friend Kathy Sierra's blog has been going gangbusters, and she swore to me that blogs are the way to go to make a point and broadcast a message.

And my editor gave me a few extra months to get out the OpenOffice.org 2.0 book since things are up in the air a bit, with the release date and the arrangement with Google. (Thanks, Greg.)

So I'm feeling hopeful again and rip-roaring ready to show you how OpenOffice.org and StarOffice are really good. Not perfect, not substitutes for all DTP applications, but such a great alternative to Microsoft Office and other suites.

And free, of course.

Enough Already. What Is This Blog Going to Have in It?

I'm going to run the gamut—simple procedures for people new to the program, tips and tricks, advanced procedures from my workbooks, plus more process-oriented thoughts on document organization, design, best ways to use the features, converting documents. My main goal is my mantra—OpenOffice.org is cool, here's how to use it to make your life easier. Without too much hitting you over the head, and always being realistic.

So welcome to my blog. I hope you find it useful.

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Comments

[seobro]

I use openoffice, it rox. The only prob is that there is no "Frontpage" then again M$ dropped frontpage, so there you are.

Still, a clone of FRONTPAGE, bad as it is would be plus max.