Here's an interview with Sun's Simon Phipps about what Sun's doing with StarOffice and OpenOffice.org.
"Phipps added 'I think you’ll see growing support from Sun for the things people use.'"
This strikes me as a remarkably practical attitude:
Here's what I've experienced as an OpenOffice.org and StarOffice author and trainer.
- Business started taking off when OpenOffice.org became available, not when it was just StarOffice.
- People asked me the difference between OpenOffice.org and StarOffice, and seemed to think that OpenOffice.org was the better program.
- I encounter very few training clients who use StarOffice. One is a school that gets it essentially for free anyway, and one is a private company contracting to NASA, so perhaps they want a big company name behind their software.
OpenOffice.org, in my experience, has better name recognition and a better reputation. Like Phipps says, follow the market share.
Comments