Dear Mr. Ellison,
I'm sure there are many reasons for Oracle buying Sun. You might not be having meetings this week about OpenOffice.org. You might be having meetings next week about spinning it off into a foundation. But if you keep interest or control over OpenOffice.org, please consider the following.
You know how huge, and pervasive, the use of Microsoft Office is. You know the massive amounts of partner and corporate revenue that comes not just from selling the product but from associated services and add-on products. (The certification program alone generates a decent chunk of change.) So you know that getting a bigger market share for OpenOffice.org would be a nice benefit to Oracle.
On that note, let me make my laundry list for what I think is important for OpenOffice.org. My letter to Santa Claus, perhaps; my wish list for a win/win/win situation for Oracle, users, and of course me and other OpenOffice.org providers of products and services.
Tell them about it. 10 years after starting on StarOffice, I still introduce myself in one sentence, "I do training and educational materials for OpenOffice.org; it's like Microsoft but free and, I think, superior in many ways." Nobody looks at me weird for explaining what it is: 10 years after Sun started making StarOffice available. This is bad. Do what you have to: work with the Obama administration, go on Oprah, sponsor a Nascar driver, get it on "Lost." Do whatever it takes. We need name recognition.
Certification. I don't know who said it, but I believe it: if you measure it and reward it, people will do it. A certification program analogous to Microsoft's is essential for a variety of improvements to perception and adoption of OpenOffice.org. And it's not a bad revenue generator, either.
Partnerships and bundling. I don't need to tell you the advantages of having a product already pre-installed on hardware and included in other packages, but I'm sure not going to leave it out of this list. People who just start using OpenOffice.org without even knowing that it's not Microsoft Office also have a way easier time than those who fear change because they know it's different.
Libraries, schools, government. They don't have a lot of money. They should have no barrier to interaction. Give them OpenOffice.org. Go out and deliver it to them.
Partners. Help us. Make it easy for people like me to connect to customers. Make it easy for customers to find me and my products. Get a big, fabulous, easy-to-use, great-looking portal web site going to let customers find providers and vice versa. Maybe make a partner certification program (optional, and affordable). Maybe make one big Amazon-type site where all partners can list their products and services. We're out there, we're just harder to find than Microsoft's partners.
It works. It's good. Don't be under any illusion that it can't compete with Microsoft from a quality standpoint. The wizards aren't there and it would be nice to have an easier way to get clip art and templates (see above re the portal web site).
I will go on Oprah with you if you can get the booking. And I'm happy to go to the White House with you, too, to demo and discuss OpenOffice.org as one of the ways to save $100 million at a time.
Thanks for reading,
Solveig Haugland
Great contribution althought I think we would want OOo to be let go and have their own Foundation.
Posted by: JZA | April 27, 2009 at 12:36 PM
Yes, I think perhaps independence would be best for OOo. I was kind of dithering about how to phrase the post. But if he's gonna do something, however authoritatively, I would like these things. (Well, from Larry or whoever.)
Posted by: Solveig | April 27, 2009 at 01:45 PM
Nice post. I wish OOo would have its own foundation, as Mozilla or Apache
Posted by: Johannes | April 27, 2009 at 08:43 PM
OOo is more of a threat to MS than Linux vs Windows. MS generates far more revenue from MSOffice. They give away Windows on pre-installed pc's to sell MSOffice. It was a great cash cow when they could force companies to upgrade to the latest MSOffice because their customers upgraded and no one can read documents. But for those pesky open standards groups and that slick Open Office platform.
I think Oracle understands.
The road to Linux is paved with Open Office and Firefox.
Posted by: J S | April 27, 2009 at 10:17 PM
All Oracle understands is money. Sun is clueful and benevolent by comparison. OO.o is in unsafe hands if they buy Sun, Oracle has no interest in the views of communities.
Posted by: The Contrarian | April 28, 2009 at 03:22 AM
"Finally, it is believed that a substantial amount of code in Linux actually may belong to Sun and, with this acquisition, could belong to Oracle. While I don't expect a SCO moment, I would expect Oracle to use it as a bargaining chip to drive Linux in a direction it felt benefitted the firm. It may be the only company on the planet that might know how to do this without it blowing up in their face. This might make Oracle a leader among equals, and if it played with HP (see below), a real risk to the other enterprise distribution owners and IBM. Coupled with Java, which is both a valid platform in its own right and vastly more strategic to Oracle than it was to Sun, Oracle becomes a real platform company and better able to match both IBM and Microsoft going forward."
http://tinyurl.com/dy4w5c
Sorry, time to move on.
Posted by: Anonymous-Insider | April 28, 2009 at 10:42 AM
It is about money. Oracle now owns an OS, one that MSOffice won't run on. They can now push OO.org and StarOffice to run on it, as well as running on Linux.
This is a selling point; "You don't have to run Windows just because you need an office suite. We have one that runs great on Solaris, most Linux distros, OSX, and Windows and which won't force you to learn a whole new user interface. Plus it's cheaper, faster and a smaller install footprint."
Think about the penetration and distribution they can achieve with their current user base if they put just a little effort into it. If I were Balmer I would be pissing myself over this.
Posted by: I don't like office 07 | April 28, 2009 at 10:57 AM
"Finally, it is believed that a substantial amount of code in Linux actually may belong to Sun and, with this acquisition, could belong to Oracle."
This is a total and utter joke. Not even Enderle believes this. Remember that his public utterances are bought and paid for.
Posted by: Wayne | April 28, 2009 at 10:59 AM
"This is a total and utter joke."
Don't be too sure. Things might come back and bite you in the a**
Posted by: Anonymous-Insider | April 28, 2009 at 11:44 AM
I agree. Keep it free, you can change the name, as it is not well known - but I would pay to be certified. I would even go to schools in my area for you - at no charge - if you would get an awesome site together to help faculty and students get to know the product better. I already burn disks and hand them out to people, so it would not be a stretch. OOo needs to keep moving and growing. If more people knew about it, I really think MS would have a real run for their money.
Posted by: dferriman | April 28, 2009 at 12:28 PM
As an OOo user I agree with all of the above.
I just wish someone would change the brain dead name. OpenOffice.org?
"You want me to install OpenOffice.org?"
"Yes"
"But thats a website"
"Yes, it's the website where you can download an office suite called OpenOffice.org".
"So you want me to download a website?"
"No download the office suite on that website."
"Oh ok. But what is the office suite called?"
"It is called OpenOffice.org."
"But thats a website"
"Yes, but....." etc.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Please, please, please, for the sake of market share give it a decent name! It's a desktop application not a website.
Thanks.
Posted by: Martin | April 28, 2009 at 02:47 PM
Who is, indeed, on first.
Has to do with some Korean software that got the name first, I think? Or I could be totally wrong.
Posted by: Solveig | April 28, 2009 at 03:19 PM
Re: The name OpenOffice.org:
"The project and software are informally referred to as OpenOffice, but this term is a trademark held by a company in the Netherlands co-founded by Wouter Hanegraaff and is also in use by Orange UK,[3] requiring the project to adopt OpenOffice.org as its formal name." (http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/faq-other.html#4, Wikipedia)
Posted by: Andy Prough | April 28, 2009 at 03:29 PM
Just about every PC sold today includes Adobe Acrobat Reader. Why not OpenOffice? I think I know the answer to that (I'm not *that* naive). You see, just about every PC sold today also includes a trial version of MSOffice. I imagine money changes hands to get that trial version there. No direct quid-pro-quo involving Windows pricing (at least as long as the anti-trust terms are still in effect), but money nonetheless.
Still, can't HP or Dell include both. Try the free one, then if you don't like it, pay to activate your MS trial copy. How mad could Microsoft get at that? Don't answer that.
Posted by: littlenoodles | April 28, 2009 at 04:03 PM
Things change, Virtualbox went downhill after Sun took them over. I will just look for another app or just keep a copy of OO if they stop supporting it. My daughter's version was three years old before I realized that she never updated it.
Posted by: Mr. Anderson | April 29, 2009 at 10:13 AM
"As an OOo user I agree with all of the above.
I just wish someone would change the brain dead name. OpenOffice.org?
"You want me to install OpenOffice.org?"
"Yes"
"But thats a website"
"Yes, it's the website where you can download an..."
It's called OpenOffice not openoffice.org.... Duh.. the name is OpenOffice.. what is so tought about that? you Install OpenOffice you get it for free from openoffice.org. No confusion here....
Posted by: Bart Burroughs | April 29, 2009 at 11:56 AM
>>> "Finally, it is believed that a substantial amount of code in Linux actually may belong to Sun and, with this acquisition, could belong to Oracle."
>> "This is a total and utter joke."
> Don't be too sure. Things might come back and bite you in the a**
No it won't. If there were proprietary code in Linux, people would make specific claims. SCO danced around this in the court for as long as it could, until the judge concluded that there was no code they could point to. They simply had no case. Microsoft says Linux infringes on patents, but cannot say which patents. This is a sure sign of pure FUD.
The interpretation of the copyright law allows for the infringer to bring things into compliance. Even if someone found proprietary code in Linux, it could simply be removed and replaced, likely without too much trouble.
More to the point of the article, have all of the terms of the Sun-Microsoft deal a few years ago been made public? Does it now fully bind Oracle? I wonder what that deal says about office suites and promoting them.
Posted by: Mikko | April 29, 2009 at 11:59 AM
I really don't think that Oracle will do something soo stupid like shutdown the Sun's OSS projects. They need to evolve to a new market paradigm, they need to be colaborative. But in the case that they takes the wrong way ... it will be the wrost move in their history, can you imagine that? ... the opensource projects will be keept alive by the community, the OSS projects will carry on ... this is not a problem ... they will have the problem that their pennant product will be no longer promoted by a great community like the OSS community ... this is colaboration and now they need to evolve. Our markets needs to evolve, we need to evolve ... COLABORATIVE MARKETS ARE THE FUTURE ... can you imagine lot of enterprises working together to reach a goal instead of trying to kill each other to gain a market place?
In the 70's and 80's, were each little geek that created a simple program earned millons, is the past, now we need a different paradigm ... once again ... we need to evolve.
Great post!
Regards.
Posted by: TheCoffeMaker | April 29, 2009 at 02:37 PM
The road to OpenOffice adoption:
1) Create high quality video training courses
2) Target the following groups with different video courses:
2.1) Schools
2.2) Private home users
2.3) Small/medium size businesses
3) Release them under Creative Commons license
4) Make them available as bittorrents and on YouTube
The Internet will do the rest.
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Posted by: laptop accessories | April 29, 2009 at 07:35 PM
You also have to look at stereotypes. Some people feel that "it must not be good software, if you are giving it away". Maybe, a basic training video could be made that Dell and HP can sell for $20 or $30 and a copy of Open Office goes with it. Yes, Dell is a partner of Microsoft so they are going to push Microsoft products, but, if this is offered at the same place in the customization order that MS Office and MS Works are offered and the software + the training video is cheaper than MS Works, people may start buying it.
Posted by: James G. Witte | April 29, 2009 at 07:37 PM
Great post, Solveig, and some excellent points you are making there. I think that, if Canonical proved anything, they proved that you can take an already very good piece of free software (let's call it Linux) and transform it into a hugely popular product by creating and promoting a great ecosystem around it.
As for the .org name, I don't see that as a very big problem at this stage. I promote OpenOffice mainly by word-of-mouth, so omitting the "extension" is easy (see, I just did it :p ). I agree, in more academic/commercial environments, it could become an issue.
Perhaps they could give up trying to sell StarOffice and just go with that name for the free version? (although, personally, I hate that name)
Posted by: Sorin | April 30, 2009 at 05:19 AM
First lets ask ourselves who's going to improve OOo for that last 20% it is lacking compared to Microsoft Office, in speed, freshness and perfectness of the UI, understandability and usability.
Noone, because it is nicer and easier to make a new feature than to improve on someone elses code. Plus that last 20% of quality is 80% of the nasty work and nobody pays you to do it.
Give Microsoft the credit it deserves for delivering an all-new version of Office that is near perfect and all-fresh....
A pity OOo remains the poor mans solution, but first make OOo work, then make that portal and some TV commercials. If the Open Source community can repeat that every 2-3 years, they might kick MSO off the throne it rightfully possesses now.
Posted by: Eric | May 07, 2009 at 08:45 AM
Many have said that it is 'about the money' and used that to justify one or another strategy that they think Oracle/Ellison will take, and yes it is about money. But is also about more than money. Ellison is not a bean-counter, he is playing to win, the 21st century equivalent of a 19th century railroad baron. Anything that gives him more power either by helping him or harming his enemies, he will use. OpenOffice is indeed a powerful weapon against Microsoft whether it ever makes a dime for Ellison or not. He will use it as such.
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very good article, Thanks!
Posted by: r4ds r4i | June 08, 2009 at 08:44 PM
Dear Solveig Haugland, 06-11-09
I have two versions of Open Office running on my two laptops, one running MS OS XP, and the other MS OS Vista Home Premium. The two versions of Open Office are, 3.0, and an earlier version ... 2.? which I never use, but I'm afraid to remove the old version because there are several folders that appear interrelated.
Do you suggest I leave all as is because all works fine, or do you have better advice ?
Thank you for creating this web page.
Cordially, Mike Goodold
PS I can use advice about twitter: What or why are these symbols: # , @ , or D ?
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Posted by: Laptop Battery | January 04, 2010 at 11:13 PM
I'm sure there are many reasons for Oracle buying Sun?
What is the relationship of OpenOffice.org and sun,and oracle?
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No it won't. If there were proprietary code in Linux, people would make specific claims. SCO danced around this in the court for as long as it could, until the judge concluded that there was no code they could point to. They simply had no case. Microsoft says Linux infringes on patents, but cannot say which patents. This is a sure sign of pure FUD.
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