Measuring OpenOffice.org’s US Userbase
Recently, I noted the analysis concluding that OpenOffice may have 11 million users in the US.
Eike Rathke points out why this may be an undercount. He listed many aspects of the survey’s methodology that likely exclude more OOo users than MSO users. Rathke notes the survey…
– did not measure usage by pupils under age of 18 at school and home
– did not measure anything on other operating systems like Linux, OpenSolaris, MacOSX, …
– did not measure that 100% of all users of Linux and OpenSolaris do not use Microsoft Office
– did not measure the fair amount of MacOSX users using OpenOffice.org
– probably wouldn’t have been able to recruit Linux users anyway, because users of Free Software usually care more about privacy
Based on these factors, it does seem fair to say the survey did not fully count the US OpenOffice userbase. Maybe in the future we can gather more accurate numbers, but for now, at least we know its bottom boundary.