Windows Pulse Finds 12% Use OpenOffice
InfoWorld runs an article titled Windows Pulse: The Real-World State of Windows, in which they report the results from a network of machines that voluntarily downloaded a reporting application. How the machines were chosen was not specified, and the sample size of 20,000 may not provide an accurate picture of global trends, but the data shows OpenOffice installed on 12% of those machines, which looks like great progress!
September 11th, 2009 at 10:48 am
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September 11th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Alas,
This isn’t great progress at all – especially not if the data related to “installed” rather than “used”. Would like to see what % of machines have only OO installed, as our (Bathwick’s) data suggests that for every 30 or so installs of OO, only 1 is regularly used 🙁
Notwithstanding that – I think the whole strategy of OO is wrong – The focus should not be on replicating what MS Office does… but on delivering the function it needs to..
see –
http://www.thinkovation.com/blog/index.php/2009/09/11/open-office-apps-doomed-without-a-major-rethink-of-their-strategy-and-purpose/
September 11th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Gary, thanks for your great comment and link to a great post on your blog.
I agree with your thoughts, and I think the emphasis on ODF is especially important. Fortunately, libraries to support ODF are being developed in a lot of languages, along with ODF validators and other tools to support the ecosystem. Sun is building some of these, and other folks are building some, and collectively they are gradually being adopted in other applications, operating systems and web apps.
Your idea of focusing on other features is also important, and I think is a problem of OpenOffice itself. On the other hand, some ODF-capable applications like Google Docs and KOffice have decided to pursue their own visions for what an office suite should be, and have created very compelling tools as a result. (Apple’s iWork also fits into this category, though it does not support ODF.)
Collectively, a suite of compatible tools that can all share documents in ODF format should be able to serve the varied needs of the world much better than one product from one company, so I expect them to continue gaining ground at the expense of Microsoft Office. Just like an open HTML format allows the web to be such a diverse and creative place, so too can ODF in its realm.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
[…] [1, 2, 3, 4]. The conflict of interests here is obvious. From the same source we also gather some numbers which may or may not mean something. As the following new post states (with caveats): InfoWorld […]