Erwin's StarOffice Tango

Erwin's StarOffice Tango
Erwin Tenhumberg's Insights into Open Source and Dancing
... or why Open Competition matters

« Apparently Microsoft... | Main | Just switch! - Open... »

Mittwoch März 16, 2005

Fighting for independence vs. waiting for independence
Yesterday at CeBIT I had a long conversation with someone who seemed to work in the public sector. He said that many city councils and ministries are reluctant to switch to new alternative technologies, because the alternatives do not provide exactly the same functionality. If the alternatives guaranteed one hundred percent compatibility, people would migrate.

From my point of view OpenOffice.org and StarOffice are doing everything possible to be as compatible, but obviously the "competitors" are not making it easy for us to integrate in an open and fair way. Thus, it will be difficult for a project like OpenOffice.org to provide exactly the same level of functionality as a multi-billion dollar company that is funded by the high margins of their products.

People have to make a choice if they want to fight for independence or if they want to hope and wait for independence. The more people switch to open standards based products, the higher the pressure will be for proprietary companies to open up.

It is like people who have installed proprietary 5-pin electricity sockets at home (I hope 5-pin sockets don't exist in any country) for which only VCR's, TV's, DVD player's, dish washers, etc. are available from one brand. If this brand provides the best price performance throughout the product line, it is no issue to rely on this proprietary company for all the different electrical and electronic devices. However, if this company goes out of business, increases prices dramatically or ships crappy products, one is screwed.

I like being creative and therefore I designed a poster for OpenOffice.org a while ago, just for the fun of it. The poster uses the plug idea that I just mentioned. Here is a picture:

If people are fine with relying on the proprietary 5-pin sockets, they don't have to switch to a different technology. However, if they think the dependence on the proprietary 5-pin socket is not such a good idea, they should fight and not wait for independence, even if the migration process is a bit painful for the first people who go through it.
( Mrz 16 2005, 10:41:51 AM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Kommentare:

Hear, hear! Have you suggested that poster to Sun Marketing?

Gesendet von I18n G.A.L. am März 16, 2005 at 10:33 PM CET #

Senden Sie einen Kommentar:

Kommentare sind ausgeschaltet.