Wednesday October 27, 2004 Redeeming Open Source
In its round-up of office suites this month, the UK magazine PC Pro gave six stars to OpenOffice.org:
Verdict: The best all-round office suite is also the cheapest. With excellent Microsoft compatibility, a consistent interface and a good network of ad-hoc support, this is the king of the business tools.
This is both a ringing endorsement of the OpenOffice.org community, and a sign of the times. As someone pointed out on a mailing list today, you no longer have to be a thief to get the best software free.
This leads me to my pet peeve of the moment - people assuming that the phrase "open source" automatically implies a switch to Linux. There's no need to make people take the big switch in their personal space to get the benefits they need. Most of the relatives and friends I speak to need solutions to problems, not a big technical upheaval. They need a browser that doesn't suffer from pop-ups and spyware. They need e-mail that doesn't let in viruses and spyware. They need something for writing letters and doing home budgeting. And they need to stick with Windows for whatever else they bought their PC for (usually games or photo editing with Photoshop Elements).
The solutions to those problems all run on Windows as well as Linux - Firefox for browsing, Thunderbird for e-mail, OpenOffice.org for documents and spreadsheets. Each of those meets the need, removes the pain and is loaded with extra easy features like tabbed browsing. So that's what I've been recommending. So far they have all accepted those recommendations - they wouldn't have listened if I had recommended Linux. That's not to say that business users don't need it on the desktop - the remarkable uptake of JDS proves the need exists - just that my friends and relatives need a different "editorial view" to that.
It's time to redeem the phrase "open source" or, if the pedants won't let us, find another. We've allowed vendor messages to make it mean just "Linux" for too long. My relatives and friends don't need Linux yet (next year...) - they need real, free solutions to the things that ail them. Let's equate "open source" with "solving people's real problems" and not with uber-geek technology. That's the first step to winning the bigger battle.
Posted by webmink
( Oct 27 2004, 11:03:10 AM PDT )
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