I.B.M. to Offer Office Software Free in Challenge to Microsoft’s Line

[FreeStateDemocrat]

Source: NY Times


By STEVE LOHR
Published: September 18, 2007
I.B.M. plans to mount its most ambitious challenge in years to Microsoft’s dominance of personal computer software, by offering free programs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.

The company is announcing the desktop software, called I.B.M. Lotus Symphony, at an event today in New York. The programs will be available as free downloads from the I.B.M. Web site.

I.B.M.’s Lotus-branded proprietary programs already compete with Microsoft products for e-mail, messaging and work group collaboration. But the Symphony software is a free alternative to Microsoft’s mainstay Office programs — Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The Office business is huge and lucrative for Microsoft, second only to its Windows operating system as a profit maker.

In the 1990s, I.B.M. failed in an effort to compete head-on with Microsoft in personal computer software with its OS/2 operating system and its SmartSuite office productivity programs.

But I.B.M. is taking a different approach this time. Its offerings are versions of open-source software developed in a consortium called OpenOffice.org. The original code traces its origins to a German company, Star Division, which Sun Microsystems bought in 1999. Sun later made the desktop software, now called StarOffice, an open-source project, in which work and code are freely shared.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/technology/18blue.htm...

[acmavm]

1. Good. I don't care who takes Bill Gates down, just as long as someone

does.

This is interesting in that the European Courts just decided last week to reaffirm the ruling that MS has been gaming the system in order to control software distribution and sales.

[ima_sinnic]

4. but OpenOffice has been available for free for quite a while, without

bringing "Bill Gates down."

Much as I would like to see that, too, I don't see how this IBM software will be any more of a threat to MS than OpenOffice has been.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

19. Publicity and a name brand may help them out

I'm always amazed how few people know about software such as OpenOffice and Gimp. When I tell people about them over half are afraid to use it because it's free.

Funny thing is the free ones are as good and less likely to come with nasties that the costly software they currently use does.

[Thor_MN]

45. From most of the people that I know that have use Lotus anything,

have the Lotus name attached to it is a negative. From what I have seen of Lotus Notes, I'd pay to have it removed from my PC.

[OhioChick]

8. I Couldn't Agree With You More. n/t

[Spiffarino]

You're not going to bring Gates down

Nor do we, as progressives, necessarily want to. Gates is one of a handful of moderates in the M$ boardroom and he no longer runs the company day-to-day. However, Steve Ballmer does run the company, and he and his crew are hardcore right-wingers and bad corporate actors. They're the ones that would stand to lose the most.

Delicious.

[acmavm]

29. Mr. Gates has had a long and a good run, he stole every idea

he ever had from someone else, and he's made money off some of the most obscene investments on earth. He's played dirty pool against everyone who's tried to get in the software business. He's blackmailed, schemed, and got caught lying.

Bill Gates is a thug in casual clothes.

[tridim]

17. Gates is preparing to retire anyway..

Gates is taking gates down, so you can relax.

[Kolesar]

2. Microsoft had been suing OpenOffice over copyright infringement

The suit was filed in the last few months. This ought to be a first class fur fight.

[jordi_fanclub]

3. You mean... DID NOT suing OpenOffice...

Microsoft has said it has no immediate plans to sue after alleging patent infringements by open-source vendors.
...
In the Fortune interview, Microsoft counsel Brad Smith alleged that the Linux kernel violated 42 Microsoft patents, while its user interface and other design elements infringed on a further 65. OpenOffice.org was accused of infringing 45 patents, along with 83 more in other free and open-source programs, according to Fortune.

Microsoft has so far refused to specify which patents are allegedly being infringed by open-source vendors, leading some experts to assert that its threats are empty.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Microsoft-wil...

[Occulus]

25. I was amused when I heard that part

"Microsoft has so far refused to specify which patents are allegedly being infringed"

Heheh. Well, then, Mr. Gates, perhaps you should tell your lawyers to STFU about it then.

Microsoft would try to patent the mouse if they thought they could get away with it. (Now watch someone clever dig up a story about them considering exactly that!)

[Kolesar]

35. Acknowledged!

welcome to our forum!

[rateyes]

5. Get it here:

http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home....

[madrchsod]

6. i use open office

why pay for microshit`s programs when there are free programs?

[Jackpine Radical]

23. I use NeoOffice, which is the Mac version of Open Office.

I refuse to clutter up my new Mac with Microsoft crap if I can help it.

So far so good. I really don't quite get what IBM's game is here, though. They just seem to be re-labelling an already freely distributed product.

[nadinbrzezinski]

33. They will do what Neo has done

they will improve some elements on it

[Occulus]

28. It's happening to other companies too

I'm thinking of applications costing thousands of dollars, namely 3D Studio and Maya (and, to a much lesser extent, Lightwave). These are animation programs used in television and cinema- Lightwave is used by the Stargate and Battlestar franchises, for example. However, there's one program that's free and does many of the same things at pretty close to the same quality level. This application is called Blender, and the results from it are pretty eye-opening for people who ask, "what can I expect from free software?"

This, for example. And this.

[NuttyFluffers]

46. holy shit, that has to be seen to be believed!

wow, i think the democratization of CGI is nigh upon us.

(though, all these things -- Blender, YouTube, Flash animation, Podcast -- reminds me of that amusing spoof of John Titor. but that was easily 10 years ago. to be that prescient is kinda spooky... nah, must be my neuroses kicking in. )

[NJCher]

7. I used Lotus Symphony in the past

I liked it a lot. It was vastly preferable to me over Microsoft's program.

I am going to the site to download now--hope it's compatible with freaking Vista. I'm also going to recommend it to my students. Many of them get new computers for school with Works on it. This should be a nice alternative.



Cher

and p.s. I have another computer coming in and am going to run an alternative OS on it. I will be free of Bill Gates in the next year or so, I'm hoping.

[BlooInBloo]

9. Cool. I personally don't want the slow speed of Java-everything...

... but I imagine there would be a lot of people for whom this isn't a big deal. More choice is good.

[3waygeek]

43. Lotus didn't want it either...

back in 1997-98, they tried porting their SmartSuite apps (WordPro, 123, etc) to Java. The performance was so crappy no one would use it. I was on the WordPro developement team back then, but I wasn't working on the Java stuff.

[Exiled in America]

10. I've used Open Office, and I prefer MS Office

I don't see any reason to hate MS just for the sake of hating MS. Their new OS, Vista, sucks. Thus, it makes sense to complain about it and consider using something else. But XP is a perfect OS for me, that meets my needs better - yes, I said better - than any other platform. MS Office also excellent for my needs, and I've never found another office suite that better meets my needs or has more features available that I would like.

I would love to look into more information about Lotus Symphony, but I'd have to have some compelling reason to change.

[Spiffarino]

12. Are you using Office 2007?

I'm using it right now alongside Office 2003 (on a different PC, of course). I love Office 2003.

I am not enamored of Office 2007.

Vista thinking has permeated M$, and it will hurt them. Their new offerings are complex, counterintuitive, bloated, slow and just plain odd to those of us "of a certain age" who are accustomed to earlier versions of Office. And frankly, I don't see younger people flocking to it, either. Younger folks are much more computer savvy than my generation and they know what's out there. The young adults I work with, for example, have no fear of Linux and open source apps. Plus, more and more are getting Macs to match their iPods.

It may not be apparent right now, but M$ is becoming more defensive. They've saturated the market and pissed off too many of their customers. Linux use is growing slowly, but it's growing. If Apple reduces prices on their computers - as they just did with the iPhone - Micro$oft will lose even more market share.

[Exiled in America]

13. I use 2007, and I mainly use Word, Excel and Powerpoint

I find the features and organizational layout of those programs in 2007 to be quite helpful.

One thing I agree on, is that competition is healthy, and anything that challenges MS's dominance can only be a good thing. Still, I need compelling reasons to switch to different applications that go beyond just disliking MS.

[Prophet 451]

16. Hating MS just for being MS?

No. There seems to be this bizarre impression that people in the tech business (and I am) hate MS just for being successful. We don't. We hate MS for:
- Buggy, unfinished operating systems (Vista and WinME especially)
- Security holes you could drive a bus through
- Countering those security holes by ratcheting security to inoperable levels
- Incresing snooping on end-user content
- Profiteering (the Office line especially)
- Predatory, illegal and monopolistic business practices
- Bloatware (inflating the data space taken by an app far beyond what it actually needs)
- Networking that defines "hit-and-miss"
- Product activation (try doing that on forty machines at a time and know true pain)
- Making their software "idiot-proof" by continually removing control from the user
- DRM

There are a lot of very good reasons to hate MS. "being MS" or being successful doesn't come into it.

[LanternWaste]

30. Seems to me that rather than...

Seems to me that rather than hating MS, one would simply stop using their products; and if that's already been done, why would one waste one's time by continuing to "hate" them if they have already become irrelevant to the end user?

[Prophet 451]

32. Because we can't

In many cases, we simply can't stop using their products. Example: I work from home on the PC. I'd love to switch to Linux but the apps which I have to use to interface with the firm's intranet simply do not work on any other OS. Yes, I could find another job, I guess (in this economy? HAH!).

Or gamers. The vast majority of commercially released games are released only for Windows. It is possible to force them to work on Linux sometimes but that's both inefficient and a pain.

Finally, PC manufacturers (i.e. Dell) simply do not deal with any other OS. If you want to buy a box (with the exception of the server market), it will come with some flavour of Windows pre-installed.

[LanternWaste]

39. It appears to me...

It appears to me that for the moment, the market is dictating you use MS products rather than MS dictating it. That the frustration should be directed against the gaming, application and PC manufacturers rather than MS.


(I have no dog in this hunt-- to me the difference between OS's are like the difference between Chevy's and Fords-- they both get you to work, while everything else is bells, whistles and marketing)

[Prophet 451]

41. In truth, it's both

Partly, it's the market but it's also partly MS's practices which prevent real competitors from turning up (see court records, they've been sued over it a bunch of times).

[Exiled in America]

38. You are misunderstanding my point.

None of the issues you bulleted affect me. I am happy with the way my products perform for my needs. Thus there is no reason for ME to switch other than just to "make a point" which I see no need to do.

[IronLionZion]

11. There are excellent free open source options out there

http://www.opensourcewindows.org /

http://www.opensourcemac.org /

You don't have to give up an arm and a leg to effectively use your computer. There are free tools for office work, media editing, photo editing, email, web browsing (I'd be shocked if any DUers still didn't know about firefox and opera) etc.

IBM's product looks like something I might check out, but it's based on Openoffice.org which is an excellent program on its own.

[yodermon]

14. Google Apps will kill them all

one day. not quite there yet, although they added a "powerpoint"-type presentation tool to their suite.
http://www.google.com/a
http://docs.google.com
I think the enterprise version lets you download a version that you can run "disconnected".

[Prophet 451]

18. I hope not

Firstly, I really dislike the whole idea of apps being "leased" from a central source. Secondly, Google is becoming as ubiquitous and evil empire as MS was in the early nineties.

[Occulus]

27. It's like paying a car company to drive your car after you buy it

This is, by the by, the same reason I don't play games you pay for by the month. I refuse to continue to pay for a product I have already forked over cash for.

I've been hearing rumors and rumors of rumors coming from Micro$oft for a few years now about considering moving to a subscription-based models for their operating systems. IMO, this would be a horrible horrible thing for everyone except Micro$oft, and you would see people start flocking to the Mac and linux, virtually overnight.

[Prophet 451]

31. I doubt it

The business world is too wedded to MS now to even consider changing (even assuming it was practical).

Regarding MMO's: My issue is when I have to pay for the client AND for the monthly subscription. I don't mind one or the other (i.e. Guild Wars where you just pay for the client or EVE where the client is free) but both is just taking the piss.

[RoccoR5955]

15. Good for IBM!

I am glad to see that IBM is continuing its battle against Microsoft. Along with Sun, there seems to be a move on to make more competition with Microsoft. I use MS Office at work, but I use Open Office at home, which is also a free, open source office suite. Open-source is the future in software. I just don't think that people will use a new product, after they are already used to something else.

[BRLIB]

20. I wish WordPerfect would make a comeback ....

It was my choice in the day. Even the non-Gui DOS version, 5.x, was many times more productive than slow mousy interfaces that unfortunately WordPerfect couldn't keep up with in, of course, the new Windoze world.

"Reveal Codes" was certainly the most awesome WordPerfect tool to see what was actually going on in your documents! It also was a great aid to help debug and work with the most complicated of documents.

But alas, today is a new world.

For now, I stick with vi.

And if I want to get fancy, OpenOffice.org Writer on Fedora 7!

[DavidDvorkin]

22. Hell, I wish Fortran would make a comeback

But there's no point in waiting for software comebacks.

[Jackpine Radical]

24. Wouldn't that be a hoot?!!

Visual Fortran.

[DavidDvorkin]

26. Best language of the bunch

And I've used a bunch.

Maybe that's because it was my first, and one always has a special place in one's heart for one's first.

I also had a good career programming in it till the silly tides of software fashion moved in other directions.

[SayWhatYo]

36. lol

[Buns_of_Fire]

40. Heck, I've still got the original disks to my copy of WordStar!

...which worked just fine on MS-DOS 6.0, with my trusty dot-matrix printer (which used good ol' pinfeed paper) happily churning out page after page (more-or-less lined up) until the ribbon finally ran dry and I'd re-ink it with several drops of bottled ink kept around just for that purpose which I'd usually get on my pants which is why I always wore navy-blue pants so the stains wouldn't show...

And we liked it that way!

[skids]

44. I had the Corel Linux distro for a while...

...debian based with wordperfect officially supported. What more could you ask for?

Well, of course, you could ask for Quattro Pro, hands down a better spreadsheet than all its contemporaries. And they were about to do that, but then they canned the project. Pity really. Eventually everything got so stale I had to go back to mainline Debian. By then, though, OO was "up to speed" by which I mean usable at least.

[regnaD kciN]

21. Curiouser and curiouser...

I remember when Lotus was one of the kings of personal computer software. Symphony was its most ambitious offering -- an "intergrated software" program that, in the days before GUIs and multi-tasking, put together all the main productivity programs of its time (WP, spreadsheet, database, graphics) into a single program that would allow the user to flip back and forth between modules, passing data between them.

So, news of a free version of Lotus Symphony brings back a wave of nostalgia...but, if I understand this properly, this isn't a Windows update of the original Symphony. As I understand it, this is merely a re-badged version of OpenOffice, which can already be downloaded for free. If that's the case, news that I.B.M. is merely taking that already-available software, changing the name, and offering it for download on their own site -- while presenting it as a new and "ambitious challenge" to Microsoft, only generates a reaction of...



...on my part. Why even bother?

[nadinbrzezinski]

34. Put yourself in the shoes of I don't know corporate drone

in charge of implementing software across the enterprise

You go... hey guys this is a great app and it is free

Go for Word

Sir?

There is support

Now change this to

Hey this is a great app suported and endorsed by IBM, and it is free

Ok, lets give it a try

This is what they're banking on

[shenmue]

37. Yay!

Get that son of a bitch!

[BootinUp]

42. Good news

I know a little about open office, never tried it though. I think IBM putting their name on it like this should make a difference in how well it is accepted. This and the recent court findings regarding Linux and SCO are very good for computer OS and software competition.