Last weekend I reflected on the fact that Open Office is an excellent resources which works as well as Microsoft Office, and that increasingly people are turning to this cost effective (free) solution. Now, after an incredible week of stock market crashes around the world, I can imagine this will give corporations and government institutions greater incentive to investigate alternative to the default packages of Microsoft. And as luck (?) would have it, tomorrow (Monday 13 October) sees the launch of OpenOffice 3.0, the latest version of this software.
However, it is also a time to reflect what may happen to other software, and particularly the free software that has been highlighted on this blog. Of course the answer depends on the particular site, but a little digging by TDB (TechnoDys Blog) reveals that some of the more prestigious and well developed website have been financed by the very banks that are now in the midst of the financial crisis. So why did the banks invest in these web site ventures? Because they see the potential to develop a web site following which will lead to "advertising" revenue and potential sale of the product to one of the internet giants. But what happens if the funder fails? Probably a lot of people will be left unpaid, and already many of these companies have laid of up to a third of their staff. However, there will still be a (virtual) product, which hopefully somebody will buy, even if not at the price the original investors hoped. So the results should not disappear, but may end up with a makeover that adds advertisements.
Another example of how things are changing is that 38,000 municipal workers in Washington DC are now use Google Apps. Not to mention a claimed further 500,000 organisations are also using the products. But why should Google offer an apparently free service? Because there are two versions. They get money for the ads that you cannot avoid in the programs, or you pay money to keep the ads away. So you could say it is a win-win situation.
OpenOffice 3
Keywords: Open Office, freeware, Google
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