OpenOffice.org V3.0 Sets Download Record, 80% Windows 451
thefickler writes "The newest version of OpenOffice, version 3.0, has set a download record in its first week of availability. Most surprising is the fact that over 80% of downloads were from Windows users. As one commentator noted, when it comes to a choice between almost identical software (e.g. Microsoft Office and OpenOffice), price is the determining factor."
Package Managers? (Score:5, Insightful)
80% (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux distro packages (Score:2, Insightful)
I would guess that a lot of Linux users will wait for OO.o to show up in their distro packaging system, and not download it directly. For the systems that I actually need to use to get work done, I am *very* reluctant to go outside the packaging system, because the many extra hassles are rarely worth it. If I wanted to have to monitor external web sites and manually do unpgrades on all my apps I'd still be using Windows. (OK, no not really, but you get the point.) I use Ubuntu on the desktop because, for me, it Just Works, with many fewer hassles than Windows.
"Almost Identical"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that like saying a cordless phone and a cell phone is *almost* identical because they both make phone calls?
Or did I just get trolled by the summary?
Good News (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Almost Identical"? (Score:3, Insightful)
It depends on what you are doing. If you just want to make a phone call, then you don't really care if the phone is cordless or cellular - just so it works.
Similarly, unless you are using some particular feature found in MS Office but not in OO.org, then you won't really care which one you use.
If you just want to hammer out a memo or make a crappy-looking presentation, OO.org is just as capable as MS Office.
Re:Almost identical? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you are a veteran user of the 97-2003 line who used the suite for basic stuff. Then OpenOffice.org looks far more attractive.
Awesome website (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a huge fan of OpenOffice (which I refuse to call 'OpenOffice.org, because it's an office suite, not a webserver), but I'll say one thing - their main page is exactly right.
Go to www.openoffice.org and take a look. What do you see? A list of things to do, in big text, impossible to miss. I wanted to download. Normally I hunt for a link. Now, it takes me 5 seconds to grab what I want.
No wonder they got so many downloads - they didn't hide them three pages deep.
Re:I haven't got it yet, not in repository yet. (Score:4, Insightful)
They aren't the same (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Almost identical? Not quite. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:80% (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt OOo3 was downloaded by the majority of Windows users.
And I doubt that it was downloaded by the majority of Linux users also.
Most Linux users prefer to upgrade software using the channels for their distrobution. None of my 3 systems have been upgraded to OOo3 yet, but they will be, as soon as it shows up in the repos.
Re:80% (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, I think 80% is surprisingly low.
First off, we really shouldn't count Macs as part of the equation. I haven't checked recently, but for a long time, OOo's support for MacOS X lagged way, way behind. It was essentially unusable.
So of OOo's potential audience, I would guess 99% would be Windows users, 1% Linux users. I would therefore expect 99% of OOo downloads to be the Windows version. Not only that, but a lot of Linux users probably aren't going to download it from the OOo web site, they're going to get it when it becomes the default through their distro's packaging infrastructure, and therefore they presumably won't be counted in this statistic. Let's guess (pulling numbers out of my rear end, I admit) that 90% of Linux desktop users won't downloaad directly, and will get it via their distro. So based on these factors, I would have expected the percentages to be more like 99.9% Windows and 0.1% Linux, a ratio of 1000 to 1.
It's actually pretty darn depressing that the Windows figure is as low as 80%. That's a 4:1 ratio rather than the 1000:1 ratio I would have expected. That suggests that the Windows market for OOo is hundreds of times smaller than it would be based merely on the market share of the operating systems. Some possible interpretations, none of which are pretty:
I wouldn't be surprised of #3 captured the essential truth of the situation. OOo is one of the worst pieces of OSS I use. I've searched systematically for something better, and haven't found it. At this point, I feel like OOo was a dead end that had the unfortunate effect of killing off interest in competing OSS office software.
Re:Almost identical? Not quite. (Score:0, Insightful)
I used OO to write my CV (resume) and saved it as a .doc.
You sent in your CV as a Word file? I, for sure, wouldn't hire anyone who did that, nor would I want to apply for a job where they required such applications. It's a sign of cluelessness.
Re:Almost identical? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. I have used Word and Excel for ~15 years. I'm not what I'd consider a "power user," but I've grown comfortable with the UI and basic features over this time. Since approximately version 2.0 or 2.1, I haven't felt the need to use the real Word or Excel even once. The Oo equivalents have been able to replicate the functionality of Word/Excel without fail to the point that I don't even bother installing Office anymore. I have also switched over various family members and a few small businesses (sub-50 employees) with nary a complain about missing functionality.
I'm sure there are folks out there that can point to some obscure features of M$ Office products that they rely on, but I think the vast majority of us fit into the mold of users that just use the basic features. I can't imagine needing or wanting to spring for another M$ Office license again.
Cheers,
#downloads != #users (Score:3, Insightful)
The statistic I'm interested in is the percentage of people that downloaded it and then later updated - that's a much better representation of satisfied customers. The time between update release and downloaded update by a user is correlated to how much that user relies on the software package, especially so for OSS which is typically low in pre-release testing on different boxes compared to commercial software.
Re:80% (Score:2, Insightful)
That's why I added the qualifier "decent." When I tried it, NeoOffice was simply horrible.
Re:80% (Score:3, Insightful)
For every Windows user who's willing and able to switch, there are hundreds of others who can't, because it's impractical for them.
For many 'professional' users, the lack of an Outlook-ish program is probably a huge deterrent. :(
Re:Package Managers? (Score:5, Insightful)
McCreesh said 90% of Linux users traditionally receive OpenOffice.org updates straight from their Linux distribution's vendor
but that would still give windows >66% (assuming os x makes up 0%, which is possible due to neo office
Let's do the math. The official site sees (scaled down) 2 linux downloads and 8 windows downloads. For every 1 of these linux downloads, there's 9 downloading from the distro archives instead of the official site.
That gives us 20 linux downloads, 8 windows downloads. Or just above 25%. How did you come up with 66%?
Even if it's just 25%, that's a fair slice; this means that the plan of moving people over to open-source apps first and moving the OS out under them later has not been shown to be infeasible: windows users are moving to the open-source apps.
Only 221,000 downloads by Linux users were recorded
So just shy of 900,000 windows downloads? That's quite good.
I won't say "we're winning!!one!11ty", but some cautious optimism is probably in order.
Re:Almost identical? Not quite. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh I'd love to, with something with spikes on it. They just match up keywords in return for 10% of your starting salary. If they're looking for MS-SQL and you've only put down SQL Server experience you're not qualified. If you've got 10 years experience and know Perl and Python you're a worse candidate for a Ruby job than some guy fresh out of college who once wrote a 100 line Ruby script. Because, you know, he knows Ruby and you don't.
I only ever hear bad things about recruitment agents. I really don't know why more companies don't advertise directly. It can't be that much hassle to take a few phone calls and read a few emails.
Re:Because it breaks the MS Office grip (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:80% (Score:3, Insightful)
Or it could be that not everyone who uses a PC knows the release date of the next version of Open Office and is waiting to grab it at the earliest opportunity
besides which docx support as of a couple of weeks ago still was um rough to say the least. It's far more likely that people will upgrade over a period of months.
Re:Price a determinating factor? (Score:3, Insightful)
retrain users [...] how to support this new application ([...] train support people), then figure out how to deploy this
And none of this happens during the switch from Office 2003 to Office 2007? Poor users.
Yes, I really said "poor users". What do you mean "you're not a real sysadmin"? ;)
Personally, I love MS Office... (Score:3, Insightful)
... but not enough to pay $500 for it. I like it better than OOo, but not THAT much better.
Re:Almost identical? Not quite. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why on earth would you send someone an electronic copy of your resume in a *any* editable word processor format? Especially when different wrd processors, or even different versions of the same word processor will render the same document in completely different ways.
PDF would be the way to go, regardless of the tool you originally use to enter it.
I assume you don't work in the systems administration field, or IT security. If you do I feel sorry for whatever company hired you (both due to the idiocy in accepting such a format, and because they've hired someone incompetent enough to send it that way in the first place)
I switched to Linux because of OO & FF (Score:2, Insightful)
I know a lot of people that switched to OO just to get the pdf output format. Sun continues to do an amazing job with the open source community on OO.
Re:80% (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, I'm not saying that MS Office is great, but the VAST majority of windows users are just going to use MS Office because they either aren't aware of OOo, don't care about OOo or have tried it and not liked it.
Your assumption that 99% of the downloads should be windows because 99% of the market use windows is therefore a bad assumption because on one platform OOo has almost no competition, while on the other it only has almost insignificant penetration because of a competing product endorsed by the OS vendor.
Re:Almost identical? Not quite. (MOD PARENT UP) (Score:5, Insightful)
People are going to flame you and call you stupid, so let me just head off some of their inevitable criticisms:
You should have checked!
No, you shouldn't have had to have checked. Besides, this assumes that you still have to have MS Office and OO.o, and isn't the whole point of this bru-ha-ha to say that you don't need MS Office if you have the free and wonderful OO.o? No, Word did not screw up your CV. OO.o does not export to Word correctly. It's OO.o's responsibility to properly support the de facto industry standard.
You should have sent a PDF!
Okay, smart guys, you try sending PDFs instead of Word documents. There are still lots of moronic HR departments (well, are there any other kind?) who don't even know what they are. The first time I started sending those, I got a call back from an angry HR person saying "We don't take scanned CVs!" I was honestly confused. "I'm sorry, but that is just a PDF of my CV. It's not scanned." "We have to be able to search the text. Please send us the original Word document."
Well you know, and I know that you can very well search the text of a PDF, but that isn't the point; the point is whether HR knows, and, as I think I've already established, those people are borderline retarded.
Also, a lot of places actually request .docs. If OO.o can't produce them correctly, then you look like an idiot. In my case in the above story, where I was requested to send a .doc? It meant I had to get ahold of MS Office, because I'd been using (and liking) OO.o for a year.
Hell, the next problem I had was that I had my "letterhead" in my header in Word, and an HR guy called me complaining that I'd used a "gray font," and that it was no wonder I didn't have a job if I didn't know how to format a Word document correctly. "It's conventional to make your name and address legibile to the person looking at your CV," he said. So I went back and reformatted all of that stuff by hand, like an idiot who can't use software.
In all of these cases, I did the right thing. In none of these cases was the company itself really to blame. They might have been nice places to work. But when you're applying for a job, you first have to get through the imbeciles in HR who stand guard at the gate. Anything that they don't understand--and that's a lot, it turns out--is going to get your CV tossed in the bin.
Why would you want to work somewhere that wants .docs and doesn't worship at the throne of OSS???
Because he needs a job so he can, you know, eat.
OO.o is damn nice for being free, and I really liked some of its features that are missing in Office. But, in all honestly, Office does more better and is the industry standard.
And finally, to all the people going on about having to pay for PDF export? Um, sourceforge up yourself some PDFcreator. It's free. I've been using it for years without issue.
Of course Open Office sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised of #3 captured the essential truth of the situation. OOo is one of the worst pieces of OSS I use. I've searched systematically for something better, and haven't found it. At this point, I feel like OOo was a dead end that had the unfortunate effect of killing off interest in competing OSS office software.
While I'm inclined to agree that OO is one of the worst pieces of software out there (open source or otherwise), office suites tend to suck period, OO's crapiness reflects that it is in fact trying to duplicate something which needs to be rebuilt from concept up, or perhaps done away with entirely, except the user base is too firmly entrenched into ideas about what productivity software should do.
Note that I don't lay this blame on Microsoft (which is strange...) the business world expects a lot of things that are either misplaced, or a waste of time. Database like functions from a spreadsheet, fancy document layout tools (not useless, but not really suitable for a program with the primary purpose of writing letters and memos), powerpoint (the whole thing). About the only thing in the entire office suite set that doesn't need a complete rework would be email clients, and even then I've had users complain that the email client doesn't render javascript...
Downloading OO does not mean you don't have Office (Score:1, Insightful)
Because OO is free there is no cost to downloading it. So even if you have MS Office on your box you might as well download.
For this reason, the statement in the post that price point is a factor is tremendously stupid. You could make a statement like that if you surveyed users and found out how many of them used ONLY OO. But knowing how many downloaded a free application does not tell you how many purchased a pay-for application.
-- Henry
Re:Package Managers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Your rant kind of reminds me of the way Democrats froth when a pundit decloaks as a conservative by referring to the Democratic Party as the 'Democrat Party.'
Yeah, he hates Macs. How mean of him.
Re:80% (Score:2, Insightful)
There are plenty of Windows users that have an old version of Office and see no point in tossing it.
That is the paradox of Linux on the desktop.
People who struggle with OpenOffice or any of the other Free Software/Open Source applications forget how refined things are in the commercial software world. I can remember a few years back being jubilant that I finally had a Linux desktop setup all working smoothly to do reasonable WYSIWYG text and graphics editing. I even had a decent vector-based drawing package integrated in. But after awhile I realized 'hey, this is about as good as Office 4.3 was on Windows 3.11 with Micrografx Designer' (substitute Corel Draw if you prefer.)
Re:Of course Open Office sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Those are some pretty big attacks on popular office tools. A word processor is not used primarily to write letters and memos, documentation is most certainly one of its prime uses, and you need to be able to lay out your diagrams, tables, and images in such a way for people to understand what you're writing. Spreadsheets are an obvious way to represent database tables, so it allows users to create mini-databases without the hassle of an actual DB where creating one would provide no advantages. That's why "pseudo-database" functionality is almost more important than actual number crunching. Finally, the usefulness of a presentation tool is obvious to anyone who has worked in an office for more than a few months.
Do you have any suggestions on how to do things better to back up your claims that these things are a waste of time?
Re:80% (Score:3, Insightful)
In *NIX terms, it's the difference between being a native X11 app and being a KDE app (for example). A native X11 app will run next to your KDE apps and will have some integration, but it won't look or behave like the other apps you use. It won't have the same menu layout, or the same shortcuts. Copying and pasting or dragging and dropping anything other than plain text may not work. It might see the same fonts you use, if it uses FontConfig, but it might also see a completely different set, or a different view of the same set (e.g. different substitutions).
This is something you notice a lot on OS X, where there are a huge number of keyboard shortcuts that are the same in every single application. When one application uses different ones, it's jarring to use. Sure, now it uses the native APIs for drawing lines, but that's not really a user-visible benefit (although it's slightly faster now it doesn't go through the X11 to Quartz mapping). It now has a theme that looks a bit like Aqua, but that doesn't help because it leads you to expect it to behave like Aqua, when it doesn't.
Even simple things like buttons in dialog boxes are often wrong. On OS X, in left-to-right reading order countries, the button for proceed is on the right and the button for back is on the left. Every button has a verb on it, not 'yes' or 'no'.