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How To 'Sell' Open Source Software
An anonymous reader writes "Have we missed the boat in terms of selling Linux to the average Joe? The writer of this article at NewsForge certainly thinks so. He points out that most people don't yet get the idea of a free operating system, and that the best way to start winning them over is to provide free software for Windows, such as OpenOffice.org." This sentiment isn't new, but unlike a lot of commentators, the writer in this case is in a good place (as a retailer who's tried selling Linux-equipped systems) to observe the man-on-the-street reaction to Free operating systems as of 2003.
Why would I want to buy something that I can get for free?
In case the site (or routes to the site) get slashdotted. Here is a mirror.
The average user buys a DELL or HP computer and, surprise, it comes with Windows included and they didn't get explicitly charged for it so it's free (in their mind). How do you really expect Joe Average to consider Linux if the current stuff is free and works fine for doing Excel stuff.
Microsoft has numerous on campus events where they give out copies of their software, in particular their Visual Studio development package.
In order to increase market share, these are the people who need to be sold on open-source. Currently there are not very many college students in CS or CompE that use open-source development products. In order to stay competitive, open-source must go out of its way to recruit these youngsters and give them the opportunity to try out open-source. This should happen at both the college and high school level.
This can be a real advantage to open-source as there are so many projects that these students can contribute on. It's a win-win situation. They get real-world hands on experience and open-source gets more coders and people dedicated to open-source philosophies.
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth
after hearing about mozilla for a while and how great it was. I decided to dl it, and it really is 100 times better than IE. Now I have a machine running a dual boot...and once I learn alittle more the windows 2000 partition will probably go away. Most people don't understand the concept of free software. Honestly most people don't care. they don't know enough and would rather be able to call up microsoft when something goes wrong, but if we show them a superior product, that is likely to get a response from them.
You cannot sell open source software, you sell the service of creating the software.
IF its the other sell however, I think people DO understand the concept of open source. You have all these people using Gnutella and Kazaa who understand the concept when its applied to music, so whats so hard to understand if we simply phase this into software?
I wonder why theres no P2P Linux Operating System
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
probably not to make one of its key selling points "the fact that it's free". People usually look at free or cheap things as unreliable. (This is exactly why most people don't buy GM/Ford/Hyundai/[insert your favorite Korean automobile manufacturer here] passenger cars. (Exception is to the GM/Ford trucks, those are good vehicles) It is almost universally known that those cars are unreliable.
What may work is the inclusion of OOo, samba, ximian connector, and gaim to point out to users that it "works exactly like and can interoperate with" windows files and servers. Also point out its widespread distribution in the server/enterprise arena. Some apple-esque switch ads may work too for the extra-dumb people out there.
This comment was randomly generated by a school of piranhas chewing on the PCB of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
Parts of the market seem to be missing the point that software such as a consumer level OS and office software have little value these days. You really can't sell them by and of themselves. Photoshop has value, maybe Access does too, but Powerpoint, Excel, and Word are just expected - kinda like a webbrowser.
Most non-geeks think of Office as Windows, and of IE as The Internet, for example. You sell Joe Punter a Computer, not Hardware + OS + Applications. The sooner little stores like this "get it" the better. If they set a demo machine up with a slick looking Gnome2 interface (no RedHat doesn't count as slick :P), OpenOffice, Moz, and Gaim, then put it beside WinXP + Office for $300(?) more, then people would buy it. Maybe it takes a certain amount of customisation that isn't in the current distros, but 30 minutes on art.gnome.org should provide a nice looking UI - and to most folks, the UI is the Computer.
Selling it to people with the "It's Free and Therefore Good" argument is pointless. Sell it with "It Works and Costs Less" and you might get somewhere.
Also, try selling SOHO networks to leverage that into places Windows Server won't go - eg, Linux Server + 3 Linxu Workstations (diskless/netbooting is even better from a TCO and upgrade viewpoint).
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Yeah but they don't pay for it. Nobody (for personal use) pays for the retail version of Windows. The corporate users are the ones spending 200-300$ per license. The average user gets it for free with the computer then upgrades with a friend's copy. It's that simple. Just count how many ppl you know that are getting their retail version in the store? not much I'm sure.
Linux will really gain widespread acceptance when the PC comes from the store, preloaded by the technicians. It should be an option; "if you want to save $x off the sticker price, we can give you Linux". Until that choice is offered, Linux will be relegated to the hobbiests.
Dell is neat in the sense that they offer(ed?) the option of having your server preinstalled with RedHat. Wish they had the same option for desktops and laptops... I am currently installing RH9 on my Inspiron, and can see how hard it might be for the average person.
Comming from retail myself, i can assure you it's a real pain trying to explain to someone why every new fangled gadget they buy won't install with the CD thats provided.
Sure, Linux is a great OS, and there is a strong developer community for drivers, but unless you are using it in a single purpose machine, ala Lindows Webstation, where you KNOW the user isn't going to try installing anything, you as the reseller in trying to save the customer money are going to have to pay more each time he calls and asks " why won't my camera install?" or "why won't my Bluetooth adaptor work with my phone?"
Unless manufacturers start supporting Linux like the way they do windows, we arn't going anywhere.
Other then that, porting traditionally Linux tools to Windows is a good idea. You get peopel used to it first then transition them to linux. so then when the switch is made, they are still comfortable with the tools they have been always using.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I agree with the sentiment. I think the largest obstacle to widespead use of linux by Mr and Mrs Average is they don't know anything different.
I used to work in a college as the sysadmin. The people that hung around me (yes some did!) eventually got around to trying linux. No-one else, including many CS students for which I ran tutorials (though anyone could come to these tutorials of course) didn't care, loved their 40G monolithic WinXP partition and so on.
Another obstacle is that Mr and Mrs Average aren't hackers. They may be able to get used to apt-get or rpm rather than clicking on an icon to install a program but they probably have hassles as to why supermount is often a bad idea (what is write-ahead caching anyway?).
People realise that they don't have to buy expensive office suites and other applications - that is what cd burners are for. What they don't realise is that they don't have to pirate them either.
I think that providing GPL software for the windows platform (as much as we may shudder) is a good first step. Mr and Mrs Average get to keep their current OS but get to explore and add functionality for free. They may or may not then make the jump to linux.
This guy is right on the money. A co-worker of mine recently had a conversation with someone on the topic of E-Mail clients. I recently introduced her to ThunderBird, and she loved it (She's an active Linux advocate). She showed it to who she was talking to. Of course, the topic of price came into play. "It's free", she said. You know what? I don't think I've ever seen a more confused look on a 50 year-old man's face. "What's the gimmick?" He asked. She proceeded to explain to him about OSS, and he just got more confused.
If we want Open Source Software to make an impact on Joe user, we need to ease them into it. Humans don't like change. We need to feed it to them with a baby spoon a little bit at a time, and if they have questions, try to explain it to them in the simplest of terms. "Thousands of programmers around the world work in their free time to provide everyone with superior software" will lead to "Why would they do that?" because when Joe user thinks of a programmer, he thinks of a glasses wearing computer nerd in a cubicle, getting paid to write programs. He doesn't understand the fact that programmers might program for fun.
I think we need to start some kind of a campaign. The masses must join together to provide something to Joe user that won't scare him. Don't try to explain everything to them, just give them a CD and say "Here, install this, it's better than Microsoft Office", or "Here, check this new E-Mail program out, it's got a really good thing for Junk Mail". If they ask "How much does it cost?", say "It's my copy, you can have it."
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Yeah, I agree that this will help build mindshare. Once my wife began using Mozilla and OpenOffice on her Win98SE box, she was a bit more comfortable on my SuSE Linux 8.1 laptop. So there is something to this.
However, there is also something to having a killer app for your platform. Apple has desktop publishing locked up, and video editing a bit too (at least at the consumer level). Sure, anything the Mac can do, other systems can reproduce. Likewise, anything Linux can do, others could copy. But taking the lead in an area means people default to your system. You can see Linux doing this for high-end 3D animation, and high-end video work seems to be coming along for Linux too. And of course, the Linux server-based apps seem to really trounce Windows in a few areas. That's our "lock" and we need to do it more. Mozilla is the next thing I see -- more features than the competition, more standards, more stability, more up-to-date.
Finally, as a developer who has released a few Perl, PHP, and AppleScript apps, I find that the best way to win someone over is ease of installation. Wizards, wizards, wizards. Once past that, it's all user interface from what I can see. Is your app more intuitive? Does it expose more options in a sensible way? I have found that most things that are difficult on Linux are justified by users/developers with comments such as "this IS hard, this isn't for idiots, this is how it has to be." And then a month or a year later, another app comes out that does exactly the same thing with no feature loss or configurability loss, and it does it better. And it "outsells" the old product well. I am experiencing this right now with one of my products -- a free photo album tool called PHPortfolio. PHPix is more powerful, easier to install, and simpler to use. My app is getting trounced. But it should -- it's crufty. Happily, everything is free, so no loss other than ego. :)
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That is a stupid remark and kind of insulting. Some people have jobs and work for open source companies like Ximian or Redhat or others. I happen to own a consulting firm and can spare some time for a fun project. To assume that all free software/open source software developers are kids working in their parents basement is simply ignorant. You've been modded up at this point by a flock of fools. Later, Erick
I spend a lot of time convincing customers that free is really ok.. That they DO have a choice.. many think they have to use Windows.. 'its what came on my pc'...
And then explain WHY its free.. Its a hard concept to grasp for the general public. "Why are they doing that for nothing... if its so good they could make money"
The laptop I carry with FBSD helps, as does the knoppix CD I leave behind... ( used to drop off 'demolinux' CDs, but knoppix is much more advanced as a useable *safe* demo at this point )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I personally probably won't be buying any open source products off the shelves anytime soon.
I bought a copy of SuSE linux a while back at a store. Paid about $40 or $60, got a few CDs and a couple manuals. I figured it was worth paying for the manuals and not having to download a gig and a half of ISOs... but unfortunately I was wrong.
I got it out of the box, and spent a couple hours installing it on my machine. So far so good, the installer was pretty easy to use and it went pretty fast (took maybe 30 or 40 minutes, I think.)
I booted up and was presented with a somewhat confusing login screen, and here for me is where it all went wrong - right there I had the option to choose multiple 'desktop environments' - it offered me KDE, GNOME, and a couple other options (I believe one of them was X11)... for me, this was confusing. I knew what all the environments were but I didn't particularly care to have to choose one just to use the machine. I started up KDE, since I had heard it was good. KDE started up fast, and I was able to hop in and start doing stuff. Did a little web browsing, and it worked great.
I logged onto IRC using XChat, and eventually one of my friends helped me get my windows drives mounted... unfortunately, it really wasn't pleasant having to figure out how to mount drives. I either didn't see SuSE's gui stuff for doing it, or that was a major oversight. So, SuSE lost a point there.
Then I started listening to some of my music in XMMS. Good so far, it worked great. I minimized it and started trying out the various apps that came loaded with the distro - games, productivity apps, etc. This is, IMO, where this distro (and the others I've played with, to a lesser or greater extent) failed. I was presented with multiple types of programs for almost everything, and there was very little on-screen help or guiding to help me select the best software to use. And to make things worse, some of the applications did things that I didn't expect. Selecting Wine caused my KDE desktop to dissapear and be replaced by Nautilus (the GNOME desktop, or so I'm told), and I couldn't get rid of it, so my session was now almost completely useless. I couldn't figure out how to do anything with nautilus or close it, so I had to shut down.
Then I tried to play one of the games I'd played on windows - Tux Racer. It said I needed hardware acceleration support, and here lies trouble. I fiddled with SuSE's configuration program (YAST) and could not get it to give me hardware acceleration for my Radeon 8500. It claimed to support it but wouldn't enable hardware 3d. So I went to ATI's site and grabbed their drivers. I then proceeded to try and install them. The installer messed with my configuration files, and then told me that I needed the kernel source code so I could recompile my kernel. (!) I didn't have the sources and I didn't know where to get them, so I closed the installer. Then, I opened YAST again to see if I could somehow find a way to get hardware acceleration working... and it wouldn't work. To make a long story short, somehow the combination of ATI's installer and YAST totally corrupted my XFree86 configuration to the point where even the CONSOLE would not display properly onscreen. Goodbye, linux partition.
If the companies behind these distros want to sell Linux to people and have them be satisfied customers (I have no problem supporting developers, but I wasn't happy with what I got for my money.), I think they need to work more on focus.
The average user doesn't need 3 CDs of stuff that he or she will probably never use. Include one good office suite, and make it easy to download the other ones if you ever need them - that's not hard to do! Do the same with other software... I don't think the average user needs to be confronted with multiple desktop environments, editing configuration files, and discerning the meaning of confusing application names. I know some distros are really good at being accessible, but there were only two distros at the store I visit
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
You mean I'm the only idiot that paid for Windows?
No wonder you posted anonymously...
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Maybe this is relevant, maybe it's not, but I've got to get something off my chest.
I'm getting very tired of listening to open source cheerleaders (particularly Slashdotters) talk about how much they hate Sun in one breath, and then including OpenOffice among the free software that's going to supersede Sun in the next.
Without Sun, the OpenOffice project would undoubtedly continue, but it wouldn't continue nearly as fast. Sun is confused, but I think they'll eventually come around and realize that mainstream computing will eventually come down to just Windows and Linux. (Perhaps they'll lose their schizophrenia about Linux when they fire Scott McNealy, who knows.) But we need to remember that free software doesn't just materialize out of nowhere; it has to be created and maintained by actual people. Some of the best software out there is created by hobbyists, but with something as complex as a complete office suite, it does help to have a big staff of full-time developers working on it.
I challenge you all to stop mentioning Sun in the same breath as Microsoft, and instead try to figure out better ways to achieve Sun/Linux synergy.
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He very happy with my software, Mozilla, and the server. He is also happy with the overall performance and the fact that the server has not crashed. Of course I also gave him an estimate of how much everything would cost without open source. Needless to say he likes open source now. Not only does he like it, but his employees see the benefit and they learn that free doesn't mean worthless.
Even getting a small business to use open source helps a lot to promote it because every employee that uses it gets comfortable with it and has some exposure to generate marketing buzz.
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
In the last couple of months I've come across tw ocustomers of the company I work for that are using open source software..
One, a small local bank that has 90% of what they have with some linux and Gnome. All desktop users (normally people who only need a word processor and a spreadsheet) use OpenOffice. Licencing costs = 0. This is not so easy to understand even for a business man. The guy in the IT deparment had to work his case.
The other one is swithing from MS Office to OpenOffice for every one excpet people who are really familiar (and actually use) with Excel. Every one else get's OpenOffice (on win32). This guys are saving some 10000 USD in licences. Still they had to be introduced to the subject of Free Software by one of the guys who works with me when our customer complained about the cost of Microsofts Office. This kind of "OSS consulting" for our customer, was some value added to another project we're on.
Still, I think, as people who benefit from the works of others for free, that we should encourage business users to make donations to projects they benefit from. At least to support these projects future survival.
"Yes."
More seriously... not even my boyfriend will touch Linux, because he can't play his Windoze-only (and/or Win-and-MacOS-only) games on it. He's not willing to touch an emulator. He doesn't want to use a piece of software that makes finding user-friendly software difficult. (Sorry, to you and I, 'bash' or 'grep' is user-friendly. Not so to him.) He doesn't want to use a piece of software that is so incredibly inconsistent that there is NO ONE WAY TO SET UP A NETWORK INTERFACE. (If you're using a shell, do it this way; if you're using Red Hat 8.x or higher, do it that way; if you're running Mandrake, do it this way; if you're running Debian, hack it your damned self cuz you're "supposed" to know how, etc. etc. etc.). And so on and so on. I love Linux as much as the next geek, but we REALLY have missed the boat. Mac OS X has already done more for open-source software in the real world of Joe Sixpack than Linux (and even *BSD) will ever do, in my opinion. I could be wrong, but that's how I feel on the issue.
Joe Sixpack couldn't give a good god damn about ideology. To him, ideology is something you learn in Church or in Ethics classes, and has nothing at all to do with software (or computers in general). To him, the notion that software can be "free as in speech" sounds like a ridiculous, out-of-context anthropomorphization, like saying "My car likes it when I pet the dashboard. See? It's purring!".
And as for "free as in beer", which most OSS/FS also is? To Joe, Windows, Office, etc. are all free as a flock of birds, since you either (A) get them free with new computer, (B) can download them off of KaZaa, or (C) mooch a copy from a friend or family member.
The ONLY way that OSS/FS will ever make headways into Joe Sixpack's life is if (A) it plays all of their games (or as many equivalently good AND POPULAR games), (B) it supports ANY piece of hardware you can buy, including WinModems, WinPrinters, WinWebcams, WinDildos and WinKitchenSinks, (C) things are consistent (which probably won't happen so long as there is more than one distribution) and (D) it STILL manages to be more stable and secure than Windows.
Oh, and it has to look and act just like Windows, too, or he'll say it's "too hard". I'm serious. I've had people tell me that Mac OS (or Mac OS X) is "hard", simply because they grew up in a Windows household, and familiarity breeds a false sense of intuition.
Not to be depressive, but... well, this is your wake-up call...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
how do you pay your bills?
We sell our virile bodies on the streets. Obviously.
The coolest voice ever.
I'm doing my Masters in IT at the moment, and so far we've developed in Java, Haskell, and C/GCC/prc-tools, using Eclipse as the recomended IDE.
No MS stuff so far.. I'm not sure if thats similar in Undergrad, but I suspect it might be.
This is at Macquarie University in Australia, in case you're wondering. They might be alone in this.
Average joe will use what their PC comes with preinstalled. They aren't going to know how to or want to change their OS. Unless of course a more knowlegeable friend or relative does it for them.
I have a quick observation that comes from demonstrating Linux to such disparate folks as a VMS database admin, an intelligent, 68-year-old man who remembers when he first saw an electric lightbulb, and an 18-year-old who grasps anything having to do with computers in seconds.
And the observation is this: Linux on the desktop does not give current users of Microsoft products anything that makes them want to leave the Microsoft world. Even the price argument fails, because people of even moderate means will tell you that the cost of a "loaded" PC isn't prohibitive. The 68-year-old said it was too much trouble to learn a new way of doing things, particularly if it meant not having Office and IE. The DB admin said it looked interesting, but she wasn't impressed with the availability of front ends for MySQL and Postgres. And the 18-year-old asked what games were available.
Friends, we should not be looking for mass adoption. Linux on the desktop is for inquiring minds, people who want change. Most users out there just want it to be easier or faster than it presently is - - scary, considering a blindfolded monkey could operate the Windows GUI. Can we fill a need for these people? Can we make it easier, and faster?
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
I work at Circuit City, and any time a customer asks me about Office (none of our computers come with it and everyone wants it), I always tell them about OpenOffice and give them the web address. But, almost none of my fellow salespeople knew about it before I got there. So, I think one thing that would definitely help is if some funding could be provided to have a free/oss rep go to Circuit Citys, Best Buys, etc and either give them discs, literature, or just educate them about what's available. They'll pass it on to their customers. God knows my coworkers have lost a bunch of sales because customers didn't feel like paying $400 for office for school when its bundled with some Dells (of course it ends up costing the same thing, but if these were smart and informed customers, they wouldn't be in this position in the first place). Plus the stores wouldn't care, cause the profit margins are nonexistent for software.
barzelay.net
I personally don't care if everyone uses it, but I think there are certain people who should, and they don't.
The local school district, for example, spends millions on software licenses, most of it to do office work. Sure, I know MS stuff is great, but why can't they use Linux and/or OpenOffice to do their e-mail, web browsing, and office app stuff? They could take those millions and hire more teachers, or re-institute music and art programs.
It's not that everyone should use Linux, but everyone should consider if proprietary and costly software is the best place to be spending their money, especially when other options are very workable and available.
"free" is a particular failure as a word - one can tell this by the fact that it's so frequently followed by the necessary clarification ("free as in speech" or "free as in beer"). One wouldn't describe the Magna Carta or the US Declaration of Independance as a "free document", so describing software that's "unencumbered" as "free" is stretching the meaning of the word rather far. Worse, the overloading of free, as in "without cost" simply serves to confuse matters for the layman further. Why is he being charged for "free software"? Isn't this "freeware"? "Libre" is better, but still not ideal. I don't really have a better phrase, but I bet if GNU software was called "libertyware" then every republican senator would be insisting the F22 ran it and that e-voting systems were fully libertyware. That's horrible and lowbrow and cheap, and that's often how marketing has to be.
"open source" is a bit better, although there's still _plenty_ of people who have no idea what "source" is. There's also the confusion with Open Standards and Open Systems. Again, I don't have a really good alternative. "community software"?
So, that's my suggestion for our cynical brandname - Community Libertyware. "Meaningless jargon", you might say. Yep, that's the idea.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
Unfortunately, it's been my experience that too many programmers and users think Open Source really means "free as in beer". Too many of them don't even understand the difference between BSD and GPL licenses. And what I find amazing is that there is no one selling a service or writing books devoted to training employees and mangers about all the difference licenses and their obligations.
If it was just a question of Apache or BSD licenses, I think people would be as quick to adopt as they are to share music files, but the GPL is a lot more scary than even Microsoft's EULA. You pray to God no programmer in your shop has tweaked something GPL in order to make a project work. It's one of those cases where you would be a lot happier if they didn't have access to the source.
Now we know why this is, Slashdot programmers want to protect their intellectual property rights from Microsoft even more than the RIAA wants to protect it's copyrights from Slashdot programmers. And that's perfectly understandable. But it makes for slow adoption. When the very act of bugfixing a GPL project on your spare time, may make some other code of yours "derivitive" of that project, you have to ask yourself if being able to see the code is a good thing or not.
So Corporations treat Open Source very carefully, and as a result people treat it very carefully at home. After all, it's very hard to trust people for whom distrust seems to be a second nature.
No Zen is good zen
AFAIK, our entire CS department at Caltech is either on Linux or Solaris, and I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of students use PINE to check their mail. I don't think exposure on the college level is a problem. ;)
"The average user gets it for free with the computer then upgrades with a friend's copy."
The "average users" that I know think that WinXX is part of their computer. The concept of an operating system upgrade is beyond them. They think they buy a new computer if they want an upgraded copy of WinXX.
I'm not kidding.
Furthermore, they think MS Word and Excel and IE is part of that same "package."
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
I've been thinking this for a month or so. We do need to put open source software onto windows.
Windows users install software all the time. They seem to love it. Next time they need to upgrade their Office suite they wouldn't think its crazy to install a free office suite. With installing software is familiar territory. Replacing windows however would seem crazy to them though. There are so many unknowns.
The average joe will hear about open office and will eventually upgrade and will see the $many hundred dollar sticker price and choose OpenOffice.org.
Sooner or later we'll see people become comfortable with free software. People will be using many different open source programs for their daily work, and then it will be more trivial to move to linux.
But try and think back to when you were first being introduced to the whole concept. If you're anything like me, it was months before you actually began to look at anything seriously.
It actually depends upon how old you are and when you started using computers. I'm old enough that Microsoft wasn't supplying operating systems when I started using computers.
The first real OS I used (not counting CP/M) was 4.3BSD at the university. After four years of that, MSDOS seemed like a toy. I never considered it anything more than a program loader.
So when I first heard about Linux (0.97) and FreeBSD (1.0), I knew they weren't toys. I took them seriously. So I kept an eye on them until I was able to afford a computer that they could run on. When I finally got a computer with a drive large enough for dual booting I took the plunge with Slackware. Eventually I tried FreeBSD and was home at last with a direct descendent of the OS I started with.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Yeah, thousands of geeky people who each build their own app using their own version of whatever, which, in order to use, requires half a dozen other things. Sure, they're all free, but to download, compile, install, all these pre-requisites for whatever, is a major pain in the ass, even for a geeky person. Just the other day I decided I wanted the latest version of the gimp. So, I downloaded it and started config. Oopsy-Daisy! Need gtk-perl. Ooopsy-Daisy! Need atk, glib, and something called pango. Go figure. So, after downloading, untar/zipping, configure, make, make install all of these... Ooopsy-Daisy! The gtk Makefile has something wrong with it so it doesn't find the *.o files. Solved by copying from install root to subdirs. Whew! Now, after all this crap, I was able to get gimp made and installed. Yay! It was free! And sure, it's a good program, but could my mom do this? My grandma? Joe End User? Should they be required to? There's just too much fragmentation, too many dependencies on 3rd party libraries. Building and installing anything is such a pain in the ass that it's usually not worth it. KDE is getting better, but I've resisted installing the latest version because I don't want to go through that song and dance again; You need this. Download here... oh, for this, you need this, download here. Oh, for that, you need this, download here. The nice thing about MS OS/apps is that you have your installation, and when you install software, the installer installs whatever it needs. You don't have to visit half a dozen ftp sites to build the prerequisites for whatever you want. As much as I like Linux, until there are fundamental changes in the way this works, it's really not going to be something that REAL people want to use.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
In house development makes the company rely on the people that developed the custom solution. Problem with that is most IT people don't stay in the same job for more than 2 years or so (until reaching a certain status). With a outside purchased product, there is a safety blanket; someone to call.
If customers don't like "Free", don't tell them that it's free. Charge them for it. Tell them it's industrial strength software that's far more reliable than Microsoft.
Tell them that they can get regular updates through your company as part of the initial contract.
Maybe I've just grown tired of hearing people ask when linux will become mainstream. I no longer care if it does.
I used to sell customers systems with an OS that cost way too much for what they got(no not an MS product) We developed using tools that cost a hell of a lot and didn't offer much more functionality then syntax highlighting. The systems just up and crashed at times and noone could explain it.
The customers eventually got mad about the stability of the system. So we're replacing it. Linux, Mysql, php, apache and a whole lot of custom modules.
So far in testing the users are much happier, the developers are happier and the over all systems cost far less which we directly pocket as profit. The customers could care less that the system is built on free software, they just need it to work.
Does it really matter if grandma doesn't use linux at home? In the early days it didn't matter that noone used linux for anything. People still made it and now it's useful, that will never change.
For many people, free software coding is a labor of love. They do it for the sheer enjoyment of coding and for the sense of giving something to the community. Hell, I'm one of those sick bastards that loves setting up servers more than playing video games; for all my friends I'm pretty much the free server guy. If I had the attention span to program, I would probably be included in that group of people that work full time jobs, compile code as a hobby, and give it back to the community.
As for the root of your question....i.e. making a living, It can be done and has been done by many people. I think the side to make money in free software has and always will be in setup, support, and packaging.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
root@id1: su Microsoft
You could actually take that one literally or phonetically, the outcome would be the same...
Another hillarious post.
Many Thanks,
Luke
Not sure what LOE it would take to gather up the most common settings that would have the be carried over, as well as put together something that can scan your hard drive and categorize each program/file type as
- Can run under an open-source equivalent
- Backup/Printout first, nothing is known that can open these files ever again
Great for schools that get older hardware too. I'd love for something like that that I could pop into a few old boxes I have lying around!Hell, a lot of people think that their monitor is the computer, and the box is the CPU. The internet? Oh, you mean AOL!
The only way to get people to use open source is to sell it with the computer.
I'm sorry but what planet are you on?
No software comes with any warrenty either expresssed or implied.
That's a pretty basic foundation for software in general, otherwise MS would be liable for damages caused by their shittying programming. As well as the geek who wrote the kernel patch that borked the file system.
There's a million and one examples of closed source
companies ignoring user complaints about bugs to outright denial that there is anything even wrong.
For instance, I was initiated into Linux, Emacs etc because a certain programming course required it;the lecturer developed a grade-tracking software, and didn't want to port that to Windows, so all our labs were done in Linux. We learnt all those Emacs keyboard tricks from seniors in the span of a week (before we discovered what the Vi versus Emacs flame was all about).
So yes, at least in the bigger, older universities, Linux/Unix is already an established thing with full community participation.
More than mere navel gazing.
If the problem is that free == worthless then the writer should find the price point that consumers will be willing to risk giving it a try - say, 30-40% of the average WinOS-only price.
Then a salesperson can say to the customer, "Not only do you get this nifty OS, but you also get a whole bunch of apps - and for under half the price you would pay for just the WinOS."
One overlooked reason why more people aren't adopting Linux is that they can't get Linux applications at the same place they buy their software -- from stores.
Take a look around a CompUSA, a Walmart, a Best Buy, an Office Depot, or Amazon, or any other franchise that sells software. You might see a few boxes of RedHat or Mandrake, but if you start looking for specific kinds of applications that run on Linux, you won't find any. (Yerah, I know Linux distros are chocked full of apps, but most people don't know that; even if they do, they'll get a confusing array of applications with overlapping functionality.)
It's all well and good to have bunches of free Linux applications available for people who know how to find them and install them. And, how to get rid of them if and when they turn out to be unsatisfactory.
That's not the case for most people. They already own Windows (or a Mac). They only need new software very occasionally, and then they can afford to pay for it. If that's the case, why dump Windows and spend hours getting up to speed on Linux just to get one free app? That's a high-risk approach.his is probably the reason for all the Mars probes launched over the last few months."
his is probably the reason for all the Mars probes launched over the last few months."
The heritage of Linux and Gnu is a double-edged sword. It enables a flowering of talent among the developer community, but it also isolates Linux from the mainstream.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
In fact, you are better off with Free Software in this context. If an OSS developer gives you the brush-off when you ask for a bug fix, you still have the option of fixing the bug yourself ... or employing someone to do it for you. Besides, if the problem is hurting lots of other people, there is a good chance that some other user will be motivated to fix it.
By contrast, if you are using a closed source product, and the vendor won't fix the problem, you are stuck.
8. Parent is a troll
9. ???
10. Mod parent down
It's called Knoppix Just put in the CD, reboot, and there you are, a full running Linux distro, and if they get scared they can just reboot. It doesn't change anything on the machine.
I tried it awhile back, and right off it found everything, and I connected to the 'net with no hassles. I actually like it better than my current distro, mandrake.
-cp
On my campus, Windows XP sells for 5 dollars and Office XP Professional sells for 10 dollars. THis started last year with an agreement with Microsoft. Needless to say, the Linux User Group here has completely disappeared. There is no need for anyone to use Linux over XP. Very sad indeed...
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Especially if you're going to continue to refer to the overwhelming majority of users with terms like "Average Joe", "Joe Sixpack" and some of the other "amusing" terms I've seen on /.
So, as long as MS has businesses in their back pocket, they've got little need to worry about competing with free, as in freedom, software.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
Here's the bigger question: should we even try to sell Linux to the average Joe?
.EXE files off of Kazaa, or its Linux P2P equivalent).
Sure, it may be more secure. But is that only until the masses start moving in that direction and warrant it more attention? Furthermore, the average Joe thinks that every fatal error and delayed pop-up ad is a virus, given the state of paranoia and misinformation out there right now. I don't see Linux alleviating those concerns, or making them any less stupid (i.e. downloading
Sure, it may have great compatibility that's getting better all the time with emulators and such. But is that any consolation to the average person that wants everything to run out-of-box and is confused by options and settings that aren't explicitly explained every step of the way?
Finally, sure, it might get more user friendly, but it's never going to be Windows. When I teach people how to use computers (mostly older folks), I always try to teach them a simplified version of what's going on when they perform an action using relevant analogies, rather than just telling them to click on the Start menu and scroll up to Programs. My thinking is that if you actually understand the basic processes that are going on, computers are essentially demystified and become simple tools rather than theoretical gadgetry removed from reality.
Most of them don't want any part of it. They just want step-by-step instructions that will work every time, reliably, and quickly. They want to know that double clicking on Internet Explorer will open up Google (which I have conveniently preset as the initial page) and let them search the Internet, or that if they want to type stuff they double-click on the Word icon I conveniently set up on the top-right of the desktop. If this changes just one bit (i.e. they accidentally dragged the Word icon to the bottom-right of the desktop), I will assuredly be getting phone calls. Getting out of their familiar behavioral methodology with Windows would be very time consuming and probably not worth the money that's saved by going the Linux route.
And even more seriously, it breaks the golden rule of never, ever messing with command prompts and complicated looking jargon. I have enough trouble convincing them that clicking OK to a licensing agreement or deleting a Word file won't wipe their hard drive.
Just because it's free-as-in-speech doesn't mean you can't charge for it. If Joe Average Consumer doesn't trust a product that costs nothing, then either hide that fact from him, or explicitly charge him for it (you're allowed to charge whatever you think the market will bear for the binaries, as long as you make the source available for a reasonable fee). If you're in the business of selling stuff, then for Todd's sakes sell it, don't try to convince people that they should accept it for free on philosophical grounds. Don't even bring up the whole issue. Why should Joe A. Consumer care what OS is on his machine as long as he can surf the web and send email?
Marklar: marklar
Linux maybe great, but until well known names run on the platform, you can forget it. I am not talking hardware, but software. I got so fed up with my Win98 box three years ago I switched to SuSE 6.4 and was happy. Then a year ago, I bought my iBook when it became clear that while OS soultions were progressing, I still needed Photoshop and MS Office. I've been more than happy with my iBook and tell people if they are going to purchase a new desktop, especially just for checking email, surfing, basic word/excel stuff, to buy a mac. For desktop use, Apple has come to play and is beating Linux badly. I know more linux people that switched to OSX than from windows to X or Linux. I am now an IT director for a small company that owns several dozen public access terminals that currently run Win2Kpro with a custom kiosk app. In my first week, we pulled half the HD's and had to clone them with Norton Ghost because people DLed programs they should not have been in the first place. I found a replacement in the Linux Based FirecastOS that we are testing over the next 30 days. If that doesn't work out, then I am going to begin to develop a custom solution using RH 9. (well it will proably be PHP or PERL based so should work on any *iux enviroment) We bought the $40 copy of RH 9 from Best Buy so I could show it to him and the number of times I got the, "Are you sure we can install this on as many boxes as we want with having to buy any more licenses?" In our case, Linux offers a great solution, but guess what, joe Q. public will be using Linux on our terminals and not know the difference. So long as they can surf the net and check their hotmail accounts, they don't give a *&#$9. We are in works to see about putting a "This terminal is powered by Linux" ad button. We currently have one box in the field we are test marketing. And when users are asked if they knew they were using Linux, they mostly say no. Then when asked what they thought, its "Well I could check my email, its what agian?" If photoshop (Sorry GIMP doesn't cut it), Dreamweaver, and maybe a couple other widely used apps made it to Linux (like Maya has for 3D artists), then people might be willing to make the jump. Ask most Mac users if they know that FreeBSD is under the hood, and they will say "Free what? It runs iMovie, and this iTunes is cool. Word and Powerpoint work better than on Windows." Now as a server OS, I still deploy FreeBSD before Linux for most uses. I guess its a personal thing, but FreeBSD was designed as a Server Platform. While Linux still has that Desktop/Server dual personality issue to work out.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
dear jerk,
one thing is certain, you (and people like you) do exist. i have to deal with people like you everyday at work, and I'm really sick of it. I work at an ISP tech support center. All my coworkers call these people idiots because they don't know what a mail server is or how to activate their webspace and ftp to it. Besides the admins and maybe one other person at my job, I am the only one who knows anythign more about Linux than how to use KDE. Does that mean my coworkers and friends are idiots? Answer = no.
does a air conditioner repair (wo)man look down on you because you don't know how it works, or know anything about it, besides the very simple UI. When you want a more powerful unit, do you buy a whole new one or learn how the thing works and upgrade it yourself.
why do you look down on people because they don't know everything you know about computers. why should they, it's not essential, or even enjoyable to most. people only use them because they are convienent and ideally, more efficient.
yes there are stupid people. but people aren't stupid because they don't know anything about computers.
In conclusion, stfu.
Sincerely,
a dissatisified customer.
I post proudly, my opinion.
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
I disagree that the time has past for the Linux Desktop - People will always consider an alternative. Rather, the issue is twofold: Foremost - when was the last time you saw a Linux advertisement that was in the local flyers from BestBuy/etc? Word of mouth is the best advertising, but the geek market tends to only talk to itself which renders word of mouth almost useless for the market intended to reach. Secondly - a major of the OS apps out there are betas compared to what one sees on Windows. Poor installers (much less uninstallation), meagre documentation, dependency issues... All stop Joe Average when confronted with these realities. To ever make a competitive desktop, these need to be addressed. Until that time, Linux will continue to be the elitist OS of choice.
Some of the best software out there is created by hobbyists, but with something as complex as a complete office suite, it does help to have a big staff of full-time developers working on it.
Actually, the mostly hobby-project, KOffice, seems poised to overtake OpenOffice in the not so distant future. In my opinion, it is overall a better written collection of software--even if the MS compatiblity is currently lacking. OOo seems to me a twisted heap of code with an insane learning curve confronting possible new developers. And regardless, final result is a buggy, slow, monolithic application. It kinda surprises me that Sun actually paid good money for it.
Apples new IDE xCode thankfuly will finally have this feature.
Larger organizations don't care about who is selling open source software (most of it can be freely downloaded from the Internet anyway) but they DO care about who is going to give support for the product afterwards.
So I think the questions should be "How to support open source software", from a services point of view.
Well, speaking for myself, I don't, and for a whole lot of reasons.
The first reason is that open source software is written to scratch the itches of people competent enough to write it. It must be, because people who are not competent enough to write operating systems by definition don't write operating systems; and, unless you're being paid to, you don't write programs to do things you've no interest in doing. So Linux will always be a geeks operating system, and will only ever be good as a geeks operating system, and that's how it should be.
If, in some act of self-denying humanitarian madness, the Linux community did turn round and make Linux into an operating system for Joe Average to use, we would just by doing that make it an operating system which was not comfortable for us to use, and so we'd all drift away to using something else and there would be no-one left to maintain or develop Linux.
Joe Average is inevitably going to have to continue to buy operating systems which people get paid to write, because there is no-one who is motivated to build a Joe Average Operating System ('JAOS'?) for free. Microsoft seem to perform this function perfectly well.
Of course the corporate (and government) desktop is different, because large organisations can afford to pay sysadmins to tune an operating system to the needs of the organisation, and lock it down so that the lusers can't make a mess with it. They're going to have to do this anyway whatever operating system they choose, so they might as well start with a free one.
Obviously, there's some benefit for us in Linux being more widely used. The bigger the community, the greater the number of contributers, the more software there is that's available to us. Great. But actually there's even more benefit to us in letting a thousand flowers bloom. The more heterogenous the operating systems in common everyday use, the more important interoperability is, and the less possible it is for wannabe-monopolists to 'embrace and extend', or to save files by default in proprietary formats.
So don't - don't - strive, campaign, persuade or even hope to see Linux on every desktop. It won't do us any good and it won't do Joe Average any good. Strive instead to expose Joe Average to a wider range of options he can understand. Let's face it, Mac OS X is a good operating system for Joe Average - at least as good as Windows - and once the Joe Average desktop market begins to fragment there will be more chance for new operating systems to emerge and break in there, and that can only be interesting for us.
And yes, perhaps, in future, we will see JAOSes emerging which are based on Linux; perhaps Lindows is the first of those. But please, we don't want Linux to become a JAOS. That's in no-one's interest.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Highly visible supporters in positions of power at the big game companies.
Imagine if some guy at Valve Software decided to release a Linux version of Half-Life 2 a couple of weeks before the Win32 version? I'm not saying that people would switch, but it'd certainly bring good press and make lots of people curious (and I doubt that they'd lose money doing that -- the Win32 people would still buy it despite the frustration).
Hell, no need for that; just hire a couple of extra guys to make sure that a Linux port of the game is available at the official release (both in the same box).
Gamers are a good target demographic for now because they usually know more about computers than the typical MS office-user and most distros of Linux still aren't that user-friendly.
Of course the hardware support would need to be better and... well, who am I kidding. This will not happen.
I'm sure that lots of programers are Linux fans but the publisher probably has the last say on the matter of allocating ressource for this kind of stuff. If it isn't where the money is, well...
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
Check any of these:
www.simply.co.uk
www.watford.co.uk
These and other sites is where the average user buys (not Dell or HP, those are for corporate users). These are companies advertised in Magazines of wide circulation in the UK.
In both cases the OS is charged and you save money if you don't buy it.
It is a real pity that they don't have (yet) a box with Linux on it showing an increase of 0 (or a nominally lower increase of price) when selected.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I wanr Linux in as many computers as possible.
Why?
Because then I will find more hardware (not that I miss anything), more support (not that I need any) and more applications (I miss nothing at the moment).
And because in such situation big companie would be forced to provide a better product and service, treating us like valuable clients and not like possible copyright infringers.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Amen brother. Anyone who wants the "man on the street" opinion - read the following: If you REEEEEAlly want to win over the average joe and penetrate into the MS monopoly on the desktop, you HAVE to address (1) hardware compatability, and (2) ease of software setup, use, troubleshooting, problem resolution. 1st, backgrounders and qualifiers: I am a smart guy. I make almost 3 figures, I have a 4 year degree and am just shy of a masters. I work for one of the big computer companies. Our department's system admin reports to me. I hate microsoft's abuse of their monopoly. I aboslutely love the concept of Linux and open source. I use open office at home as well as MozillaFirebird. I have tried and tried again to use Linux as my primary OS both at home and work, but quite frankly its a big pain in the A$$. Sure the hardware detection is getting better all the time, and the software tools are improving as well, but 3 huge mountains still remain: (1) compatibility with MS networks, (2) support for cutting edge hardware, and (3) cutting edge software titles available to Linux (ProE, Autocad, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator). In spite of everything you will try to flame me with please listen to this: I don't want to fsck with a command line to configure my PC - I want to click the dam menu and *bam* be done. I don't want to fsck with my hardware trying to get Linux to like it - I just want to plug the dam thin in and tell it where the drivers are (assuming it doesn't already recognize it). I want to be able to open the help center, type "setup samba" and have it provide step by step instructions not say things like "go to 1234.org and read the manual pages for more info" or "you may have to recompile your kernel". Quite frankly I don't give a rat's butt about kernels or .orgs. I want to use a tool and have it work. I want to buy a piece of hardware, plug it in, load the drivers from CD and use the dam thing. I will pay someone for that privilege. MS understands that, however evil their little hearts are.
THIS is why Linux can't break the "average joe" barrier.
I LOVE what you guys do, I DO want you do succeed. Please understand that the market you are trying to penetrate REQUIRES that you jump the above mentioned hurdles.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
Case history: I was working a short-term writing contract in a Windows-only company. The job would require editing photos, so I asked them to install the GIMP for me, pointing out that it was freely usable and the equivalent proprietary program would be about $600. I also asked them to install Open Office so I could use it for labelling photos and making drawings. The only question they asked was whether things would be in standard file formats. I think they had been burned before by proprietary formats.
Several weeks went by, and one of the assembly workers mentioned he just bought a PC for his kids, but software was REALLY expensive. I offered to give him a CD with GIMP and OO and Mozilla (and NetHack!) ... explained it's not only free but legal, and he could give copies away or install it anywhere he wants to. Within a week, a couple of others asked me if they can have "that free software", or if I knew of free software to do ___. Viral marketing was starting to infect the company.
The mechanical engineer whose office I was working in took a GIMP/OO CD, then asked about OSS engineering software to use in his engineering classes. I told him that most of the good stuff was written for Linux. He was curious, installed the distro I gave him (probably Mandrake) one weekend, and came back with one question - "what about my data?" I showed him that OO could read EXCEL and Word files ... his next statement was "So what the hell do I need Windows for?" I pointed out that his major drafting software was going to release a Linux version, and that he could ask for that upgrade instead fo the Windows one, so soon he could be totally free of Windows at work and at home.
The third to convert, although very cautiously, was the bean counter who doubled as sysadmin (very good admin, far from clueless). I had already saved him $600 with the GIMP, and the OSS for WIn CD was getting rave reviews on the factory floor, so he trusted that I knew what I was talking about. They desperately need manufacturing control and CRM software. It's extremely expensive, seldom works the way a business needs it to work, and getting it customized is more expensive if you can get them to do it at all. I suggested he look at the Compiere project as the least painful way to introduce it. It has a web-based server interface and is aimed at small businesses. It does require an $1800 Oracle run-time license, but that and the cost of customizing is way less than the cost of a proprietary system and the hardware to run it on. He could use an old PC to install Linux/Apache and test it out for free - I gave him Mandrake, RedHat and Knoppix. The last I heard, they had hired someone to install and customize Compiere for them. Everyone will be using browsers and their existing systems (Win 95/98/2K) to access it, but it's one Linux server in the door.
The key to my success was not talking vaguely about the virtues of open source operating systems ... it was handing over an OSS solution to the person's current problem.
You must enjoy going to work everyday. Me personally, I prefer to show people that don't know much about Linux or Open Source what the stuff can/can't do, instead of carrying myself around the office like some l337 jerk.
OK. You have two commercial OS's.
First you have MS. They hate open-source software, they want to kill Linux, they won't make any products for Linux.
Second, you have Apple. They like open-source, they use open-source, the need open-source. Without software like Apache, CUPS, GCC, Samba, etc. they're in trouble.
I think average users need a commercial OS and the installation ease and large support infrastructure that a commercial software company can provide. So I support Apple as you consumer OS provider because they NEED open-source, and so they're going to support it and expose people to it. And avoid Microsoft because they HATE open source and will do everything they can to belittle it, cripple it, and eventually destroy it.
So you're advocating that open source authors get paid from either locally-collected (as in the case of libraries) or nationally-collected (as is the case of NPR and PBS) taxes?
Or that they should have their software, for a two-week period every six months, interrupt what your doing every few hours with modal dialog boxes that block your work until you pledge more money (as PBS and most public radio do)?
As I said earlier, I don't see my computer as a political platform; and I don't have all that much free time (or free money for that matter). Hence, Linux so far is not for me. Of course, when the new-and-improved DRM comes along and cripples Windows, I will probably switch to Linux, because dealing with its inconsistencies and bugs will become cheaper (in terms of time as well as money) than trying to crack the DRM.
I think I'll have to disagree with this point though:
Unfortunately, this is not really an option for a gamer such as myself. I like my games to be involved, pretty, and multiplayer (massively multiplayer if possible). I also like having a keyboard and a mouse as the input devices. Currently, none of the major consoles can quite satisfy these demands. The one console that comes close is the X-Box, but I already have a PC, so I don't need a PC clone on top of it. And presumably , you would not want to support it as well, seeing as it comes from the Evil Empire.>|<*:=
You make less than $100 a year? Wow. You've got to be pretty smart to live on that little.
You're some kind of manager and you make less than $100 per year? Wow!
I find the easiest and most effective way to explain OSS and why Linux is great is to liken it to a collaborative scientific project like the human genome project or the race to cure cancer. The public has been conditioned for years by movies, tv, and print to wrap their heads around the idea of thousands of scientists in white lab coats using their enormous brains to create things that are great for industry and humanity. And to some extent the public has come to grasp that that's how the Internet itself evolved. So if you tap into that image of hordes of geniuses working for humanity, the reaction goes from "Huh?" to "Wow."
Then you show them quake playing on your linux laptop and hey presto! Instant convert.
However, as a footnote, folks, linux really, really needs to become easier to install/uninstall new programs and to configure if we really want the average Joe to buy in completely...
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Well, it worked for you until all the commercial software companies stopped developing Amiga software because nobody bought legal copies. Then it was adios, Amiga.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Just for the record I'd like to point out that Sun uses StarOffice (OO with a few tweaks) as their corporate standard office environment. Something that is "slow and buggy" wouldn't hang for long in that role.
I have used StarOffice for numerous large technical manuals as well as standard day to day office work, and overall find it to be reasonably fast and stable. Bottom line here is that modern software often requires modern HW whether you are on M$ Office or OO. Remember, OO isn't designed to beat wordpad, it's designed to go head to head with Word. As much as I don't like M$, they have a strong incumbant.
Regarding the learning curve, I'd ask the question: "How long have you used MS Office?" Most people who argue the learning curve are trying to use OO in the same way they have used M$ Office for *years*. I hardly see that as a fair evaluation. Try working with the manuals, asking questions in newsgroups, etc. In my experience, the only thing that required "learning curves" was understanding OO's implementation of page/chartacter styles. The rest was a breeze.
Why should you bother? Because innovation requires change. Because competition is good for everyone in the marketplace, and competition breeds innovation.
You also mention that M$ compatibility is lacking in KO... Keep in mind how significant that issue really is. In order to for an office program to be a viable option in the business world it needs to interoperate. Period. As much as I hate to say it, the office arena is still dominated my M$. I receive M$ files from customers all the time, and never have to call them back asking them to change the format. It's seamless.
I'm *not* making any statements here about the quality of KO - I'm sure it's excellent. My point is that in the scheme of things what matters is the ability to communicate outside of your workstation / house / etc. In the real world, M$ is the spoken language to this day.
I'm thankful that Sun paid good money for it, and thankful that Sun has contributed it to Open Source. This is the kind of competition that the industry needs to get prices competitive again. Sun invested a lot of cash to make this happen, and that kind of play shouldn't be taken for granted.