Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Making Inroads in Small Businesses
prostoalex writes "In a story mainly about new OpenOffice release, NewsFactor Network quotes an interesting finding of Jupiter Research analyst: "Open-source productivity suites did "surprisingly well" in the mid-size business market, with the OpenOffice suite alone claiming a share of about 6%. Furthermore, [Joe Wilcox] found that some 19% of small businesses ran Linux on their desktop, and a whopping 26% ran Linux on their servers.""
Small to mid-size business move faster than big business. When the smaller ones are more competitive and saving cash the larger businesses will have to follow suit to remain competitive.
Trolling is a art,
As we may remember from a recent interview with James Gosling, he made the statement,
"There's no way that I could pay nearly $4,000 for a freaking word processor at home. It just isn't going to happen."
If the home user cannot justify purchasing an expensive office suite, it is no surprise that the small business will try to avoid it as well. Initiatives such as OpenOffice really help to push these boundaries, making Open Source software appealing to business, and to the end user.
I personally use Abiword and OpenOffice in my day to day word processing, and I prefer it much to the expensive Microsoft Office suite.
We're a small business, and we run open source on our server and a few desktops. We'll be moving to more in the future.
You can just imagine the look on my boss's face when he asked how much he had to pay for my software and upgrades.
Basically, we use open source because this company lives month to month. We make plenty of money, but there's not enough to throw around on wild expenses. Also, the only excuse for not using open source is not having any employees smart enough to handle it. The MS philosophy is to make computers dumbed down to the level of the dumbest user. And that's why a lot of businesses use windows. But in a sense, if you have open source knowledge and background, then the sum of all open source software is like a benefit you bring to the company once they hire you. Because you have free or cheap access to a program to do just about everything on just about any hardware. What could be better for a small business? This had a large role in my employment.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Want to know some more detail? Then buy the report. That's the whole reason they bait you with these findings. In the end, they are just trying to sell some research.
Personally, I find it sickening that schools (here in the UK at least) are teaching lessons as what amount to "Microsoft Office Classes"... My housemate is a teacher, she has little knowledge past the standard MSOffice skills an average office worker would pick up, yet she's planning lessons and teaching these kids.
IMHO there needs to be a definite line between teaching kids how a word processor works, and teaching kids "MS Word 2000" or whatever...
What happens to all these kids when they finally get jobs? their employer has to either spend more money training them, or shell out for the latest microsoft product that they are vaguely familar with...
19% on the desktop? Uh, no way, that's just too unbelievable for me. Please note they claim 19% of small businesses use Linux on the desktop. That's something totally different than 19% market share. Those 19% may have just 1 desktop with Linux. So actually, it still says nothing, but it's a start.