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IBM Challenges Microsoft with Free Office Suite
BBCWatcher writes "Reuters is reporting that IBM plans to announce a free, downloadable office suite today in a direct challenge to Microsoft. The news comes only a week after IBM announced they were joining OpenOffice.org and dedicating 35 developers to the project. IBM is resurrecting an old name for this brand new software: Lotus Symphony. The new Symphony, based on Open Office, is yet another product to support Open Document Format (ODF), the ISO standard for universal document interchange. There are about 135 million Lotus Notes users, and they will also receive Symphony free. IBM support will be available for a fee. There are no details yet about platform support, but IBM is supporting Lotus Notes 8 on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, so at least those three are likely."
Ahem - This may clear it up for you.
Although the word "universal" may be a bit much.
No.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
It's the MS format that doesn't have ISO status. The free and open OASIS standard does.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/technology/18blue.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=technology&pagewanted=print
Coverage of the announcement plus some comments on the fact that 3 of the "big" firms, IBM, Google & Sun are now squarely behind ODF. As for the announcement - the 35 FT developers on OOO can't be a bad thing - OOO has the potential to become a large force for good, but it has always been a couple of steps away from where it could, and should, be - hopefully this might help rectify that.
It looks like it is actually available for download here
see http://symphony.lotus.com/
(less or more) rebranded lotus productivity tools -> ooo1.3 bloated into eclipse with some eyecandy.
Yea, I would much rather become IBMs bitch than MS bitch... or not. Just ignore IBMs absurd pricing, neglect of Lotus Notes (where is the Linux client???), massive lay-offs replacing workers with H1-Bs and offshoring, etc... Yea, bunch of fucking saints over at IBM, until you have to do business with them.
Open a spreadsheet in Excel and label 6 cells from A1-A6. Now select row 5 right click and select cut. Select row 1 and right click and select "Insert Cut Cells." You still have 5 labelled cells, the order they're in is simply different. Now trying doing this very basic activity in Calc and see if you get the same results. Nope, you don't.
I'd say Calc is the inferior product in being unable to perform this very basic activity.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Notes 8 is a major architectural change for the Notes client, it is now presented through an Eclipse framework where it can live alongside other applications in the same Eclipse instance. The Notes 8 client has a bunch of "productivity editors" wordprocessor, presentation tool, spreadsheet, and these live in the same Eclipse instance as the regular Notes client bit. Symphony is the exact same code without the Notes client part. At the moment it is based on a fork of OpenOffice.org 1.x from before the SISL license change, however in the next release (or thereabouts) it will be based on a new LGPL cut of OpenOffice.org. This is really cool, it isn't quite competing with OpenOffice.org, improvements and contributions will flow in both directions. It is competing with Microsoft Office and the branding, packaging, support etc from IBM might go down quite well in some companies. I am not quite sure what the business model is for IBM, I guess they will do OK on the support and consultancy and it is a bit of a loss leader for the Notes client. Plus there is the bonus of screwing over Microsoft which has got to be worth a lot.
Bah! I ran it in amber monochrome, the way God intended. If I needed "color", I ran an emulator.
Goodness my...instead you have to select 'Insert', press enter to select the default option to move the other cells down 9i.e. insert a row), and paste the cell you just cut. Involves 1 extra mouse click/key-press, in exchange for a simpler right-click menu.
Yes, I would certainly call that a showstopper bug, uhhhuhhh.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
IBM also has a history of successful products. Eclipse, WAS, WSAD, Lotus Notes, Rational Developer etc... The utterly failed in the office market with Lotus (They probably didnt have a clue on what to do with it)
The last version of their Word knockoff I used was TERRIBLE for layout
Thanks for confirming my suspicion. It has actually, always, been terrible for layout.
Makes one wonder, why someone spends US$300 for a layout-program on the dark side.
Oh, wait, you mean it is fantastic ?? Then I don't post any reply. Because neither OpenOffice nor MSOffice come any close to a layout program. You disqualified yourself, dear. Sorry.
Better articles w/ links:
News.com
The Guardian (Blog)
CNN Money
ZDNET
And also, actual Lotus Symphony page on IBM's site, with download link.
Unpleasantries.
Lotus Notes has a Linux client starting with Notes 7 and continuing in Notes 8. The Linux client for Notes 8 was released the same time as the Windows version.