OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office

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OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office

Posted by timothy on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @05:53AM from the imaginary-markets dept.

rbowen of SourceForge writes with an interesting way to look at the value of certain free software options: "Apache OpenOffice 3.4.1 has averaged 138,928 downloads per day. That is an average value to the public of $21 million per day, as calculated by savings over buying the competing product. Or $7.61 billion (7.61 thousand million) per year." (That works out to about $150 per copy of MS Office. There are some holes in the argument, but it holds true for everyone who but for a free office suite would have paid that much for Microsoft's. The numbers are even bigger if you toss in LibreOffice, too.)

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potentially worth... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 05:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

...people are downloading it for free so they're not necessarily paying customers...
1. Re:potentially worth... by rudy_wayne · 2013-02-12 06:10 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  How many people in this list would pirate instead of pay. How many of these downloads represent aborted downloads that are retried (it is a large download). How many of these would have been covered by the home license (I believe you get up to three computers with the normal licensed product -- as opposed to Student edition or other licenses). etc.
  You missed the most important question. Out of those 138,928 downloads per day, how many people actually continued to use Open Office and how many used it briefly, discovered that it is crap and downloaded a pirated copy of Microsoft Office.
2. Re:potentially worth... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-12 06:20 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Yes, the biggest assumption being that anyone would use OpenOffice or LibreOffice if they had to pay the same price as MS Office.
3. Re:potentially worth... by Beardo+the+Bearded · 2013-02-12 06:33 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I pirated Open Office just on principle.
  
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4. Re:potentially worth... by akpoff · 2013-02-12 06:42 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  The summary also notes this is savings to the end user. If I don't need all the features found in MS Office I shouldn't need to buy it. If I get what I need and pay $0 I've saved $150.
  That's the whole point of the summary. Some segment of the public are getting what they need to get their "office productivity" tasks done for less cost.
5. Re:potentially worth... by Bert64 · 2013-02-12 06:51 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  And how many of those who downloaded 3.4.1, also had 3.4.0 before? Even MS makes minor updates available for free...
  
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6. Re:potentially worth... by Palestrina · 2013-02-12 06:58 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  You are applying the logic of a corporation to a non-profit. This is like applying classical mechanics to massless particles. It doesn't work. The price/demand curve is based on competition. Nonprofits are not competing. They are giving it away for free, regardless of the value. There is no price/demand curve for them.
  TFA is talking about the "value" of OpenOffice to the world, the value provided by a nonprofit organization.
  If a group of doctors volunteer their time and work in a clinic and treat the poor, pro bono, are they not entitled to claim the value that they provide is based on their normal rate? Same question for lawyers who provide pro bono counsel to those who cannot afford it. Can't they claim the value they produce per their normal hourly rates?
  No one would argue that the value of their volunteer efforts is zero because their "customers" would not pay the prevailing rate. That is irrelevant, since no one is asking them to pay that rate. It is a charitable act.
  The article merely applies the same logic to professionals in the engineering field, whose public service is in the form of publishing open source software.
7. Re:potentially worth... by symbolset · 2013-02-12 07:46 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  They are missing out though on the cyclic obsolescence that has come to characterize what office document suites are for. Without this how will they know when it's time to update their PCs and operating systems, discard and re-buy their printers and server-side support systems? Without the periodic need to update one's office suite to support the features required in documents received from users of the new version there is no cue. They would keep using the same PC for far longer, and update their servers only when the hardware innovation provided true value-add and ROI. LOB applications and third-party plugins would continue to work indefinitely. End-user data would no longer go out of format support. This is anarchy!
  
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8. Re:potentially worth... by aybiss · 2013-02-12 10:10 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  To look at the analogy another way, MS Office charges you a higher rate so that it can turn up in a gay robe and wig, whereas Open Office rocks up in jeans and t-shirt but does 99% of the same things for far less money.
  
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Interesting analogy to the BSA's piracy figures by Palestrina · 2013-02-12 06:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

Every year or so Microsoft and the BSA roll out an updated report on the financial cost of software piracy. They make a similar argument, that someone who uses a pirated copy of MS Office would have otherwise bought an MS Office license. So they estimate the loss to the economy as # pirated copies * retail price of MS Office.
So it is interesting, and a bit of poetic justice, to apply that same logic to show the value of open source in the economy.
Certainly one could quibble with the exact figures, but it does show that the impact of open source is huge. But we already knew that, right?
Re:What? by tgd · 2013-02-12 06:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

How many people would download OpenOffice if Microsoft Office was free?
How many people would download OpenOffice if it wasn't free?
Re:It is a good alternative to Microsoft Office by tgd · 2013-02-12 06:24 · Score: 4, Insightful

So to each their own, if you need the features of Microsoft Office, more power to you. I'm sure many here though will chime in that for the majority of users, Open or Libre Office have 99% of what the typical user needs.
Home user, yes. Office? I'd say yes, if you leave out Outlook. And, you could probably use some sort of web-based or other mail client and some other mail server if in some cases, but there's more to Exchange/Outlook than a simple mail program. IMO, the thing that most makes Microsoft Office "sticky" in corporate environments isn't Word or Excel, its Outlook.
Troll... by serviscope_minor · 2013-02-12 06:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

And while the free Office products are sufficient for most people's normal use (i.e. homework),
That's a subtle troll. Well done.
I love how you dismiss everyone who doesn't need vastly complex features (LO has some pretty involved ones) and their work by comparing it to nothing more than schoolwork.
If you need more complex features on a semi-regular basis, it's worth paying the price (but if all you do is type in text and change the font, stick with free).
I'll clue you in on something from the world of "real work"(tm) where people do "real things" for "money" which makes it much more important than "schoolwork": almost noone knows how to use word beyond changing fonts and typing text.
Actually this is one of the things that aggravates me about people who refuse to conemplate the idea of moving to another system because "they know word": almost always they don't even know how to use it beyond the absolute basics.

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1. Re:Troll... by icebike · 2013-02-12 06:41 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  This.
  It's been years since most people ever saw any training on MS Office, if ever, and the sands have shifted under their feet. It has become more obtuse every release.
  At work we switched totally to Office Libre, and haven't looked back. There is a wealth of How To information on line, making the training available on par with anything Microsoft provides.
  
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2. Re:Troll... by akpoff · 2013-02-12 06:53 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Agreed. In my office we've standardized on OpenOffice (or LibreOffice). We write reports, produce spreadsheets and give presentations without problem. The only time I ever need access to MS Office is when somebody sends me an Office document that for whatever reason doesn't render correctly. It's not because the information isn't available. It's always a disagreement between the two programs as to how to render. OO and LO interchange nicely. The Apple iWork suite works as well. In my experience Office is the odd-man out.
  At this stage of the game Office productivity is mostly a solved problem. The feature set is known. Now we're dickering over file formats and presentation.
Re:It is a good alternative to Microsoft Office by Belial6 · 2013-02-12 06:43 · Score: 4, Interesting

I would go farther than that and say that Libre Office has 100% of what the typical user needs. Google Apps has 99%. The Office App requirements haven't really changed much over the last 15 years. The last must have word processing feature MS added was real time spell checking. My accountant pal couldn't get buy without Excel, but the typical user isn't even coming close to bumping their head on the OO/LO spreadsheet.

The one thing MS does still have on OO/LO is that it looks prettier.
Re:Not as good. by colinrichardday · 2013-02-12 06:47 · Score: 4, Funny

Yeah, LibreOffice Calc has an array check box for operations that return arrays. Nothing like Excel's intuitive F2 Cntl-shift-enter.