AbiWord 0.7 release

thomasd writes "AbiSource have just released development version 0.7 of their GPLed wordprocessor, which runs on Unix, Windows, and BeOS. There's still a fair bit missing, but it's now quite usable for producing simple document, and it's starting to look very polished. For the lazy, there are now binary packages as well as source code. "

Comments

But _are_ they making money?

[Zico]

At least, more money than they're spending/losing? I haven't seen any financial numbers for this company, so if you're just assuming that they're in the black, I'd say that's a pretty big assumption. Even the CIO of Burlington Coat Factory, who's planning to buy over 1000 Linux boxes from Dell (if they haven't done so already), says, "I suppose Red Hat's business model makes sense to somebody, but it makes no sense to us."

FWIW, AbiSource's president (who I would hope knows his way around Linux) wrote an article on the joys of installing Red Hat Linux 6.0, which is worth a read for the goofballs out there who think that everyone should throw away their Macs or Windows software and start installing Linux.

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Slashdot Realist

So what does this mean?

[SuperDee]

Well, I say this is a GREAT development, though perhaps a little overhyped at the moment. The reason I say this is that though it is indeed looking better and better with every passing moment, it is still has a ways to go before it catches up to the levels of maturity that products like Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect are at. AbiWord still lacks many features that any sensible critic would rightly point out are essential in a modern word processor. And ultimately, the fact of the matter is, people will not make the switch to an open source product like this unless it offers them at LEAST the minimal set of features that they NEED to get real work done. I don't think AbiWord has reached that level yet.

But this is still good--it is always good to see competition. Given a little more time, I think this product may well be in a position to compete head-to-head with Corel soon, not only for technical merits, but for its licensing terms. WordPerfect, though it may be free, it is still essentially proprietary. And if given the choice between two products that are almost identical on technical merits, I believe people will then start making the choice based on which one has more liberal licensing terms. Therefore, this might ultimately also put pressure on Corel to open-source their code as well, maybe under terms similar to those of licenses like the NPL and MPL. In my opinion, these are VERY good open source licenses to look at (and possibly model after), which even take business considerations into account. (But that's a slightly different topic.)

Anyway, my main point is that I think it is healthy to see competition like this that might lead to more open sourcing of proprietary products. If this trend continues, maybe someday we will in fact see nothing but open source software as a result. Now wouldn't THAT be wonderful!

AbiWord notes

[Camelot]

For those who are not familiar with the economics of running a start-up company, it should be pointed out that aren't necessarily making any money, and it's not altogether necessary that they should at this point. Like their FAQ says,

We will be selling...

Who knows what else these guys are doing while are waiting for the business to start blooming ? It doesn't matter if you doubt their business model as long as their investors don't.

Secondly, using XML as a native file format is one of the most brilliant ideas, as far as I am concerned anyway. This would mean that I could do less abiworddoc , and, if necessary, I could write some quickie perl script to do some processing and formatting for output myself if AbiWord wasn't available. (Does it look like a document format like this would make sense to MicroSoft ? Didn't think so). Of course, in an ideal case, I wouldn't need to.

I, for one, will support the development of AbiSource if for no other reason than helping them set an example (if there is such an example to be set after the success of RedHat). It should show that Open Source is the best development model - not because it brings the most money to the company, but because it brings out the best software - which is what every user should want.

Read their mission statement

[Rayban]

"AbiSource software is available for all to use, free of charge. Like most Open Source companies, we make our money selling a variety of services and resources. While our software is free, the additional services and resources which we sell are not."

It's nice to have more people making money from the Open Source model, rather than the standard models. They create a baseline of quality for the rest of the industry to follow and provide a high-quality alternative to those who don't want to shell out for the full office suite.