Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft

[MCWebsite.Staff]

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[H.Boldt]

Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft

** This thread discusses the article: Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft **
Personally, I'm a bit confused about the need for Symphony when we already have OpenOffice. Compare the system requirements: OO needs 128M of RAM, Symphony needs 512M minimum. OO can run on Linux (any variety), Solaris, Mac, and Windows. Symphony is supported on Windows and just a few Linux distros. Of course, Symphony is just in no-cost beta right now, but can we expect it to run in a significantly smaller RAM footprint? Or on a greater variety of systems? Can we expect it to be free forever? And will it be open-sourced? Sorry Joe, but personally, I really don't expect it to make much of a dent in the office suite arena. Cheers! Hans

[mpavlak]

Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft

** This thread discusses the article: Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft **
Wouldn't it be cool if M$ open sourced M$ Office? I mean, do they really derive the lion's share of their revenue from the office suite? They could still sell support contracts. And the M$ zealots can write their own tweaks to the application...if they dare. I have used OO for some time and find this product a bit of a step backwards. But, if Eclipse is any example, I would not count IBM out by any stretch. Hey, Eclipse is still free, right? Nice write up Joe!

[J.Pluta]

Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft

** This thread discusses the article: Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft **
I'm glad you like Open Office, Hans, and lots of other people do as well. However, I will continue to watch IBM's strategy in this space, especially to see how well Symphony integrates with the other Lotus products. Not only that, but symphony is built on the Eclipse abse, which has some very interesting long term strategic goals. Open Office is a great product. I use it in situations where I need document capabilities and don't want to license Office. It's not perfect; Mac currentl requires X Windows (although that's due to change soon). However, I'm more intereted in the future. Keep focused on IBM as it moves ahead into the world of rich clients. All of IBM's technology is merging into a very interesting multi-platform approach using both rich clients on the PC and rich clients delivered via the web. If IBM can provide a pwoerful office suite that runs on any platform AND reasonable functionality with the same product over the web, then I think it will indeed have a product that people will buy. Not to mention that it will appeal to many corporations that still have a problem with open source software that isn't directly supported by a major corporation. Open Office is, of course, funded by Sun, but that's not the same as "developed and distributed by IBM". Joe

[J.Pluta]

Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft

** This thread discusses the article: Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft **
And Eclipse will continue to be free. And it will thus have a gigantic community of developers building the base components, such as the rich client technology I was talking about in my post to Hans. Open Office can't even touch the developer base of Eclipse; I think the only thing that can is Linux itself. Maybe Redmond, but frankly the results out of Redmond have shown that Microsoft still doesn't know how to run large development projects - and that's one thing IBM has done well forever. Watch... Domino and Symphony and EGL and WebSphere. IBM is positioning itself pretty darned well. And especialy since it continues to embrace other technologies, such as PHP and MySQL, which the other groups seem not to want to do. For example, if you go to some of the main PHP sites, they actually kick you out if you use IE. That's just plain silly. I think IBM may just pull off the miracle of the millenium and position itself as the prmiary technology integrator, at least for this first couple of decades. Joe Joe

[H.Boldt]

Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft

** This thread discusses the article: Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft **
Joe wrote: "However, I'm more intereted in the future. Keep focused on IBM as it moves ahead into the world of rich clients." OpenOffice.org likewise is moving forward. One of the presenters at this past weekends Ontario Linux Fest discussed the immediate future of OO.org, and I can say they too are definitely not resting on their hands. I believe they're supposed to send out softcopies of the presentations. If/when they do, I'll try to distill the highlights. Cheers! Hans

[Guest.Visitor]

Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft

** This thread discusses the article: Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft **
Well IBM certainly did not resurrect OS/2 and offered for free in a bid to kill MS-Windows. Instead, the wise decision was to support Linux which unfortunatley has yet to overtake MS-Windows. Kudos to IBM nevertheless. However offering Symphony for free instead of working on OpenOffice, simply means IBM is just trying a marketing technique known as "Dumping". No kudos to IBM here. Dumping is illegal by the way! Software companies get away by calling the dumped product as "Beta Version".

[SoftwareTrend]

Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft

** This thread discusses the article: Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft **
I don't think this is right. IBM was off the OS/2 bubble well before Linux even began making waves in public arena. IBM is now king of jumping on every bandwagon that comes along that has reached a critical mass. Think Java - only once it was well established in it's competitor's marketting and the public mindset then it was suddenly the bees' knees, Think Linux - only when it realised there was enthusiasm for it in the market place and it could flog more hardware by being an "active" supporter.

[Guest.Visitor]

Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft

** This thread discusses the article: Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft **
"I don't think this is right. IBM was off the OS/2 bubble well before Linux even began making waves in public arena." That is right. OS/2 was dead long before IBM parked its eyes on Linux. That is the reason I used the word "resurrect". English is not my mother tounge but I think it means raising the dead Using this word makes it clear that I knew that OS/2 was long dead Likewise, Symphony might still be alive somewhere but in real life it is practically dead and IBM is trying to "resurrect" it instead of investing on OpenOffice. This strategy is something Hans are I are questioning. If my usage of the word "resurrect" was incorrect, I apologize and seek your forgiveness on the ground that English is not my mother tounge. Cheers

** This thread discusses the article: Lotus Symphony Directly Targets Microsoft **
Well IBM certainly did not resurrect OS/2 and offered for free in a bid to kill MS-Windows. Instead, the wise decision was to support Linux which unfortunatley has yet to overtake MS-Windows. Kudos to IBM nevertheless. However offering Symphony for free instead of working on OpenOffice, simply means IBM is just trying a marketing technique known as "Dumping". No kudos to IBM here. Dumping is illegal by the way! Software companies get away by calling the dumped product as "Beta Version".
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