To clarify my previous posts. Perhaps I was too terse. I tend towards
brevity as list traffic puts people in a race to stop reading.
I had three ideas in mind in my previous post with regard to add-ons.
1) Vertical market applications include business, engineering, medical,
legal, etc., fields where the use of word processing forms, spreadsheet
analyses, and database templates come ready made to the end-user based
on OpenOffice applications for word processing, number crunching, and
data management.
2) Third-party products like Quickbooks, etc., update their offerings to
include import and export of data to and from OpenOffice applications.
That would be a minimum. A further example would be that banks that now
offer downloads of online transactions into Excel also offer CSV file
format for obvious reasons.
3) I also had extensions in mind such as those for Firefox and
Thunderbird, but example #1 above is the most robust opportunity.
Let me reason by analogy. When IBM came out with the original 8088 PC
in the 1980s, the firm chose to deploy an 8-bit bus to attract
third-party add-in cards because that market was much more active with
independent firms making such products. There was a limited market for
16-bit bus cards as Compaq, Olivetti (AT&T6300), and others using the
8086 Intel chip soon found out.
IBM gained market share for the 8088 PC, which was technologically less
attractive than the 8086 in terms of performance, because of ready
acceptance by third-party developers for the 8-bit market. The gain in
market share was IBM's objective, relative to the competition, and they
achieved it.
This doesn't mean OpenOffice should be technologically inferior to other
office applications to attract market share. The IBM example the
marketing idea which continues to drive the look over their shoulder by
Microsoft and other majaor commercial software developers. The question
they are asking is how the new product will, or will not attract, third
party or independent software developers. IBM still uses this marketing
strategy today with its enterprise email/calendar program Lotus Notes.
My educated guess is that Mitch Kapor will have this idea in mind for
the development of his open source email/calendar program 'Chandler'
http://www.boston.com/business/personaltech/articles/2005/06/27/software_knight_kapor_takes_up_new_quest/
The implication for OpenOffice is that the extent to which it offers
opportunities for indepdendent software developers to create useful
products will drive, in part, increased market share for OpenOffice.
These independent software development efforts might be grassroots open
source projects on their own or they might be commercial offerings.
Either way, they will make the core products more attractive to business
and government and might sway positive decisions for adoption. I also
expect that as Firefox achieves 10% market share or greater that it will
attract more independent software developers who see a market
opportunity further fueling adoption relative to all other web browsers.
I hope that explains my thinking. Since there was disagreement to the
original post perhaps this update will clarify my thoughts.
--
Dan Yurman djysrv [at] gmail.com 43N 112W -7 GMT
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