Yes, yes, we're a non-profit organization. We don't charge for Apache OpenOffice. We don't pay developers. But we still do produce something of value, and that value can be estimated.
People need office productivity software. The main alternative to OpenOffice is Microsoft Office, perhaps the "Home and Student" edition. The latest version (2013) sells for $139.99 on Amazon. This is for the downloadable version. We have averaged 153K downloads per day of Apace OpenOffice over the last week. That is an average value to the public of $21.5 million per day. Or $7.833 billion (7.833 thousand million) per year. To put that in perspective, here are comparable annual sales figures for some familiar companies: -- Campbell Soup Company: $7.882 billion -- Royal Caribbean Cruises: $7.657 billion -- Mastercard, Inc: $7.391 billion -- OfficeMax: $7.094 billion So we're providing tremendous value to the public. We should be proud of what we've accomplished over the past decade. Note: We could certainly debate the exact value provided to users. Determining what a user would do if they did not get AOO for free is tricky. But the logic above is similar to how the BSA estimates losses to Microsoft from software piracy. They assume that the person who pirates Office would buy it if they did not pirate it. So it seems fair to use that same logic to estimate the value provided to users by a legal free alternative like Apache OpenOffice. Regards, -Rob
