On Thu, 2005-03-24 at 18:27, Chuck wrote: > Smoot Carl-Mitchell wrote: > > On Wed, 2005-03-23 at 12:12 -0800, Christian Einfeldt wrote: > > > > > >>High School, in Portland, Oregon. IMHO, the day is only about 3 > >>years away when people will wonder why they ever paid for an office > >>suite, just the way that people now wonder why they ever paid for a > >>browser. (I actually paid for Netscape, twice!) > > > > > > I think it is even less time than 3 years. My guess is it is within 2 > > years. Same will be true for the OS market. The winners in this new > > world will be the companies who can leverage the Open Source "commons" > > and build convenient services from the modular components available in > > the commons. > > > > I've been hearing that for decades. The truth is corporations will not > embrace free software until they have guaranteed support a phone call > away.
They can already buy that for most mainstream OSS. Sun, Novel, IBM, Redhat etc etc. > Is there such a number for OOo? Yes, ring Sun. They will sell anyone a support contract for OOo. Look on the web site, there are plenty of commercial companies that support OOo. My company in the UK is just one example. > Until there is, it will never be > more than that unsupported (from the corporations standpoint that is) > software on the desk of a few technically savvy individuals, sitting > alongside a fully supported commercial product. This view is about 2-3 years out of date. I think Smoot is pretty well informed. While Windows and office won't disappear in 2 years, at the present increasing rate of take up, we will get past a critical point where there will be no turning back and OSS will become an everyday and increasingly obvious part of everyone's lives. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMS Ltd --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
