OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office 361
rbowen of SourceForge writes with an interesting way to look at the value of certain free software options: "Apache OpenOffice 3.4.1 has averaged 138,928 downloads per day. That is an average value to the public of $21 million per day, as calculated by savings over buying the competing product. Or $7.61 billion (7.61 thousand million) per year." (That works out to about $150 per copy of MS Office. There are some holes in the argument, but it holds true for everyone who but for a free office suite would have paid that much for Microsoft's. The numbers are even bigger if you toss in LibreOffice, too.)
Re:7.61 thousand million? (Score:3, Informative)
No English-speaking country uses the long scale anymore; it's only pointed out by pedants in the comments section of Slashdot stories.
Re:What? (Score:3, Informative)
How many people would download OpenOffice if Microsoft Office was free?
And there you have identified the real problem that nobody wants to admit.
Linux, Open Office and GIMP are free. And yet, every day, all over the world, millions of people choose pirated copies of Windows, Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop instead.
Re:potentially worth... (Score:2, Informative)
Goofy numbers (Score:4, Informative)
Re:potentially worth... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:potentially worth... (Score:5, Informative)
The summary also notes this is savings to the end user. If I don't need all the features found in MS Office I shouldn't need to buy it. If I get what I need and pay $0 I've saved $150.
That's the whole point of the summary. Some segment of the public are getting what they need to get their "office productivity" tasks done for less cost.
Re:potentially worth... (Score:5, Informative)
And how many of those who downloaded 3.4.1, also had 3.4.0 before? Even MS makes minor updates available for free...
Re:potentially worth... (Score:5, Informative)
You are applying the logic of a corporation to a non-profit. This is like applying classical mechanics to massless particles. It doesn't work. The price/demand curve is based on competition. Nonprofits are not competing. They are giving it away for free, regardless of the value. There is no price/demand curve for them.
TFA is talking about the "value" of OpenOffice to the world, the value provided by a nonprofit organization.
If a group of doctors volunteer their time and work in a clinic and treat the poor, pro bono, are they not entitled to claim the value that they provide is based on their normal rate? Same question for lawyers who provide pro bono counsel to those who cannot afford it. Can't they claim the value they produce per their normal hourly rates?
No one would argue that the value of their volunteer efforts is zero because their "customers" would not pay the prevailing rate. That is irrelevant, since no one is asking them to pay that rate. It is a charitable act.
The article merely applies the same logic to professionals in the engineering field, whose public service is in the form of publishing open source software.
Re:It is a good alternative to Microsoft Office (Score:4, Informative)
This exactly. I have had MS Office docs that simply would not open in Office. Attempt to open, useless error message, then nothing. All data lost. Try again in LibreOffice, and it opens it. Some corruption, but at least the data was still there. Fix the file, save it and hand it back to a VERY happy manager, who opens the file in Office and gets back to work.
Re:potentially worth... (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft Office may be a lot of things, but comparing it to LibreOffice/OpenOffice and calling MS Office crap in comparison is ridiculous. I actually ended up buying MS Office (for my mac) because Open/LibreOffice is so shit. I've tried to love it for a long, long time, but it's slow, it's bloated, it's buggy as hell and I just got tired of trying to overlook its blemishes.
MS Office's blemishes are much more bearable, in my opinion. The price isn't cheap but not having to screw around and waste my time is worth something, too.
And I find the complete opposite, even more so after MS went to the ribbon. I've used Libre Office and/or Open Office for years now. It is far more integrated and for what the vast majority of users (even business users) need, it does everything that is asked. I've certainly never found a necessary feature missing in LO/OO that is available in MS Office. Maybe there are some gimmicks available, but I doubt one in a thousand users needs them. I don't see how you can call LO/OO bloated, then go on to say you use MS Office. That is just as bloated, if not more so, and if you compare the file size of a .doc or .xls file with the same file saved as a .odt or .ods you'll find a lot of extra baggage there as well. Older versions of MS Office can't open newer versions of MS Office files (LO/OO can!), MS refuses to allow open document format files to be opened in MS Office (you can get a crap plugin that sort of handles .odt files), and any formatting issues you can claim for LO/OO with MS Office files work both ways. Indeed, you'll find that LO/OO does a better job with MS formats than vice versa. As far as bugs go, I've never had any more problems with LO/OO than I've had with MS Office.
Re:potentially worth... (Score:3, Informative)