Is it the beginning of the end for OpenOffice?

At one stage I was very enthusiast about open source software. I put hundreds, if not thousands of hours of effort in. For example I wrote over a thousand responses to people’s issues, created a number of open source products such as the Australian English dictionaries using by OpenOffice, Firefox and Google Chrome, but in the end there were issues which concerned me greatly.

I found the promoted benefit of problems being quickly fixed was perceived and not real. As an example when Mozilla released a new version of Firefox the British dictionary stopped working for weeks. After a couple of weeks I put a patched dictionary on my site. It was less than half an hour’s work and yet tens, if not hundreds of thousands of users were inconvenienced for a matter of many weeks.

I found with OpenOffice.org at one stage they’d push beta product onto users as though it was production ready. If problems were found they would not openly admit to the problems. Open source wasn’t particularly open.

I found with OpenOffice.org there was known corruption of Microsoft Access databases. I lost a considerable amount of work resulting in many hours of work. This corruption was known about for a long time but users were never informed.

For me however the biggest problem is open source creates a leech like mentality. Most people take. A few people take and give back what they want, but they rarely if ever back to the people who assist them. For example Google used my work in their Google Chrome browser. If Google had of provided a live link back to my work it would have had considerable value. Unfortunately Google took the work and buried it deep within their project so very people even know someone else has done the work.

As a person working in IT I felt open source was not sustainable. Good people will contribute for a while and then realise for all their energy they’d get little if anything in return. For users it is great as they get free (as in no cost) software, but developers need to live and without something coming back, most developers will eventually move on as I did. The good thing for open source is there is always another developer around the corner thinking things will be different for them, until enough people end up with the same experience and word gets around.

From a business perspective the cost of the software is not a great outlay when spread over three years. Commercial software in general is much better than open source software, but there are times when the high cost commercial packages, where only a small amount of function is required, can be replaced with open source software. For the open source software I use I contributed a small donation. Frankly I think this was a waste of money, but I did it because I felt it was the right thing to do. Would I do it again, probably not.

I saw the big organisations take up OpenOffice.org when I was focused on open source software, but in around 2008 I started to move on. OpenOffice.org was not meeting my client’s needs whereas Microsoft Office did. Linux as a file server had become more difficult to use and Microsoft’s Windows 7 used in the same way did a much better job with much less effort.

Now some years later we are starting to see those high profile sites to come to the same realisation as I did back in 2008.

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I can’t help but wonder about the future of open source projects. Google has poured a huge amount of resources into Android (people wouldn’t even know it was based on Linux) and yet I still find I can’t even use the Android browsers to run Google’s own software such as their blogging software. I use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer under Windows and have no problems.

As people find they have an Android mobile or tablet, which is only a year or so old, and they can’t upgrade to the latest version of the operating system, the Android operating system may start to go out of favour. If Microsoft and Apple can hang in there long enough (as Microsoft have done with Office versus OpenOffice.org) we may just see the interest in Android devices wane. For me the only real advantage of Android at the moment is cost. Like open source software if I only have a basic need, a lower cost suits. But if I need more and it is justified, using Android devices (which I generally find to be flaky) will often be a second choice option.

I recently checked out the ASUS Nexus 7 tablet and compared it to the iPad Mini. The Nexus is cheaper but what surprised me is when comparing the two devices, the Apple iPad Mini just felt better. The scrolling of the web page in the browser was smooth whereas the scrolling in the Nexus didn’t feel right. The screen of the iPad Mini looked better. The Nexus has features I’d prefer and with Apple, would end up being twice as much. Not an easy decision.

I also dropped into the Telstra shop one night to check out the Samsung Galaxy Note (note the edition just released) and to my surprise the scrolling in the browser was sluggish and frequently paused. Something I didn’t experience on the Apple devices.

The focus on open source software appears to now be receding and commercial software has managed to fend off a formidable foe. Perhaps it is because most open source software simply copies and doesn’t innovate. Is Android, which is based on open source software, destined to go the same way.

At the moment Android is getting a lot of press. Supposedly Android has a huge market share. Was it something in the order of 50-70% of the market. Yet my logs show me Android has around of fifth of the traffic of Apple’s iOS devices. A paltry couple of per cent of the internet traffic is generated by Android devices. Isn’t that why Google created Android? To generate traffic for them because their business model is based on advertising.

When you purchase your next mobile phone or tablet perhaps think about how long you’ll have the device. Do you want to upgrade the device to the next edition of the operating system? My ageing iPhone 3GS bought around three years ago is running iOS6, albeit without all the new functionality, but at least it has been updated. Apple’s original iPad can’t be upgraded and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 devices can’t be upgrade, so there’s no guarantee their products will also be able to be upgraded, but I’m pretty sure my Acer Android tablet which is under a year old won’t see a newer operating system. To me that’s a major problem with Android devices, unless you already have the mindset that you don’t expect to upgrade the device.

- Kelvin Eldridge
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