This is for the Mac BU, I was wondering if you guys see the open
source port of KOffice to Mac OS X as a threat to Office for the mac
and in turn you developing for the mac?
I don't know if you'll find that anyone from the MacBU will respond -
since this is a peer-to-peer forum they usually don't.
I certainly can't speak for them, but I'd guess they'd see it much as
they'd see OpenOffice. I'm sure it's a concern, but MacBU's emphasis has
been on providing added value - certainly nothing open source has
anything like Entourage or the new Project Center. Nor are any open
source packages as integrated as MS Office is.
I've got several clients who use OpenOffice (and therefore I use it
myself), but I don't see a general movement away from MS. I also have a
client who uses Gnumeric instead of XL, but he's also very technically
adept (and needs the statistical functions, which are better than MS
Office's).
The far bigger threat, in my opinion, is in the schools market, as the
No Child Left Behind But No Money To Fund It Act, as well as other
economic factors, take money away from the discretionary (i.e., software
acquisition) budgets. That's a problem for both the Mac and Windows
Office platforms. More than one school administrator has indicated to me
that they would make the change once OpenOffice was ready for primetime.
KOffice isn't quite ready for primetime either, though it's not a bad
port.
