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 Channel Futures

Open Source


Microsoft-Free PC: Where's Sun?

  • Written by Joe Panettieri 1
  • August 11, 2008

When IBM got cozy with Canonical, Novell and Red Hat to announce the Microsoft-Free PC initiative, at least one closely related company missed the party: Sun Microsystems, the original advocate of OpenOffice. I’m starting to wonder if IBM’s Lotus Symphony efforts are starting to eclipse Sun’s own office suite efforts.

Open source fans know Sun launched the OpenOffice.org project in 2000 and continues to contribute significantly as a community member. IBM, meanwhile, is promoting its Lotus Symphony suite — based on OpenOffice code — as a key component of the Microsoft-Free PC initiative.

It makes me wonder: Why didn ‘t join the Microsoft-Free PC party — or throw a similar party of its own long before Lotus Symphony grabbed the spotlight?

According to the original Microsoft-Free PC press release from IBM, Canonical, Novell and Red Hat:

“The four leaders are working with their local business partners in markets around the world to build and distribute a pre-loaded PC offering that features IBM’s Open Collaboration Client Solution (OCCS) including Lotus Notes, Lotus Symphony and Lotus Sametime; the Linux operating system of each distributor; and software applications and installation services from the local partners in each market.”

At first glance, Lotus Symphony has eclipsed Sun’s own suite in this initiative. But I decided to dig a little deeper. I sent emails to Sun Microsystems and OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead John McCreesh, seeking his perspective.

I asked McCreesh:

“How come Sun and OpenOffice.org aren’t directly involved in this Microsoft-free PC effort??? Is OpenOffice.org assisting the effort at all?”

McCreesh’s reply:

“Well yes – they’re all using our software 🙂

The OpenOffice.org community maintains the OpenOffice.org software, assisted by generous sponsorship from Sun, IBM, Novell, RedFlag, Red Hat, etc. Several of these companies then use the software as a base for their own products – Sun’s StarOffice, IBM’s Symphony, RedFlag’s RedOffice.

Canonical, Red Hat, and Novell will now have distributions both with OpenOffice.org and with IBM’s Symphony. That provides choice to their customers, as they can choose which flavour of software suits them best. The really good news is that both software packages use the ISO approved OpenDocument Format to store their documents, so people can happily swap backwards and forwards between OpenOffice.org and Symphony without losing any data, formatting, etc.

The significant difference between OpenOffice.org and MS-Office is Microsoft’s marketing budget. IBM also have considerable marketing budgets, so hopefully this will help to redress the balance.”

What’s Sun position on the Microsoft-Free PC effort? I wish I knew. The company did not return my requests for comment.

Tags: Cloud Service Providers Digital Service Providers MSPs VARs/SIs Open Source

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5 comments

  1. Avatar Alan August 12, 2008 @ 3:40 pm
    Reply

    I can’t see the big deal about the “Microsoft free PC” anyway, it just looks to me like IBM is bundling Lotus-whateva for the major Linux distros. So what? If contributing an office suite constitutes some big new “push” or “initiative”, then I guess Sun has been doing “MS free PC” for years now.

    From my perspective, IBM is just coming in a day late and a dollar short: I fail to see how their contribution to the situation really changes the desktop linux landscape, and in any case Lotus is not FOSS. It’s just freeware that happens to run on Linux.

  2. Avatar The Microsoft-Free PC: So, Where#8217;s Sun? | Server Tales August 12, 2008 @ 3:56 pm
    Reply

    […] PC initiative. So, has Sun squandered its early lead as an alternative to Microsoft Office? Works With U looks for answers. Sun Microsystems, the original advocate of OpenOffice, missed the boat when IBM, […]

  3. Avatar Mr Root August 12, 2008 @ 6:10 pm
    Reply

    Ahem, Mr VarGuy,
    Do you really, … , REALLY asking the one company which always and from the beginning made M$ free workstations and servers why they did not chime in into this marketing “bull****”?

    Do you know how M$ hostile SUN in their history was?
    Just in the last several years – beginning with the time where SUN lost much money after the internet bubble – they got more M$ friendly.
    But the jokes of McNealy about M$, Bill and Steve are things Unix “fanboys” tell even today.

    Yes, IBM had also always a big department of UNIX and even a more disconnected world from PCs – mainframes – but they were long time also big partners of M$.
    IBM always danced at many weddings.
    SUN did not.

    And even today where SUN even delivers the one or the other workstation with Windows they are M$ hostile by pushing Open Source at many levels.
    Which company made a real UNIX Open Source?
    Which company made the one Office Suite Open Source which gets on every live CD of the 733t k1Ds ?
    Which company made THE language and platform and framework used in the businesses Open Source?

    You know, SUN doesn’t need such marketing things what IBM made with RedHat and Canonical.

  4. Avatar aikiwolfie August 12, 2008 @ 6:47 pm
    Reply

    I don’t think Suns apparent absence is that big a deal. Where are Novell in all of this? Sun Microsystems and Novell have both had long standing love/hate relationships with Microsoft. Is it really that surprising Sun aren’t involved?

    We could equally ask where a few of the other big(ish) names in Linux are? Where are the likes of Gentoo and Xandros? Where’s the company that does Linos for Elonex? Where are Debian for that matter? Ubuntu is built from a Debian base.

  5. Avatar sexy sofie August 13, 2008 @ 1:50 am
    Reply

    where’s mandriva?

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