If Linux is the flagbearer of the open-source movement, OpenOffice is (to use a movie cliche) its less capable, rebellious younger brother. The warcry is simple, and easy to remember: OpenOffice is the best way to stick it to Microsoft and its vaunted Office suite. It can do everything Word or Excel can do, except it’s totally free, and anybody can help to make it even better.
Funny thing about OpenOffice though; it’s not really developed by the open-source community. According to this very enlightening Guardian article, OpenOffice is being actively developed by about a hundred full-time programmers at Sun, and enjoys very little actual code contributions from the community at large. (Of course, it’s that same community that is largely responsible for conjuring up the "alternative brand" identity that OpenOffice currently enjoys, so it’s difficult to imagine where they would be without their army of supporters.)
You have to wonder then, why Sun went to the trouble of making the OpenOffice effort open-source at all, if they were going to shoulder all the development work themselves anyway. Well, to answer that question, you have to first ask yourself what the key difference between open-source and closed-source software is (and no, it has nothing to do with the actual source code). The answer, of course, is customer support. Or the lack thereof.
The theory, you see, is that Sun and its partners chose to develop OpenOffice in this manner because they are under no obligations to ensure that their userbase actually understand how to use it, or to offer technical support when they don’t. (Less obligation, at least, than a licensed software such as Microsoft Office.) The amount of resources they save by going open-source/support-free is staggering when you consider how many years they’ve been at it (OO was first released as an open-source project five years ago).
This is not to say, of course, that the open-source movement is in any way a farce. The lesson here, as with everything in life, is that you need to look past the rhetoric of evangelists and staunch supporters, if you want to see what’s really up. I have nothing against the open-source movement as a concept, but I do think that "open-source" is quickly becoming yet another buzzword in an industry that’s already troublingly full of them.
That is also not to say that you shouldn’t try OpenOffice. I’ve been trying it on and off for the past couple of years (usually after each major release), and you never know, one of these days I might actually switch over. The operative phrase being "one of these days," of course.
![catpower-thumb[1].jpg](http://www.guttervomit.com/img/pics/catpower-thumb%5B1%5D.jpg "catpower-thumb[1].jpg")
It’s tough to describe Chan Marshall’s voice: soft, raspy and unbelievably gorgeous in all 12 songs on Cat Power’s new album