When I was in elementary school, the method of work submission was a notebook and a standard number two pencil. Handwriting, not computing, was a daily class. A teacher told me once that the pencil was empowering so use it for all it is worth.

Microsoft products were not used in my school until my final year of high school and that was the first time I used Microsoft Works for Macintosh. The teachers saw my enthusiasm for technology so I was sent to private university. There I learned how to use Microsoft Powerpoint with other 16-year-olds. The university offered to give me credit for my study if I could pay the $15,000 a semester to enrol there full time. Coming from a middle class home, I went to a public community college instead for a 10th of the price. What did I use as an office suite my freshman year of college? The market share holder at the time: Corel Word Perfect.

Money is a huge factor when parents and children are selecting a school at all levels.

Today’s schools in America are strapped for cash. Assuming the school has computers, technology refreshes are expensive. Donations from the community are absolutely necessary. What do students need to today to do their school work? At least a browser, email, and an office suite.

A school with no computers in 2010 is like a student without a pencil.

A donation of a computer meets only a small fraction of the need. You need some software to use: an operating system, a web browser, and an office suite is a good start. Typing tutors, art design software, multimedia, math and reading games are also in demand. Then enter the communication software like email services, blogs, and class management software. Unless you opt for a Free and Open Source software, it could cost about $2000 per workstation – easy. The good news that GNU/Linux operating system like Ubuntu offer these packages are available at no cost.

Before you say that Microsoft branded products like Windows, Exchange, Office, and Sharepoint are a requite for successful productive adulthood, what did you use in school? My answer: I used pencils.

Do you think you are up for the challenge of setting up some Ubuntu labs in your school district?

Say you have ten Ubuntu systems to donate. They are in top working condition. You install all the software the teachers and students could ever need. The principals buy-in to this plan. The teachers are on board. You decide to split the hardware between the two schools.

Great but it all takes resources….

The systems need somewhere to go, some power to use, a network to plug into, a place for students files, an internet connection, some way to print, backups, and some people to setup maintain the systems. It gets very complex, very quickly.

Who has the track record to deliver?

Partimus is a California Ubuntu LoCo Team and 501c(3) non-profit which has successfully deployed Linux on the desktop in 6 Bay-Area schools.

With everyday people like Partimus at work, Microsoft will lose a majority market share.

To help answer this question this Ubucon has an all star cast.

Jorge O. Castro, External Project Developer Relations for Canonical, will be speaking about Low-Hanging Fruit of the juicy software variety. Jorge works with getting really hard bits to integrate with Ubuntu, recently and namely Google Voice with video support. He will show us how we can all help by packaging and bug fixing. Yummy.

Next will be the outstanding Amber Graner of Ubuntu User magazine. She will discuss how it is possible to contribute to Free software, even if you are not a developer. Amber knows because she has done it all without compiling a single code or hacking a single kernel. You go girl.

Then we will have some words from the Ubuntu Ohio LoCo Team who are experts in gorilla marketing of Free software. They mobilize volunteers to support recycling efforts like Free Geek Columbus and distribute Ubuntu to the libraries. These party-animals also make sure every single release is properly celebrated. If your dance card on October 10, 2010 does not include Maverick Meerkat then the Ohio LoCo team will tell you how to plan a release party in your neighborhood. Ubuntinis anyone?

Master-of-the-Universe and Kubuntu programmer Mackenzie Morgan will discuss the Ubuntu software development process. She will explain how she makes great Free software available . Microsoft sells software like it is 1984 and Mackenzie packages Free software like its 2014. Take a time machine with Mackenzie and she will show us how its done. Mackenzie is the future.

Last, but not least is David Mandala, lead of the ARM team at Canonical, who will be taking your questions concerning ARM on Ubuntu. When not giving talks at LinuxFests, David travels the globe working with ARM board builders and councils them on making their hardware compatible with Linux ever since Ubuntu 9.04. Microsoft didn’t even get into the ARM operating system business until last month – and that took some arm-twisting. Catch David on Saturday at 10 A.M. where he will talk more about the future of Ubuntu ARM support in the “FOSS in Other Worlds” track. With David’s help, Ubuntu will be first and best on a full Free software stack on ARM-based tablets as soon as this Christmas. Game over for the Windows desktop.

At the Ohio LinuxFest, at Ubucon, we will seal the fate: Microsoft will lose majority market share come June 30, 2011.

Freedom through Ubuntu is possible and real…

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The time was ripe for Linux and free software in the late 1990′s. Netscape formed mozilla.org in February 1998 to fight the Microsoft in the browse war. Oracle, the proprietary database, supported Linux as a platform in October 1998. Sun Microsystems released Star Office in November 1998, the previous name of the Microsoft-crushing Oracle Open Office suite. Red Hat went public in August 1999 and quickly acquired Cygnus, the makers of the Cygwin – a bash shell with GNU tools for Windows. Meanwhile Apache gained and maintained at least 50% market share in the web server market, an achievement which Microsoft has never been able to do.

Indeed it was history in the making and the world was starting to pay attention. O’Reilly Media published Eric S. Raymond’s “Cathedral and  the Bazaar.” PBS filmed a documentary called “Code Rush” about Netscape’s race to open its browser code.  HP sponsored a theatre documentary Revolution OS captured the relationship between free software, open source, the Linux kernel, and the American business sector during the dot-com boom.

With all of the excitement going on, Western PA Linux Users Group was experiencing growing pains. I started showing up in the Fall of 1999 after buying my first Linux desktop. Jeremy had moved to the West Coast and Jennifer and Alex were soon to follow. This is what technology people did during the boom: California gold rush 2.0! Jonathan Billings, a Carnegie Mellon employee at the time, volunteered to reserve the room so all was good.

Also, in 1999, there was a considerable amount of Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt concerning if legacy codes would bankrupt world economies and cripple technology-dependent infrastructure. Being a technology leader, the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon made the prudent decision to improve off-business hours security. This meant that free passage into the building was not possible for those attending WPLUG meetings in late 1999. It was labor intensive since we to escort late comers into the room. Still, we made it work from 1999-2007.

Meanwhile Microsoft at the turn of the Millennium, they were starting to get scared. Here Microsoft states NT is a threat to Linux in 1998. Then in 1999 Bill Gates claims the impact is “fairly limited” from Linux. Why all of the double-talk out of Microsoft? Answer: US vs Microsoft.

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I am a shareholder of your company. The world is still waiting for your Q4 FY2010 report so that we will know how much money you made as of June 30, 2010. We are all on Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein’s schedule. Mr. Klein, you rival Red Hat posted their FY 2010 report, what is the hold up?

Since I have yet to receive a personal invitation to your shareholders meeting on July 29, 2010. I have several more questions for Microsoft which I will ask from here. I welcome any answers from leadership or the floor.

What is your mobile strategy in a post-PC world? Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer may try to deny it. The fact is that PC desktop sales have been on a decline, 23% down as of last year. Bill Gates has nothing to do with the day-to-day anymore and it shows.

Your attempt to reach the youth via smart phones was an epic failure. KIN has been pulled by Verizon in a matter of weeks. Anonymous purported employees claimed that the IP you bought acquiring Danger are now wasted and call it as embarrassing as Microsoft Bob. Joe Wilcox correctly predicted Kin’s failure as you fired the leadership of the Entertainment and Devices division just before the Kin product launch. I too predicted in November 2009 that Kin, then code-named “Pink,” would not live up to Mr. Ballmer’s nor Mr. Gates’ vision. How could releasing the Kin under the circumstances be profitable? Why would anybody buy a Kin? Android and the iPhone have cameras, Facebook, Twitter, and more… how could you proceed into the market with less?!? Sure you can say I don’t get it because I am not a teenager but still how can you make a social phone without a calendar? Sorry, the Microsoft brand does not equal cool with whatever crowd you expected to buy Kin.

You bought the wrong smartphone IP. Last year bloggers advised you to buy Palm for their Linux-based WebOS, but you let that HP beat you to it. Now HP plans to ditch Microsoft for WebOS on tablets netting a double loss for you. There goes Mr. Ballmer’s iPad killer. Your excuses come from Mr. Klein who complains that tech mergers are hard to do. Is this fiscal leadership?

With all of the Kin ads you bought, did you once stop to notice that Windows Mobile lost market share to Google Android Linux? Developers are not chomping at the bit to write apps for Windows 7 Mobile but they were so eager to do so for Apple that WWDC2010 sold out. Developers favor Android over Apple’s iPhone OS which makes any platform you put together a third class even before product launch.

What is next, Microsoft, yet another round of layoffs? No wonder Business Insider is saying “Microsoft’s Business Could Collapse in 2010.” First Google ditches Windows on security concerns. Next, IBM names Firefox its web browser standard. Microsoft apologist, Ina Fried reports that Microsoft is now forced to offer no-cost Office options in order to compete with OpenOffice.Org and Google Docs. How does firing people now help you make products that actually sell?

Microsoft, I can not say I did not warn you as I have been warning you of your demise here at whatwillweuse.com. I do not stand alone as Computer World is ready to admit: Linux could become the world’s most popular operating system. Come June 30, 2011, Microsoft, you will lack majority market share. What are you going to do about it?

Sincerely,

Beth Lynn Eicher

I started this blog to keep personal notes of what exactly is Microsoft’s market share. Never did I ever expect a crowd of 28,460 unique visitors to care about what will we use when Microsoft has a minority market share. Thank you all for making me the tribal user of What Will We Use where we watch Microsoft’s market share until FY 2011 close.

First I defined where Microsoft claimed to have a majority market share.Then Nick and I agreed to watch w3counter’s market share reports.

There were only 3 which held any merit as of June 2009: Desktops, Browsers, and Office Suites.

How are we doing one year into it?

1. Desktop Operating Systems

In the past twelve months Windows market share went from 88.09% to 83.11%. The Windows XP product, which continues to hold the largest market share went from 69.74% to 49.95% of the total desktop operating system market share. The trend is showing as people divest from older Microsoft technologies, they do not “upgrade” to Windows Vista or Windows 7.

The next 12 months will bring a new breed of tablets and notebooks which will run  Ubuntu on ARM. These will sell like hot cakes so that people can watch Google’s youtube and play games of Facebook. The desktop is over, even in the corporate sector.

Here’s the dirty secret behind this mind-boggling growth — and the two words that will put an end to the party

IT consulting firm IDC reports that every dollar a company spends on a Microsoft product results in an additional $8 of IT expenses.

And one IT expert admits, “Trillions of dollars that companies have invested into information technology have gone to waste.”

Yet, companies have had no choice but to run these obscenely expensive and highly inefficient networks.

But that’s all about to change…

And that’s precisely why the two words “cloud computing” scare the hell out of Bill Gates.

…

And Nicholas Carr, former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, has even written an entire book on the subject, entitled The Big Switch. In it, he asserts: “The PC age is giving way to a new era: the utility age.”

He goes on to make this prediction: “Rendered obsolete, the traditional PC is replaced by a simple terminal — a ‘thin client’ that’s little more than a monitor hooked up to the Internet.”

While that may sound far-fetched, in the corporate market, sales of these “thin clients” have been growing at over 20 percent per year — far outpacing the sales of PCs.

According to market-research firm IDC, the U.S. is now home to more than 7,000 data centers just like the one constructed on the banks of the Columbia River in 2005.

And the number of servers operating within these massive data centers is expected to grow to nearly 16 million by 2010 — that’s three times as many as a decade ago.

quote courtesy of Motely Fool Newsletter called

The Two Words Bill Gates Doesn’t Want You to Hear…

Plus, the 2 companies poised to rule the post-Microsoft world

“

2. Web Browsers

In the past twelve months Internet Explorer went from 57.6% to 45.7%. As far as Nick and I are concerned, this one is won in my favor. It is still fun to watch low low can Microsoft go? Google’s decision to turn off youtube.com support for older browsers was a fatal blow for IE6. All market share browser counters show Microsoft hemorrhaging market share. In June 30, 2011. IE9 will not save Microsoft since they have decided to not support it on Windows XP. Since Microsoft’s key operating system user demographic is XP, turning their back on their legacy customers will be the last straw. Seriously, how many people are going to buy a new PC just to run a proprietary web browser when Firefox and Chrome are free?

3. Office Suites

It is very possible I have this one won too. Last month I proposed to Nick that we use Oracle’s OpenOffice.Org download figures to count as missed profit opportunity. As of the time of this post OpenOffice.Org 3.x has 159,894,085 downloads which represents $55,962,929,750 loss. That’s Almost 56 MILLION dollars that Microsoft coulda-shoulda-woulda had. Will Microsoft make that level of profits in their business software division come FY2011 market share reports?

Meanwhile, Google Apps continues to pick up market share with their Microsoft Exchange migration tool…

Over 500,000 companies — including GE [NYSE: GE] and Procter & Gamble [NYSE: PG] — have already signed up for Google Apps.

This grab bag of business applications can be purchased and run over the Web for just $50 per year and is just one of many Google products now giving Microsoft a run for its money.

Considering that Google Apps costs just one-tenth of what a traditional business software suite does, it’s no surprise that more than 2,000 businesses are signing up per day.

quote courtesy of Motely Fool Newsletter called

The Two Words Bill Gates Doesn’t Want You to Hear…

Plus, the 2 companies poised to rule the post-Microsoft world

Microsoft’s Sharepoint product which is heavily tied to Microsoft Office 2007 is not for long either. Customers seeking to use free software to manage their intra-net content can do so with Alfresco. They’ll even help you migrate.

I am as confident as ever in my assertion.

Yes indeed Bug One will be RESOLVED.

Nick will pay me $20.

GandhiCon4 is afoot.

We will win the war. We are at war with Microsoft. We have always been at war with Microsoft. Come June 30, 2011 Microsoft will lose majority market share.

wasted

Just next door to the yard sale lived a friend of mine. She is a single mom and she was desperate. Her desktop would keep hanging and she was convinced she had a virus. She was using Windows after all. My friend had called the company who made the computer and the broadband provider. The company who made the computer would not talk to her because the computer was out of warranty. The broadband provider sent a tech to her home who fuddled around with her system but did not fix it. Instead the tech advised that she keep the computer off their network since it may have a virus. A mutual friend gave her a Ubuntu CD but she feared that the computer was too far gone. Her desktop, despite not having the cash to buy another one, was about to sit right next to that television.

She was hopeless because not only will her home be suddenly desktop-less, she was about to lose her documents and pictures. These bits were far beyond sentiment to her; they were her livelihood as a freelancer. Mother and daughter were asking themselves the question, “If we junk this computer, what will we use?” I told them, do not fear, this can be fixed by Linux.

I booted the system with the Ubuntu live CD. There was about 6 GB of original work to backup. Moreover, we were up against a dying hard drive. As I traversed the hard drive looking for good bits, the computer was trying i/o errors. I had to leave her home, go to the store to pick up a USB key and new hard drive. Out of pocket cost, minus the gas, was $65.

After backing up the hard drive, I asked my friend if she would like to replace the hard drive herself. Never seeing inside a computer, she was reluctant but I told her that I would be there the entire time. Once we cracked the case, she was more bold. Now knowing this computer was all-but-a-goner like the television hours previous, she slid the new hard drive in its place. While we were in there, I put in some spare memory I bought in a lot on ebay. As a reward, I gave her a t-shirt I bought at the Zareason booth at the SouthEast LinuxFest. Indeed, friends help friends use Linux. Out of pocket cost now up to $85.

Fixed by Linux

Now my friend uses a desktop with a newer disk, double the memory, and absolutely no viruses. She could not be happier. Was she asking for “Internet Explorer” or “Microsoft Office?” Nope. She was already using Firefox and OpenOffice.Org on her desktop before the disk failures and viruses showed up. There was absolutely no panicked questions like “If I can not use Microsoft software on Ubuntu, what will we use?”

Skeptics of my story and the premise for this blog “Microsoft will lose majority market share come June 30, 2011″ may say, “Beth Lynn, you are just one idealistic geek, you can not free the world with open source software.” To the contrary, I say, the Linux community steps up against poverty, not just proprietary software.

Maddog and Me at SouthEast LinuxFest 2010

Take Maddog for example. This man was a system administrator, like me. When he worked for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), a too-big-to-fail mega corporation, he told everyone that UNIX was dying and “Linux is inevitable!” They laughed at him but since he did a lot of favors for people he had enough gift-economy credits to convince folks to gift a computer to some college kid in Finland. Who was this boy genius who promised to replace the UNIX operating system this DEC computer ran with free software he helped write himself? Linus Tourvalds.
Maddog could retired with the gift of that one desktop as the feather in his cap. Instead he has dedicated his career to spreading the word about free software since then. Indeed, Linux is International.

Today he is in Brazil, and promises to deliver 70 MILLION systems with a business plan centered around Linux Terminal Server Project consoles.

Don’t believe it because you did not see it on television? Well, nobody watches television anymore. Instead we watch Google’s youtube.

Come June 30, 2011 Microsoft will be like television.

Before Apple’s “I am a Mac and he’s a PC” ads, long before Microsoft’s “I am a PC and Windows 7 is my idea,” Red Hat Inc. had released a campaign in 2004 “I am Fedora.” To Red Hat, Fedora is commitment, not a gimmick. Fedora is both a living community and a Linux-based operating system for those who love freedom.

I, Beth Lynn Eicher, am Fedora.

Here at “What Will We Use” we discuss Ubuntu bug one: Microsoft will lose majority market share come June 30, 2011. Some may be surprised then by my announcement of the title of this post, “I am Fedora,” as some people assume that one can be loyal to only one Linux-based operating system. I am here to explain why I love Fedora, and last weekend at the South East Linux Fest, I joined the Fedora Project. It was a long journey to join a project which produces a Linux operating-system. Still, it feels like I am finally home.

Back in 1999, my employer, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center put a Red Hat Linux system running an Alpha processor on my desk. From there I was supposed to do write parallel code for a Red Hat Linux beowulf cluster. It was tricky without some basic desktop tools. The default install for the Alpha lacked a browser, let alone an office suite. There was no Internet Explorer for Red Hat Linux… there still is not. If you used an Intel-based Red Hat system, you could get Netscape. The Mozilla Project, which beget the Firefox browser, was still very new and no one had compiled and packaged the source code for the Alpha. Despite all of these frustrations, I liked that I could use other tools such as Openssh, Gcc, and Ghostview. I came home to my Windows system, I missed the software at the office. While Windows alternatives existed for these applications, they were expensive. Sure, Cygwin existed back then but I did not know about it.

I saved my entire paycheck for several months to be able to afford a Linux box from of my own. The vendor was “Explorer Micro” who agreed to ship the system with a copy of Red Hat 6.0. The order took over two months which was this vendor’s M.O. Once the system arrived, it was painful: The operating system was not installed, the CD-Rom drive was defective, the modem was not US-Robotics, the sound card required a driver that was not in the Linux 2.2 kernel. Still, with the help of Western PA Linux User Group, I was up and running happily.

In 2001 I went to go work for Carnegie Mellon at the School of Computer Science. There, my job was to support the now defunct proprietary UNIX operating system, IRIX. Many UNIX-based platforms were used as a desktop with the fastest growing being Red Hat Linux. Before long, I was a Linux system administrator too.

Most of my days involved building systems. I knew and lived the pain points of Xfree86, isapnp, usb, and sound cards that would not support midi. Even though we could download the software at no cost and install off a floppy, I would still buy the boxed sets. Loki Games came with Each Red Hat Linux 7.2 only in the boxed set since the software was not open source. Still, I looked forward to each full number release with fantastic excitement. In 2003, Red Hat Linux 9 was simply glorious with Open Office and Mozilla – that was “the year of the Linux desktop” for me.

In 2004, that all changed with Fedora. Red Hat Inc. was no longer going to release “Red Hat Linux.” Instead, customers could buy support contracts for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or use their new community-based Linux named Fedora. Being at a non-profit university, the “per employee” model of support that RHEL sales contract tried to make us buy was not going to cut it. Fedora on the other hand was at no cost but would a distribution with an aggressive 6 month that welcomed volunteer code. But would Fedora be any good? Red Hat Inc. made Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science ask “What will we use?”

Much was going on in the desktop operating system market also during the same time: Microsoft Windows XP was the most popular Windows yet, Novell had just bought SUSE, Lindows (aka Linspire) was looking suave, Apple’s market share was picking up as MacOSX matured… In the end we chose to support Fedora  from day one. We figured that it would be the most familiar to our large Red Hat Linux user base.

Also in 2004 I became a major contributor to the Ohio LinuxFest. This will be important later.

After we started deploying Fedora, I did like it. I must have installed it over 1000 times for professors and graduate students. In 2005, I went out to the CPLUG Security Conference to do a talk. As a speaker, Red Hat gave us some really nice swag including a t-shirt that said “I am Fedora.” Even though I had used and installed Fedora just as much as some Red Hat Inc. employees, I did not know how I could make such a bold claim.

I am Fedora?!? I did not commit a single keystroke to the operating system product known as Fedora.

How could I ever be Fedora as a systems administrator? This question troubled me. Heavens knows I wanted to give back. I was giving back by organizing the Ohio LinuxFest for a solid year by then. Still, I could not wear the “I am Fedora” shirt, since surely it meant for someone who contributes code… not me.

After about 9 months after receiving the “I am Fedora” shirt I pondered what my Fedora-specific contribution could be. Installing un-vetted packages was risky business. The Fedora that we deployed at Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science was fairly customized with OpenAFS, a distributed filesystem. I wanted to build a repository of .rpms that the user community at the university enjoy. Hopefully other universities that used similar dependency issues could use the repository too.  Unfortunately, we turned off up2date because the default Fedora kernel did not include the “tainted” openafs module. (Due to legacy issues, OpenAFS is distributed under a free software license but it is incompatible with the GPL.)

Building and maintaining the repository would have entailed more time than I had. Meanwhile, Fedora was so popular I was deploying several computers a day. I proposed the repository idea to the management anyhow. Regretfully they decided to keep their packaging of the in-house codes in depot format. My rpm repository idea did not support the almost moot system types such as Solaris and IRIX system types that depot treated like a generic UNIX-like system.

Still, I regret not trying harder. Users were downloading their own .rpms from Fedora, Fedora legacy, rpmfind, and sourceforge without any care if it broke something distributed by depot. The users wanted fresher packages than what the depot maintainers could provide and did not care what was considered “supported.” It was my job to clean up the rpm vs depot conflict mess. Meanwhile, the official stance was depot only or be darned.

Instead of just deploying a stealth rpm repository or arguing it out, I decided to leave the university. Sure there were other reasons for me to go including my suspicions of the Carnegie Mellon’s Gates Center of Computer Science which was funded from Bill and Melinda Foundation. Ultimately, I resigned for another job in September 2006. An opportunity to really do something for the success of Linux occurred with a system administrator opening at the Linux-embedded support company: Timesys Corporation.

While at Timesys, I supported the computers that ran the business and not the product. For the first time in my then 8 year professional career, I was supporting both Linux and Windows. The funny thing is the systems running Kubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and CentOS required about 5% of my attention. The rest of my time was working with proprietary firewalls, closed-source PBX-es, Microsoft Exchange, viruses on Microsoft desktops, and Blackberry support. To this day I can not understand how a company who sells the cost-savings of software freedom can insist so much on a proprietary infrastructure for their day-to-day business. With all of the proprietary support, there was very little time to work with the Linux operating system I loved. Still I was producing the Ohio LinuxFest in my spare time. In 2007, I left Timesys for my current employer. There is not much I can say about what I do now but I am happily supporting Linux.

2007 was an exciting year for both Fedora and the Ohio LinuxFest. One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) was shipping with a Fedora/Sugar base. The Buy-Two-Get-One OLPC project was a little too successful. Yup. I bought the two. Meanwhile I had finally felt like I was part of the success of Linux doing not for pay work for the Ohio LinuxFest. There I was working with dozens of open source projects and for-profit companies to create an excellent expo. The icing on the cake was Fedora’s community manager,Max Spevak, keynoted at that year.

Still I did not feel right saying “I am Fedora.”

Why not? I did not want to publicly show preference for one distribution for another.

Meanwhile, I was running both Ubuntu and Fedora:

• Ubuntu to test so that I could support my friends who were using that distribution.
• Fedora for the freshest free software and drivers out there.

People would see me at user groups using Ubuntu and make assumptions that I was “just a Ubuntu person.” Instead of asserting preference of Ubuntu or Fedora, I proclaimed neutrality. I really did not want anyone to assume that I, as Ohio LinuxFest officer, would direct the conference to be too much of one distribution or another. Heck, I will defend to the ends of the earth that the Ohio LinuxFest has room for all of free software, even non-Linux distributions like FreeBSD and Haiku.

Freedom to choose from many excellent free software options means more free software for everybody.

Until last weekend at the South East LinuxFest 2010, I kept my allegiances to myself. There I joined the Fedora Project Documentation Project. Later I will post why documentation and why Fedora for my first free software project endeavor.

Even as I take my Red Hat out of the closet, I have no intention of snubbing anyone for what they use. Moreover, I will be sure to write more about Red Hat, Fedora, and Ubuntu in the next twelve months.

I am not a Mac. Nor a PC. I am Fedora.

Below is my proposal, subject to Nick’s approval, for counting office market share.

Profit statements from Microsoft business division in FY10, to be released this July, will help us calculate how many copies were purchased this year. Then, we can compare against the number of OpenOffice.Org 3.x downloads, 150 million and counting, to establish how Microsoft’s leading competitor is doing  with its distribution. Next, we can count each OpenOffice.Org as a missed purchase opportunity for Microsoft at the cost of $350 per download.

Thus, Microsoft must meet or beat about 53 billion dollars in revenue from their business services division in FY2010.

Unfortunately for Nick and Microsoft, only $18.9 billion dollars was spent on Office and related products in FY2009. Microsoft explained the lack of better profits in the office suite department as such “Revenue from the 2007 Microsoft Office system decreased reflecting PC market weakness, a shift to lower-priced products, and pricing promotions.” Microsoft had struggled in FY09 to compete with the open source office suite and “cloud” competitors such as Google Docs. If Nick or you the reader care to dispute that no-cost options such as Office.Org and/or Google Docs products as a threat to Microsoft’s market share, I give you the below video of Stephen Elop, President, Microsoft Business Division, interviewed by Gartner about how Microsoft was going to deal with the disruptive challenge of these products.

Some may argue that counting downloads is not fair since we can never be sure how many actually downloaded. One download could be done by an OEM to ship on thousands of desktops or thin-clients. One download could be done by a third party which in turn re-brands as its own Open Office product (ie Oracle, IBM) and sells it as a product.  One download could be done by a mirror or torrent. One download could be done by a system administrator who pushes the suite across the corporate WAN.  One download was done by someone with the Fedora project which packaged the OpenOffice.Org for 23 million users.

I will acknowledge that the offer of counting Microsoft’s office suite market share ignores other office suites such as Apple’s suite and Corel Office with Word Perfect. Other  “cloud” products such as Google Docs/Apps and Alfresco also do not enter the discussion. We are also not considering office suites on phones or tablets, as Microsoft has 0% market share in these spaces.

Instead, I believe I can prove that Microsoft lacks office majority market share one year early, this June 2010, on OpenOffice.Org statistics alone. Due to the abundance of the scenarios that I have chosen to ignore, “charging” Microsoft $350 on the “missed opportunity” each time OpenOffice.Org is downloaded is a generous offer.

Some may argue that Microsoft will come back strong with its 2010 product and its online counterpart. However, with Microsoft raising their prices, Google is likely to steal what is left of Microsoft’s corporate office suite market share.

Just in case anyone wants to assert that Microsoft’s other divisions like the ones responsible for Bing or Xbox or mobile phones will cover for the lack of office suite products, on the contrary. This graph from February 2010 depicts the division that sells MSOffice as the company’s most profitable division with entertainment and online services as loss leaders. Meanwhile, Google, Yahoo!, Nintendo, Sony, and Nokia laugh their way to the bank. I must also point out that Apple is the most profitable software company and Oracle is the largest software company.

I will wait patiently for Microsoft’s FY2010  report and Nick’s response. Victory is mine: Come June 30, 2011 Microsoft will not have a majority office suite market share.

Sorry this video seems to require full flash. It claims Google resolved bug one: browsers, operating systems, and office suite dominance. If anyone knows of a youtube or other accessible source of this footage, please leave a comment.

Actual story with video on thestreet.com

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In this page we will discuss and update the profiles of some of the more popular office suites on the market.

More exists at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_office_suites

This is a work-in-progress. This post will move to a page in a week or so.

Microsoft Works

This product was a low cost office suite for the masses. Bundled by oems at the cheap cost of $10, Works was everywhere. Its younger versions could not open MSWord documents which caused Microsoft loyalists wondering “What will we use?” This product has been rebranded as “Office Starter” which is basically a stripped down version of MS Office.

MSOffice

Coming in at the three figure retail value mark per seat, Microsoft Office boasts cash cow status for Microsoft. While some corporations swear by integration into other Microsoft products such as Outlook/Exchange and Sharepoint, Microsoft lacks market share in the email and web content management system markets. Corporate customers who do by MS Office, will find themselves pressured to upgrade and open their wallets every 3 years.

No one but Microsoft knows how many copies are legally activated each year. If anyone has any figures as to how many are purchased, that would help a lot.

OpenOffice.Org and derivatives

When one executes a Google search on the term “office suite” the first non-ad post which appears is OpenOffice.Org. Now sponsored by Oracle, the OpenOffice.Org suite provides free software for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and other desktop productivity tools. It’s commercial version is now called Oracle Open Office.

Market share for such a product has been traditionally tricky considering that it is free to download and redistribute. Moreover big vendors like IBM and smaller folk since Open Office Suite have re-banded OpenOffice.Org with other free and non-free components. By all means, I applaud everyone who gets in the business of marketing and selling OpenOffice.Org. Heck, even Novell has gotten in on it.

Certainly OpenOffice.Org derived products are not the only ones in the office suite game. While they are widely available via over one hundred distribution channels on CD with hundreds of ebay listings, Microsoft still claims 80+% market share.

Sorry Microsoft, hiring Forester to interview “152 IT Decision Makers” on what office suite they use is not a true indicator of market share.

This a blatant disregard for the home office suite user market. Do they really think all the 100,000,000 downloads as of 2009 are to be ignored?

With that said, let’s just focus on corporations. Forrester did a similar market share poll in 2008 with 62% out of 102 IT executives involved in decision making in Large Western European Enterprises already using Open Source office suites with another 19% promising to adopt in the next 12 months. That would put OpenOffice.Org and other Open Source cousins with 81% market share!!!

Desktop/Office Productivity Open Source software in use in2008 out of 102 European companies

Moreover, I could just as easily stack the deck and find 122 other corporations who do not use Microsoft as an office suite.

Google Docs and Google Apps

Google has two web-based application suites for word processing, spread sheets, and presentations. Google Docs for consumers is a no-cost product that is heavily tied to Gmail. For companies, they can buy Google Apps where Google Docs happens to be one component of the commercial “Apps” product.

Numbers of businesses who use Google Apps:

1million in 2008 with 100 million active users

2 million customers as of 10/2009

Nick asserts that Google Apps users are using an office suite because it is an opt-in product yet Docs is not.

Beth Lynn asserts that both products are office suites because the cover word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation within the same tool set. Users who does not have an office suite installed on their computer can still click on their attachment to open their documents via Google Docs applications.

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