Re: Why Aren't Open Source Tools Being Considered?

[Siliconwriter <siliconwriter -at- comcast -dot- net>]

Okay, I've been using OpenOffice.org for four days now, after  
downloading it and installing it on both Windows 2000 Pro and Mac OS  
10.4. So far, it's doing everything I need to do for my work. I've  
made the tables, index, table of contents, and captions I need to. It  
loads quickly, and even in the Mac version the controls are  
"intuitive" enough that I found it easy to learn and use. The fact  
that it DOES imitate the Word interface so closely makes it actually  
faster to learn. One only has to identify those features which are  
invoked differently and account for that. Oh, and the thesaurus  
feature is, IMO, better than Word's.

I am prepared to suggest to my manager that we switch to this program  
for our next project, which is an update of an SDK written in Word.  
As our company writes software for the Linux platform, open-source  
software may get a better reception than at most companies. One of  
the chief features I like about OpenOffice is that its files are XML  
based; most of our developers use XML on a daily basis. I think that  
will make it more acceptable to our developers when they write  
technical notes. I believe that working with more XML files will  
enhance our ability to single-source our APIs to HTML, print and PDF.  
That, and the absolute compatibility between a platforms: Linux to  
Mac to Windows.

Does anyone have any experience pitching a software change like this  
to management? More importantly, how did your SMEs/developers react?  
What concerns did they raise? I'd like to anticipate any concerns and  
address them.

Thanks all, and especially to Bruce for raising this question.

Sarah

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