Copyleft: the magazine

We’re big fans of OpenOffice.org here at Copyleft: the magazine, and it appears that we are not alone in our open source office software love. Combining the pure open sourcey goodness of OO.org and its own Lotus Notes code and branding, IBM launched Lotus Symphony this week. The software suite (get it? “Symphony”… “suite”…. it’s funny!) includes three apps, Lotus Symphony Documents, Lotus Symphony Presentations and Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets, which are equivalent to OpenOffice.org’s Writer, Impress and Calc and Microsoft’s Word, Power Point and Excel. As with OO.org, IBM is letting you have these free of charge (though it looks like you have to sign up for an IBM.com account). These “productivity tools” are also being fully integrated into the latest version IBM’s popular Lotus Notes.

Perhaps just as important is IBM’s adoption of the OpenDocument Format (which both OpenOffice.org and Google Apps also use). Given that Microsoft’s Open XML was recently rejected by the ISO, which adopted OpenDocument Format as a standard earlier this year, IBM’s decision to stick with the open source crowd appears to be a solid one. Furthermore, IBM has also announced that it is going to release some of its Lotus code for use in OpenOffice.org’s productivity suite, allowing for an even more versatile OO.org in the not so distant future. It remains to be seen, of course, if anyone can topple Microsoft Office’s dominion in the world of office apps, but with IBM getting in the game and putting its Lotus muscle behind the OpenDocument Format and OpenOffice.org, the odds just got alot better.

(from OpenOffice.org, CNET, and IBM)