Last Straw

OpenOffice.org 2.0, a replace­ment for Microsoft Office, was released today. You can down­load and use it right away, for free!

It opens Word and Excel files et cet­era, and not only is it free, but it also fea­tures an open doc­u­ment format, mean­ing you’ll never again be forced to pay some fat pig cor­por­a­tion like Microsoft for the priv­ilege of open­ing your own doc­u­ments (or have to fer­ret around the inter­net search­ing for a pir­ated copy of their software).

The reason it’s free is because it’s open source, which means the com­puter code used to cre­ate it is licenced in such a way that any­body can use and alter it, as long as their alter­a­tions and improve­ments are then licenced in the same way. And lots of people do it, many coders love writ­ing soft­ware this way. It’s part of an open and par­ticp­at­ory cul­ture that has been emer­ging along with the inter­net over the years. A heap of soft­ware is cre­ated in this way, Open­Of­fice just hap­pens to be one of the most high pro­file because it dir­ectly chal­lenges Microsoft’s cash cow, Microsoft Office. Heh.