Get Legal – Get OpenOffice.org free office suite
OpenOffice.org the free Office suit has launched a new campaign encouraging users to avoid the legal problems of commercial closed source software, by instead adopting the free OpenOffice.org software.
This campaign is timed a week after “World Intellectual Property Day” where Business Software Alliance announced a record reward for anyone informing against illegal software in UK organisations.
This is also at a time where Microsoft actively out to catch users of unlicensed versions of their software. This includes those who may have unwittingly bought a “dodgy” copy, those that install the software across multiple machines without realising that they are breaking the license as well as those who knowingly pirate software.
- It has just bought a software company specialising in detecting what software is installed on PCs.
- It is now using the internet to put piracy detection software into copies of MS-Office on people’s PCs.
- around the world, the Business Software Alliance is setting up schemes to prosecute offenders – for example, in the UK it is offering large cash rewards to anyone who informs against organisations.
- Microsoft’s licence agreements are complicated – it’s easy to break them by mistake.
[Information from: why.openoffice.org]
The message from OpenOffice.org is simple. Avoid the complications of buying and managing software licenses for an Office Suite by instead using the free, open source OpenOffice.org software.
For home users it certainly makes sense, a saving of hundreds of pounds compared to the cost of Microsoft Office. For home users that want to use presentation software this is especially true as PowerPoint is not included in the home edition of office, which is the version normally provided if you get a new PC with Office included.
For work users the savings could be huge.
OpenOffice not only provides the same functionality that most people use, but it even adds some additional functionality. OpenOffice.org can export to PDF without any additional software.