The Evolving ODF Environment: Spotlight on KOffice

Vendors adopt standards - and therefore go head to head with other competitors - because standards create larger markets faster, making for a bigger and more certain pie to share, cumulative marketing impact, and greater credibility. End-users benefit because they get more choices, more value added-features and services (that's how the vendors differentiate their products), and lower prices. All of which means that a standard only "works" if it gets widely adopted. The adoption of ODF OASIS, and now ISO/IEC offers the opportunity to watch such a standards-based ecosystem evolve, and there has already been much attention paid to the vendor developed or funded apps: StarOffice, IBM Workplace Managed Client, and the Sun-supported, open source project developed OpenOffice.

But there are less publicized, non-vendor fueled offerings, and KOffice is the most advanced of these. In this extensive interview, I explore with Inge Wallin, the KOffice Promotions Lead, how KOffice is different from the other major office productivity releases that support ODF, which users may find it most appropriate to their needs, in what directions future development will proceed, and much more.

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