Walter Mossberg (WSJ) compares the two, and finds that even while StarOffice/OpenOffice has improved, it still does not match up to MS-Office: “As I said last year, [StarOffice] is mainly for light users preparing basic documents who either can’t afford Office, or hate Microsoft so much they’ll live with some complexity and limitations.”
There is a market which will be delighted with OpenOffice – it is the market which does not want to pirate software and cannot afford the high costs of Microsoft Office. This is a market which is to be found in the SMEs of the emerging markets. No one is pitching affordable alternatives to them, leaving the only option as piracy if they want to use an office suite (which they have to if they are using a computer).
