MacVillage.net

According to MacSlash, OpenOffice will not be Aquafied as previously announced.

While the Mac never had huge penetration the business sector, it does however hold a role in quite a few businesses, even if it’s just limited to the creative few. The Mac also has a large userbase in education, and home use. All of these users take advantage of business software (the most popular being Microsoft Office).

While Microsoft Office for Mac OS X isn’t a bad product, it’s far from cheap, and it’s not guaranteed to be developed forever. Internet Explorer for Mac died last summer, as Microsoft cited Safari as being the browser of choice for Macintosh customers. Will Microsoft stay in the game? Apple sure hopes so.

If Microsoft were to find that Office for Mac OS X wasn’t worth perusing, this would leave Apple in a tough situation. Apple’s own products, while fine for small projects, and home use don’t have the interoperability that Microsoft’s Office products have. Apple would need to ensure there’s an equivalent product for Mac OS X to keep it’s customers.

OpenOffice is an open source project that has remarkably good compatibility with Microsoft Office, and reproduces most common features. Odds are only a handful would find something they use missing. OpenOffice is available on Linux, Solaris, and Windows. Mac OS X is only available through X11.

An option Apple of course has is to work with OpenOffice like it did with KDE. KDE’s Konqueror browser is the basis for Safari. Apple could take OpenOffice, and rework a Mac port to compete. But the project wouldn’t be an overnight process. It would be a long term development process as the work needed is rather signifigant.