Symphony's Now Playing For Linux And MacSymphony's Now Playing For Linux And Mac

IBM's Lotus Symphony -- the clever and stylish rebranding of OpenOffice.org -- is now hitting Ubuntu Linux and Mac desktops. It's another sign that for the software of the future -- especially open source software -- the platform won't be the deciding factor.

A couple of things stand out about Symphony being offered for these systems. It doesn't surprise me at all that Ubuntu would be the first choice of Linux distribution -- not least of all because of Ubuntu's sheer popularity and name recognition, but also because it's possible to partner with Ubuntu and offer the program through its software repositories. I'm expecting that to become one of the ways to get software in Linux, generally, since it means the least amount of hassle and confusion. (Adding third-party apps to any Linux distribution has never been a snap, and I suspect that difficulty is only going to be resolved on a distribution-by-distribution basis, not universally.)

Having Symphony for the Mac brings a whole different set of thoughts to mind about the prevalence of user-level open source software on that platform. I've gotten the impression -- probably horribly biased, but here goes -- that because the Mac is a boutique platform, people who use it are not averse to paying for software of any size. Case in point: One of the most popular text editors for the Mac, BBEdit, isn't a free program; it's $125 (!) for a single-user license.

I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly thrilled by the idea of paying $125 for any program unless it was on the level of Microsoft Word. (The full retail version of Word is $196.99 at NewEgg.com.) There are Mac builds of FOSS apps -- VLC, for instance -- but my guess is they run a distant second to the for-pay stuff on that platform, even if we're talking shareware-level for-pay.

I don't think one program by itself can change a whole culture of preference, but the more such programs out there that can persuade people they don't need to pay tons of money to get good software, the better.

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