IBM Lotus Symphony Aims to Corner a Share of Microsoft's Market
About one week after IBM joined the Open Office project, Big Blue is releasing its own free office package. The office software, dubbed Lotus Symphony is based on Open Office.
The package gives users a word processor, spreadsheet and a presentations package – a full set of applications for the office user . "The lifeblood of any organization is contained in thousands of documents. With the Open Document Format, businesses can unlock their information, making it universally accessible on any platform and on the Web in highly flexible ways.", says IBM's Steve Mills. Thanks to Lotus Symphony and ODF enterprises no longer need to use proprietary software to access texts. At the same time IBM is helping to promote the use of Linux and free software by releasing Lotus Symphony.
When it joined the Open Office project IBM assigned 35 programmers to work on office applications. IBM uses parts of Open Office in Lotus Notes 8. Lotus Symphony Beta 1 for Linux is already available as a download; users are required to register with IBM to download the package.
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