Microsoft: Office '10 years ahead' of OpenOffice

by admin March 8, 2006 at 1:10 pm

Open source advocates defend OpenOffice as a Microsoft executive argues it is 10 years out of date

A Microsoft executive has criticised the open source productivity application OpenOffice.org (OOo), claiming that it is far behind Microsoft Office in terms of functionality.

Alan Yates, the general manager of business strategy for the Information Worker Group at Microsoft, said in an interview with Australian news site iTWire that OOo is only useful for basic tasks. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to ZDNet UK on Monday that Yates had made these comments.

“It really depends upon what job you’re trying to do. Certainly, if you’re just trying to write a few notes or something, OpenOffice is just fine. The truth is though that OpenOffice.org is really designed to solve the problems that Microsoft focused on 10 years ago when the model was an individual user working at their individual PC,” said Yates in the interview.

Full article: ZDNet UK