The world of software is often one of brutal competition. Copyrights exist to promote innovation and prevent people from coldly ripping off clever new ideas as soon as they crop up; but, companies and individuals are very crafty and will usually find a way to take a popular product and produce a variation that is just different enough as to pass muster in terms of copyright law while capitalizing on the interest in that kind of product. This is true in all business of course but is especially notable in software. Whether it’s a popular new video game that soon sees many imitators or an accounting program with innovative features of which mysteriously turn up in the competitor’s products, you can count on anything unique not remaining so for long.
This isn’t always a bad thing for consumers, as it promotes strategies that appeal to their interests. Sometimes that shows up in the price and sometimes in the features. A good example is Microsoft’s Office Suite and the challenge posed by OpenOffice which you can download from openoffice.org. Microsoft Office is a standard in the industry, a series of programs that almost any office is likely to use. It includes such software as golden-boy Microsoft Word for word-processing, Excel for calculation and any other spreadsheet needs, PowerPoint for animated slide-show presentations (crucial for those business meetings), and in the deluxe version, Outlook for email.
It’s useful software that is inescapable, and it also costs a lot of money. Most organizations get the Office suite through subsidized programs (possibly bulk-buying) so they pay at a discounted rate, but if you want to buy the software straight up, it’ll cost a pretty penny, which is where OpenOffice makes its mark. OpenOffice is a free, downloadable alternative to the Office suite, matching it program for program. The layouts are different, but familiar enough that any user of Office can find thei way in OpenOffice with a little work.