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Linux Business

Applix Exits Linux Desktop UPDATED 109

Posted by Hemos from the continued-exits dept.
The folks at Newsforge have got a story up regarding Applix exiting the Linux desktop market. Applix has been making ApplixWare for the desktop market, but has found the competition from the free office products to be too rough -- but they are continuing to work on the server-side versions. I've been contacted by VistaSource, the company that is owned by Applix, doing Applixware - they want to make it clear that while they are focusing on serverware, they are not doing away with the desktop completly - but that development will continue on both desktop and server versions.
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Applix Exits Linux Desktop More

Applix Exits Linux Desktop

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  • Not yet ... but it's dropping so fast I don't think it'll make it out of 2001. Hard to keep a company going when it doesn't make any money - eh?
  • This story is completely wrong. The spindoctors have been notified - hopefully they'll put this right.

  • Interchange probably was the killer. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From looking things over I don't see a compelling reason to choose ApplixWare. I don't think it was the Free Software competition that killed them, but the lack of important features.

    The most important thing to grab large numbers of users would be seamless exchange with Microsoft users. The price wasn't exorbidant, about fifty bucks for an office suite, but forcing export via RTF would be enough of a reason for a corporate I/S department to shoot it down.

    It's too bad, it looks like a solid package, the spread sheet looks better than any of the others I've seen under Linux (though screen shots can always look pretty) but again the lack of formats seemed to guarantee a quick death.

  • Re:Applix's never understood the Linux market (Score:3)

    by Cylix ( 55374 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @12:26PM (#595401) Homepage Journal
    Honestly,

    I wanted to try ApplixWare...

    However, the lack of actually being able to try it before I buy really put me off. There are some damn good alternatives as well.

    I'm not sure what I am afraid of when closed source vendors start stalking the linux market. Maybe I should be happy... maybe I should rejoice... but damnit.. deep down I am just a scared little penguin ;)

  • Yup! This Thanksgiving my ext family gathered at my parents' (I was not there since I am a bad son). My parents use Linux and their "office suite" is StarOffice 5.2 whether on Linux or Windows. ANyway, while I wasn't there my sister got a phonecall from her boss at XXXXXXXX bigtime B2B asp company. Had she seen the email he sent her? No she hadn't. She opens email in My mum's desktop Linux acct. in Netscape and saves .ppt attachment to /home/mum . After instruction from me, opens Powerpoint display in StarOffice. It just works and opens the presentation for her review and OK, and she's doesn't miss a beat working in Linux, instead of Windoh's!
    Time to retrain: .5 sec (spent telling sis that the powerpoint "application" in Linux is called StarOffice.
    Cost of installed OS = $0
    Cost of installed office suite =$0
    Value of giddy moment when pointy haired sister realizes that MS software is $600 of deadloss per employee (plus lost opportunity value thereof)= priceless!
  • They could have had a great team of devlopers help them hack, then sold a "Deluxe" version for a fee that included support. If they had targeted corporate accounts with this type of strategy they may have been able to do both that AND the server end. Who knows we may have ended up with a very comprehensive office suite for the workplace that didn't suck. Hell if they'd have opened the source who knows how much help they could have gotten. Shoulda, coulda, woulda, didn't = lost money and time. Sad to see a linux office product die, but on the same note, I opted for the free Star Office stuff. Now if it only did accounting stuff.... Anyone try appgen?
  • Keep in mind that the FAQ refers to the closed StarOffice 5.x, which is only distributed in SPARC or x86 binaries.

    OpenOffice [openoffice.org], which is to StarOffice what Mozilla is to Netscape, is available in source form (CVS or Rhode Island-sized tarball), so xBSD, PowerPC, and Alpha users don't have to worry about binary-only distribution.

    We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead
  • > "as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee"

    Hark! Thy narcuations are to me.

    (geez, there's something I haven't heard in a long time)

    --
  • Red Hat isn't out of biz.. yet. But look at the numbers; it won't be long at the current burn rate.

    the difference between a hobby and a business is paying customers. Having a product or a service helps too.

    look into it.

  • I suspect many don't understand that with the current development there will be no software development related jobs in ten years or so. The free software movement will kill the whole industry. And please...spare me the bull about service and support alternative...

    Well, I think the service and support alternative is greatly exaggerated--but a lot of software developers in the country are working on "in-house" software. The estimates I've seen are about 70% of developers are employed working on "products" that never leave the company, because they're for internal use.

    Also, programs that address "vertical markets" are also largely immune to competition from free software; the more limited the market is, the less space there is for competitors, free or otherwise. Few hackers have a compelling interest in making a GPL construction management program or a records management system tailored to the needs of hospitals (and for that matter, few hospitals would move their systems to a non-trusted vendor; "if patients die, you have the source code to see what went wrong" just doesn't carry a lot of weight). Even a "semi-vertical market" program like Nota Bene, the word processor for academics built around XyWrite, isn't likely to face serious competition from free software companies: if they're getting people to pay $400 for a word processor now (and they are), price obviously isn't the overriding concern for their customers.

    The only real question is the future for shrink-wrap software of the kind that you pick up at Best Buy or CompUSA (and the same kinds of software when delivered electronically, of course), and by proxy, the future for software developers working on such projects. If a typical office application meets the goal of being user-friendly and having an effective, self-contained help system, it doesn't need people to supply service and support for it (particularly if the Internet community can supply free help through newsgroups, websites and mailing lists); the profit potential lies in the software itself, future upgrades and potential "add-on" modules.


  • There is no Linux market for desktop applications.

    I must disagree. No is such a strong word. If you had said "little" I would agree, but not "no". There is a good market for desktop applications on Linux, it just is not a main stream market. I can't stand using Windows. I feel so constrained, that anything I want to do, I need to go out and buy a package, or down load some closed source utility I have no idea how it works.

    But there are many like me that prefer to work in Linux/FreeBSD/Unix, and we do need desktop applications that we can use to communicate with the rest of the world. Unfortunately, right now the main document "protocol" is proprietary. I'm hoping that something like XML can be used to change the format of documents that are passed to and from individuals.

    But don't say that there is NO market. I have bought/paid for desktop applications for Linux (Corel WP and Star Office: before it was bought by Sun). I prefer to work with LaTeX, but most people I need to send documents to, don't know any other format but ".doc". I know I have a need for desktop applications, so if it is only me, I am still a market. Just a very small one!

    Steven Rostedt
  • Applixware is dying on all platforms. They are abandoning the linux port, big deal. Almost all Linux users wanted to try it once, (I did and If I cant try then I dont buy!) MS doesn't offer a try before buy path (well they actually do, you can download NT server,SQL server, etc.. for free and try it for 30 days before it explodes.) but there are enough drones out there using it that someone can effortlessly find someone who has it to try it. Applixware, first off 98% of the planet will say Applix-who? and the other 2% will say yeah, I saw it at a show once, you have to buy it to try it..

    They killed themselves. Plain and simple... And their death throwes are just starting... You dont see their products on the desktops of Fortune 500 companies! (IBM drones dont use applixware, AT&T drones don't, MCI, etc....)

    I can see them dying completely within the next 2 years, unless their business model is changed.
  • The ones that are maintained are often those with some corporate backing.

    The kernel, Debian, KDE, Apache, Gimp. Corporate backing? Ridiculous. Maybe they donate some hardware or money every once in a while to keep up good will, but that's about it. These crumbs off the corporate table are certainly not the reason that those projects are well maintained; they are a consequence of the project's success. Corporations are not needed at all, all that's needed is enthusiastic volunteers. This is also shown by the fact that corporations entered the game very late, when much of the hard work had already been done and the success of free software had become apparent.

    Nothing is free, software costs developer time which is a limited resource.

    Developers like to give up that limited resource on projects they find interesting, and that's the reason why there is a tremendous wealth of software that is completely free in every sense. "There is no such thing as a free lunch" has been proven wrong by the free software world over and over again.

    you don't need to chase away all the application vendors to develop a free OS.

    The more proprietary software is chased away, the freer the resulting system will be.

    --

  • Are you talking about the "live-and-let-live" attitude exuded by your average End User License Agreement of proprietary software?

    --

  • I disagree, I could care less how the app looks. I care about speed and useability. I dream of a working wysiwyg word processor, desktop publishing and non-linear video editing systems. The problem with what is available is the fact that Staroffice tries to take over my Window manager (I want word processor not some damned desktop on my desktop!) and WP8 wile great is extremely slow due to feature bloat. Give me WP5 for linux and I'd feel like I was in heaven! (oh and a MS word 90000 to RTF converter so we can read the stupid non-standard doc files out there)

    The problem I have is that what is released has too much crap in it that is not needed but put there to make it slow.

    Me? I use wp5 at work (Found a copy in the IS boxes!) and I send every document through a pdf distiller to my co-workers, and as RTF to the co-workers that have a couple of brain-cells.

  • Yes. That's the economic model that produces ghettos in the real world, and will leave Linux trapped forever in a ghetto.

    The real world case- A neighborhood deteriorates to the point where nobody would be foolish enough to spend money maintaining the buildings. Therefore the rents plummet even farther. Within a few years it's a ghetto.

    The same can be said for Computer Operating Systems. BeOS is an example- quite a nice operating system, but no business is willing to invest the money to produce the large number of software packages it needs to get a snowball effect going so it becomes a mainstream success.

    Yes, we know. Some of you prefer the low rent of the ghetto, so you can spend most of your money on fuel for your bongs.
  • I know you are just making fun but isn't it nice to have a better system with the money you saved? When you're not running StarOffice your computer will fly in everything else. Some better than others obviously but you get the point. You should be able to keep the upgrades you mentioned under $600.00(USD) and have a fairly nice system. Maybe you could build a Q3/UT server with your leftover Celeron 400 since you know have a sweet game. This is assuming you have a reasonably good video card (Geforce 2 MX under $100.00 [pricewatch.com])
  • I wonder who Applix might sue for giving away a product that they sell for a profit. Is Sun in jeopardy because they're giving away StarOffice? Should the government take action to protect Applix from open source competition?

    I don't really think it will happen. Even still, it makes you wonder how much litigation we want to invite from the federal government.

    Can you imagine an open source developer being sued by the government for putting a company like Applix out of business?

    Note: I know this violates the long standing tradition that anything that might disagree with the government's lawsuit against M$ is a troll but I think its worth considering. Karma be damned ;-)
  • I've been trying to open powerpoint files with staroffice for nearly three years now.

    Usually what I try to open is the lecture slides that come with textbooks. It's certainly much better than it used to be, but it still loses or misplaces some of the information (but a least it no longer spits out a page-and-a-half length document that doesn't fit on the slide . . .)

    Come to think of it, word documents tend to come out aline to long--the last line of one page forms ends up on the next page, and my last three installations have produced spreadsheets that can't generate charts . . .

    Staroffice is a lousy product. The question isn't whether or not it's any good, but whether it's worse than ms office. [and I'm not willing to fight windows long enough to find out :) ]

    hawk

  • Yeh, but it's abusive to run ed when you don't have a slow teletype or other printing terminal . . .

    Besides, ed is for those that can't handle toggle switches and patch cords.

    Damn newbies, demanding keyboards . . .

    :)

    hawk
  • I've seen things that I've moderated then pop up with something different than I marked--sometimes moderating the right direction, othertimes the wrong direction.

    hawk
  • That is the way all consumer software will go, in my opinion. If there are enough people who want it and use it, it will get created and maintained. Software products like word processors that eventually become 'finished' in the sense that they fulfill what 99.9% of the users want wont have a market because there simply isnt anything to create a valuable diffrentiation in (and no, changing the document format so people have to upgrade doesnt really count).

    Of course, the same thing applies to the Windows market, but in a different way. If enough people want it Microsoft will make it to take that market and you're out of buisness anyway.

    Its too bad for those companies, but they should probably move on to either games or vertical applications markets or some other segment that will remain viable.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • please see My number 1: 1) If slashdot was filled with humorless linux nerds, I'd stop reading it altogether. If you truly can't stand the A/C posting, change your threshhold and deal with the 14% of the posts that are up to your level, and leave the rest of us to sit and laugh at the childish humor. If you have a problem with that, lemme know, I'll send someone over to pull the penis bird outta your ass.
  • The lesson I take from this is that free software kills the software-sales and software-license business models. Service and technical support are still valuable in a free-software environment.

    So, while companies like Apple, Palm, Microsoft, and just about every other for profit software company move in the direction of making software easier to use and charging money for their efforts in the matter, Redhat, and any other Linux distro companies only hope for survival is keeping their distributions needlessly complex?

    Afterall, that'll be the only revenue they can count on, correct?

    Face it, proprietary software isn't going anywhere. And neither is free software. They both serve different markets, though there's widespread talk in the linux community of shoehorning Linux into environments where it just won't work (Most home desktops, for instance).
  • It seems that when people demand a "modern" look and feel, they're often looking for a MS look and feel. I'd much rather use a Motif app than something that looks like Bill Gates had a hand in making it. I'd like GUI apps to get rid of menu bars and icon bars. Use popup menus like xterm does. Don't waste pixels.
    MS Windows looks wrong, diseased, rancid. It's hard to analyze the impression, but part of it comes from the disgusting proportional font MS uses for most controls. Give me misc-fixed-medium.
    The Mac often has beautiful widgets. Unix has a cross-section of every possible approach. I love the scrollbars used on xterm and xfig - so clean and logical. What's the modern contribution? Reduce the contrast between "thumb" and background, making the eye work harder to resolve the thumb. Add little buttons at the top and bottom. Reduce 3-button functionality to 1-button. Add klassy "3d" look.
    I'm sad that there's so much momentum toward a desktop look that's "straight outa Redmond".
  • I have to that I don't really like the look and feel of Applix or Framemaker. Both are reasonable products, though. I'm definately not in Framemaker's target market.

    Many commercial Linux apps are looking dated and are based on older codebases. Corel WordPerfect 8 is in Motif, the way they write it (or shall I say wrote it) in Utah quite a few years ago. Applixware has a bit of a dated feel, as well.

    No wonder they get beat by StarOffice, which for all its faults, at least looks and behaves in a somewhat modern fashion.

    The last three commercial software packages I bought for Linux are Quake3 Arena ( in the tin box ), Myth II, and Corel WordPerfect 8.

    WP8 feels old and clunky. I still use it fairly often. MII and Q3A run for hours on my debian machine, no problems.

    If I'm EVER going to pay for another productivity app for Linux, it had better have a decent/modern feel to it. If a company can't do that, then they should get out of the market and go make cheetos or something (sorry I'm getting a little hungry).

    Loki is doing new things, and "gets it". The companies focusing away from Linux don't really seem to have any vision, and are just porting dated apps, so I guess they should go.

    I don't mind paying for software -- freedom is never free, and slavery costs much more -- but the least the company can do is add a bit of excitement to the mix.

  • I hope that Allison read some of these threads. You can't sell software to this community blind. Not when there's free stuff that can be used. It's a pretty simple equation:

    Free w/ 'flaws' > Pay For unseen.

    Staroffice is a memory monster. If ApplixWare was more efficient, and supported similar features, I'd gladly pay the $80-100 (?) bucks for it.
  • That's a relief. As long as ed is still around, we're safe.
  • Ummm...to whoever modded this down. It was a joke. I didn't see the same thing posted above so it was not redundant. If you didn't find it amusing as I had intended, just ignore it and it will go away. :-p

  • Not what the article says: (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    According to the article, "...it will no longer be aggressively marketed as a desktop product, according to VistaSource marketing vice president R.J. Grandpre." That's a little different than dropping it altogether. Also, their website [vistasource.com] doesn't make any mention of this, in fact they are still proudly displaying the new features in version 5.0:

    What's New in Applixware 5.0 Applixware

    • GTK interface
    • Dockable toolbars
    • Combo Boxes
    • Tooltips
    • GTK Themes
    • Applixware Office Theme Selection
    • New Applixware Iconbar
    • Open, Save, Save As, Import and Export from ONE dialog box
    • Graphical Font Installer
    • Drag and Drop support from compatible file managers
    • Improved import and export filters
    Applixware Words
    • On-The-Fly Spell Checking
    • Vertical Rulers
    • Ruler Guides
    • Updated horizontal rulers
    Applixware Spreadsheets
    • Autosum
    • Autoformat
    • Spreadsheet templates
    • Autofill
    • HTML Export Wizard
    Applixware Data
    • Native gateway for MySQL
    • OpenSource gateway
    • Bundled drivers for Postgresql and MySQL

    See Giant Penguins Naked! The Linux Pimp [thelinuxpimp.com]

  • The real world case- A neighborhood deteriorates to the point where nobody would be foolish enough to spend money maintaining the buildings. Therefore the rents plummet even farther. Within a few years it's a ghetto.

    Except in the neighbourhood ghetto the buildings aren't owned by the people that reside in them. We 'own' linux and can readily maintain, upgrade and change it to our hearts content. If anything proprietory software becomes an impediment to that level of freedom.

    skribe
  • IE: anything you produce, someone else will release for free and put you out of buisness. can you say Netscape?

    Was that a pun? ;)

  • You are sort of correct, but software such as games, and applications targeted to bigger enterprise can be closed source and do certainly well in Linux. I have thought of writing commerical software for linux, but then the thought that someone will start an open source version the next day puts me off, and I don't bother.

  • . I have thought of writing commerical software for linux, but then the thought that someone will start an open source version the next day puts me off, and I don't bother.

    That's good. I hadn't thought of it before, but apparently the mere threat of free software keeps the free-to-proprietary ratio high on Linux, which is of course what we all want.

    --

  • This may be the one pitfall to the entire open source movement and any companies looking to make a profit off of it. IE: anything you produce, someone else will release for free and put you out of buisness.

    This sure is a pitfull for any companies trying to make money off of proprietary software on Linux, which is good, but I don't see how it can be construed to be a pitfall to the entire open source movement? It is sort of the point behind the entire open source movement: free wins, proprietary loses.

    --

  • I thought there was something awfully fishy when they offered our LUG a big discount on Applix software. Trying to dump the excess inventory before announcing that there would be no new versions, I guess. Too bad.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I agree. I've been using their office suite for quite awhile now and hate to see it go. I feel it's far superior to StarOffice. StarOffice runs horribly slow. I've NEVER had a problem with Applixware.
  • Funny, I bought Applixware 5.0 for FreeBSD. Perhaps you misunderstand VistaSource (formerly Applixware)'s commitment to all variants of UNIX?
  • "Applixware is arguably the most stable and mature Linux office suite available, but it will no longer be aggressively marketed as a desktop product, according to VistaSource marketing vice president R.J. Grandpre."

    Now, someone riddle me this: since when does "no longer be agressively marketed" mean "no longer produced"? Is this just a poorly written article (yes) or even more likely just the typical knee-jerk /. post?

  • there may be decent, hard-working, talented people at Applixware losing their jobs ... you probably think that would be great if it happened in the name of the all-important GNU cause

    It's neither here nor there. For-profit companies are not charities (although Amazon must be, considering all the money it's lost). If ApplixWare has trouble paying people to develop a second-tier proprietary office suite, then maybe it shouldn't. I assure you, those hard-working, talented people will be just fine.

    Free software isn't necessarily about doing battle with proprietary software companies, although the flip side is often true. ApplixWare would sue my pants off if I:

    • pirated its software
    • borrowed some code for my own project
    • diluted its trademark
    • published its trade secrets
    • infringed its patents (if they have any)
    I'm not saying it's a bad company. In fact, I rather like the story that it gave reams of scrap paper [slashdot.org] to a fifth grader. But it doesn't deserve your pity.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Ermm... What part of the "K" in Koffice makes you think it'll ever run under gnome? Have you checked out koffice.org recently? What's the first line of their website say?

    :)
  • I mean, his name is part of "tuxedo," which leads me to believe that he's already dressed.

    Besides, how many Linux users do you know that wear anything other than casual to work? Or carry a briefcase, for that matter!!!

  • Oops. "Applix" is not the name of the company selling Applixware.

  • First off, the story was wrong, and the correction predated your post, which makes me go hmmm...

    Anyway, your analogy is backwards. The Free software projects are the trees. They may grow better one year than another, but they rarely die... they are the stable base that the vines can grow on. Things like Linux, Apache, Free/Net/OpenBSD, Xfree, GTK, Glibc, GCC, and so many other things - things developed by GNU, by the BSD teams, and so many other groups and individuals that that contribute to the community that any attempt to name them all would take hours and still be sadly incomplete. The commercial apps only exist on the basis of this infrastructure. They can grow and flourish, or shrivel and die, but the community and the infrastructure lives and grows nonetheless.

  • I always like StarOffice better. I haven't seen KDE's new version of KOffice, but I liked Applix over the KOffice I saw...I thought they were doing pretty good in the office dept.
  • From what I've seen they have some cool stuff. What happens now?

  • Re:And you are surprised? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you deliver something that people are willing to spend money on, they will come. The fact that something else is free is NO EXCUSE. I was a happily paying Applix customer until I ran into something (excel docs) that Applixware couldn't quite handle.

    Until then, I was ignoring the GRATIS StarOffice in favor of better Payware. Unfortunately, there are things that applixware is poor at regardless of how much or how little it costs.

    If that's what you happen to need a word processor or spreadsheet for, then it doesn't matter what else the competition has done.
  • That's funny, I just got snailmail spam from them yesterday advertising their Linux Office Suite.

  • Goodbye to a great product (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @11:35AM (#595449)
    DOH! I've been using Applixware without a crash for 3 years. Maybe I should have upgraded to give some support . . .

    Drat - I like Applixware a lot !

  • I think both points here are valid. There are a lot of people who'll choose the free equivalent if it's available, and most of them will not choose it for philosophical reasons; they'll choose it because it's cheaper.

    Having said that, though, if a commercial program offers you a specific feature that you absolutely must have, or a significant performance jump in features that you use regularly, you'll more than likely buy the commercial program. I played with StarOffice a bit and while I was impressed with it in some ways, it was a true performance pig--and in my work I'm regularly dealing with spreadsheets that have 20,000 rows or more. I can literally open the file, make a couple changes and close it again in Excel while StarOffice is still loading the document. (I think I may well have killed StarOffice after it had been trying for fifteen minutes.)

    Realistically, I don't think we're going to see the Linux community stop "competing" against commercial alternatives. For better and worse, the hacker mindset is different now than it was a decade ago; the idea of the cottage software house has given way to the "gift culture," a shift from direct (financial) reward to indirect rewards--partially the ego boost of name recognition, and to some degree the possibility of parlaying that recognition into employment in a field you presumably love (although probably not in a job whose success depends on selling commercial software, of course).

    There's probably an interesting sociological thesis lurking in there somewhere. Much of the "open source" movement is strongly--some might say excessively--libertarian, yet it's friendly only to certain types of entrepeneurship. It's downright inimical to "traditional" methods of selling software, despite the fact that it's a proven business model and that the proposed alternative--shifting software to a service-based and "value added" commodity business--is still largely theoretical. (There are software companies that derive a significant portion of their income through support contracts, I believe, but they're still selling proprietary software--and would have no compelling business reason to become open.)

  • The only way to get someone to chose your software over a free alternative is to offer something that is not available, yet needed, and somehow prevent someone else from doing the same thing for free. This may be the one pitfall to the entire open source movement and any companies looking to make a profit off of it. IE: anything you produce, someone else will release for free and put you out of buisness. can you say Netscape?

  • If someone is offering a quality Linux office suite ... don't screw them over by releasing a free alternative.

    Pardon me while I shed crocodile tears. Maybe we should hold a bake sale for the poor, beleaguered proprietary software company. ApplixWare doesn't have a God-given right to my $99, $49, or $1.

    The GNU project and the Linux community are "screwing" the proprietary Unix vendors.

    GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of competition. ... If your business is selling an operating system, you will not like GNU, but that's tough on you.

    --Richard Stallman, The GNU Manifesto [gnu.org]

    Free software trickles up. As it moves to the desktop, office software is a logical next step. That's just tough on ApplixWare.
  • This is disappointing news. I've been running Applixware since the 4.3.7 days when sold by RedHat. Applixware 5.0 was the best yet and I found it to work superior to Office2K, and I definitely like it better than StarOffice 5.x. To me, it was well worth the $100USD price ($50USD is a bargin). I guess I'll be looking at Koffice when it is ready...hope it runs under both gnome, KDE, and any other desktop I'm in the mood for at the time.
  • freshmeat.net, man.

    Found utilities to convert Word documents to HTML, Postscript, and other nifty formats.

    I've never needed a way to batch-convert spreadsheets, so I haven't looked for that (I work for a printing company), but most of our internal forms are in Excel format, and Staroffice opens them just fine.
  • and if you look at the NASDAQ as a whole, every company on there will be at or below 7 bucks by the end of next week. The market is doing a lot of things right now, it is weeding out the companies that IPO'd within the last 2-3 years that have no product and no revenue model. It is also overcompensating for the companies that do have a revenue models that are not doing as phenominally well as some of the fooish "get rich quick" investors had hoped.

    Red Hat is not a multi-trillion dollar company, odds are that it won't be - but that doesn't mean that it is not a successful company. Just because a company doesn't completely dominate a market by ruling with a strangle hold doesn't mean that it is not a successful company.
  • I presume, of course, that you actaully used Applix, Star Office, Koffice, Word Perfect Office 2000, and Abi Word under Linux.

    I have found that the proprietary office suites are generally better than the free ones. Word Perfect has had problems with being buggy, but is an excellent office suite. Applix is not as full-featured as Word Perfect, but is a very stable and solid offering.

    Star Office is a good suite, but has a lot of rough edges that Applix doesn't havem such as the inability to change the color scheme of the suite, and poorer rendering of fonts as you type the document.

    - Sam

  • Linux has thrived, partly due to the support of
    corprate sponsers. I guess the question is can Linux keep up with the sponsors it's killing off,
    and without the sponsors will the quality of
    the free software keep increasing at the rate it
    has been?
  • It is sort of the point behind the entire open source movement: free wins, proprietary loses.

    No, it is not the point of the "entire open source movement". It is the point of some of the zealots within the movement, sure. Some of us however have more of a live-and-let-live attitude.

  • The ghetto-Linux analogy appears to be somewhat far-fetched. The Linux buildings are maintained rather nicely, and nobody needs to spend any money on them.

    Some of them are, some of them aren't. The ones that are maintained are often those with some corporate backing. Nothing is free, software costs developer time which is a limited resource.

    If you want the Linux world to deterioate into a proprietary mass market wasteland,

    This is an obvious straw man. you don't need to chase away all the application vendors to develop a free OS.

  • I use Applixware on my system at home. I also have WordPerfect 8 and have used Star Office. Out of the three, I like Word Perfect's word processor, Applixware's Spreadsheet (I'm not a heavy Spreadhseet user) and Star Office's Integration.

    With the 5.0 release of Applixware, they converted everything over to GTK+. Unfortunately, it seemed to me to be a little less stable than previous versions. Also the spell checker interface was a bit weird to use for anyone who was used to the way Microsoft integrated it into Word. (i.e. Right click, see options, select.) Also I had a few random crashes which I attribute to GTK+ and pixmap themes.

    I'm not sure Applix, or Vistasource, or Smartbeak or whatever really promoted Applixware as an office suite. They always seemed to get little mention in the press when compared to Star Office, Word Perfect Office, or even KOffice. I think they could have done a better job. I also think the whole "Vistasource" split off was rather confusing. Who am I buying my upgraded Applixware Office from? Is there an upgrade?

    I'm sorry to see Applixware get out of the desktop arena, as they've got a product that is really good. However, I wouldn't say this is the death knell of commercial software on Linux. Hell, we haven't even seen many commercial products for Linux. :)

  • Drat - I like Applixware a lot !

    You and me both! We were just about to pull the trigger and convert our entire office (would have been some 10-15 licenses) to Applix 5.0 after successfully evaluating one (legally purchased) copy -- now we'll be stuck on star office a little longer, until Koffice or gnome office are sufficiently far along ...
  • I've been a longtime applix user. I've tried star office but IMHO I want an office suite that does office things, not re-implement windows95 in all it's bloated glory. S.O. was slow, had intensive system requirements, and was very prone to bugs and crashes. Applix more-or-less did what I expected it to. Although the open-source alternatives have been getting better they still lag behind most of the features available in applix. One place that applix was weak is the lag in MS-office import filters.. they always seemed to be a generation behind. Ah well, I should just spring for VMware personal and run windows in a window.

    -- Greg
  • I know its not a big thing, and that /. would post ahigher concentration of this, but it is relevant to the discussion that two potentially or big time players have withdrawn, so yes I realize this is useless, buti ts fun to talk about and guess at, especially with purely office style applications

    So its hard to prove a trend, but we are talking about office apps here not just linux apps in general right? That is what I was thinking when I posted this

    Jeremy

  • Service and support do not scale well

    Which means, no big corporations will get a lot of money out of Linux, but independent consultants will.

    However, if I was a VALinux founder, I wouldn't worry much. If they sold their stock at $300 the first day, it doesn't matter if a year later it's going for less than $10. They are too busy spending it to worry.

  • If you can't adapt and overcome obsticales, you will lose in the long run every time. Its too bad, though because that was the only mature and native Office program for *nix. True, StarOffice and KOffice are out there, but SO is too bloated and looks like Win95, which I don't want. And KOffice is still in development. Oh well, I suppose I can just use Gobe Productive [gobe.com] for BeOS [be.com] or Office2k.

    -------------
    He who doesn't evolve, dies.

  • It was funny.

    Between the poor moderation and the unimaginative crap that has been passed off as humour lately, it's hard to find the good stuff around here.

    I like amusing posts. Slashdot at -1 nested used to be a hoot. We need more signal to noise ratio with regard to humour as well. And moderators who know when something is intended at humour, even though they may have a pickle up there rear and really don't get it, should stick to moderating up those things they do like. Or at least moderate with relevence.

  • Stock price going from $300 to $10 will tend to piss your share holders off quite a bit. Not to mention that the people working their, that received options, no longer have much of an investment in the company...

    So you have angry sharholders and a suddenly under motovated work force... yup, sounds like a dot-com startup to me.

    ~Sean
  • That link up there to Applix is wrong -- applix.com has nothing about Applixware. It should be a link to Applixware.Com [applixware.com], or to the company site that you'll be redirected to: VistaSource [vistasource.com].

  • VistaSource Response to the Article (Score:5)

    by gzub ( 33942 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @01:09PM (#595470) Homepage
    This letter is in response to the article "Applix Gives Up on the Linux
    Desktop" written by Robin Miller and posted on NewsForge on 11/28/00.

    It is the belief of VistaSource, Inc. that some of the statements made
    in this article are incorrect, and some of the quotations made by RJ
    Grandpre were taken out of context. To correct some of the statements
    made in this article, please note the following:

    * VistaSource is not "throwing in the desktop towel." VistaSource will
    still produce and sell its desktop product through traditional and
    online retailers and through its own online store. VistaSource has also
    committed to future releases of Anyware Desktop (formerly Applixware)
    and will continue to provide the same quality product and level of
    service to its existing customers.

    * The real news is the change of focus from a company that focuses on
    desktop applications to one that is forging the way server-centric and
    web-based applications. This shift in focus was announced on August
    15th, 2000 at Linux World in San Jose. For the complete release which
    further describes this strategic shift, please visit:
    http://www.vistasource.com//news/press/pr_966348 46 4

    * Active development continues for BOTH Anyware Desktop (Applixware) and
    the server version, Anyware Application Server. Both products are
    recognized as integral components of the VistaSource product mix.

    Thank you for your attention and promptness in correcting this matter.

    Regards,
    Allison Antalek
    Marketing Communications
    VistaSource, Inc.
  • It's called being able to run KDE's applications under Gnome just as long as I have the qt library installed. I run Kdevelop just fine under Gnome, so I would also hope the KOffice will also run under gnome. Comprende?
  • MS is a monopoly. The rules are different for monopolies.

    (Yes, I know I shouldn't feed the trolls :)
  • ...is here. [bc.edu] Sorry, no pictures. [bc.edu]
  • I like ApplixWare. Superior to StarOffice, IMHO, and not all bundled together in one bulky package. Well, back to the old OpenOffice drawing board...

    If only they could have found *support* in the Linux community...

  • Applix's never understood the Linux market (Score:4)

    by richie123 ( 180501 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @11:40AM (#595475) Homepage
    Apllix always tried to sell their products the traditional boxed product way. But that system can never keep up with the speed of internet distributed, by the time their product hit the shelves, there was always a new update of Star Office, or Abisuite, or Koffice on the net. They never allowed you to "try before you buy" or evaluate their product over the net, So why would anyone buy their porduct if you can try out every other product first?
  • or are somebody not thinking straight?

    First they talk about how they can't comptete etc. But then they say that they will still continue to dveleop both desktop an dserver versions? Is it just me or is that just what they have been doing all along?

    That menas that nothing has changed one bit. Everything is like it has always been. They will still develop new versions of both products, so whats the big deal?
  • Tuesday, November 28, 2000 will go down in the anals (misspelled on purpose) of history as the day that linux lost all of it's word processing applications.

    With a move that started with Adobe and Applix, all other companies that make linux word processing programs have bailed out. The last remaining two, emacs and vi, are expected to dissapear by 5:00pm EST. Ole' Pappy Torvalds, the creator of linux responded with, "What the hell?" Linux's arch nemesis, Microshaft, was unavailable for comment, but rumors are that they continue to work on their Linux word processor, WerDix.

  • "Mass-market" closed-source won't make it... (Score:3)

    by Ami Ganguli ( 921 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @11:41AM (#595478) Homepage

    I don't think this is the first closed-source software company that will fail on Linux. The fact is that mass-market proprietary software (with the possible exception of games) will never make it under Linux.

    If there are enough users to support an Applix, Corel, or Microsoft Office style suite, then there are enough Open Source developers who will build one. Even without StarOffice, KDE and Gnome both have efforts that, although a few years away from matching the big boys feature for feature, are "good-enough" for most users today.

    That doesn't mean there's no hope at all for proprietary stuff under Linux, but stick to vertical market applications (where you're not going to find an active developer community) or applications were you can sell support. Office apps just won't cut it.

  • Really? Is Red Hat out of business yet?

    The lesson I take from this is that free software kills the software-sales and software-license business models. Service and technical support are still valuable in a free-software environment.

    The other lesson I take from this is that Linux and its free-software adjuncts are getting into the quality/capability region where they can take on Microsoft for possession of the desktop. If Microsoft Office starts losing that battle, it's all over for the Wintel monopoly.
    M
    / \ ASCII ribbon against e-mail
    \ / in HTML and M$ proprietary formats.
    X
    / \

  • Back in 1992, when I was in the fifth grade, I had sent a letter to Applix (as part of a class project) asking if they had any used sheets of copy paper with only one side used. I got a reply in the form of a three-foot tall box filled with half-used copy paper, a bag of about 50 Applix Aster*x pencils, and a sweatband. For the next five months, all of our class assignments had parts of a software manual on the back; I do remember that it was some program for the Macintosh (was 1992 before or after System 7?).

    Unfortunately, I don't have anything left over from that experience. However, I still marvel at their overwhelming contribution to our class.

  • Free software keeps commercial software valuable (Score:3)

    by GlitchZ ( 205899 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @11:42AM (#595481)
    Point in case here. If you are going to charge exorbient amounts of money for something then it had better be worth it. Apparetnly Free Office Suites have gotten to the point that they so the same job as over-priced suites. Now if they made something revolutionary they would be able to make money easily. This is just keeping corporations from getting comfortable with selling the same OLD thing in a shinier box.
  • Is the competition rough, or maybe are there just not all that many users who use Linux as a desktop OS and want a full-featured but not MS-compatible Office suite?

  • Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!!

  • Yes, the trend is that two companies with names beginning with "A" exited the Linux desktop market. Does Axis have a desktop product?

    If you want us to look for a trend, can you show us a chart of the number of applications added to/withdrawn from the Linux market? Or 26 charts, so we can see the trends according to the first letter of each company?

  • WTF! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Jesus people! pay a little more attention! If you read the article, they are not pulling the product. It just won't be "aggressively marketed" anymore. That means the company (VistaSource [vistasource.com] now, Applix has moved on to other things) will be banking on other things, but the product will still exist.
  • I've used (and paid for) all the pay-for office suites under Linux, and the only one that's still on my hard disk is Applix. I would be very sorry to have to do without it. It is lightweight, small footprint, fast, solid, reliable, intuitive. By comparison, StarOffice is bloated, clumsy, slow, fragile and balky; the only advantage that SO has is that it is better at reading MicroSoft files. I can't really think of an advantage that WordPerfect has, but there must be one.

  • Staroffice is a memory monster. If ApplixWare was more efficient, and supported similar features, I'd gladly pay the $80-100 (?) bucks for it.

    ApplixWare is much more efficient, and does support similar features.

  • But has no source code available. Source code availability is a huge advantage, both from a practical POV (native versions for other versions such as *BSD, which is good for interoperability) and from a moral POV.

    I'm glad to see failures of commercial closed source software for Linux. It means that the threat that Linux could have been for OSS goes away: If Linux would attract too many closed source commercial software, this would be negative for open source initiatives (the incentive to create them would fade) and be very disadvantageous for both other UNICES and also for the open source movement in general.

    This only shows the strength of open source, apparently it creates applications that are good enough or better, not making it worthwhile to spend much money on programs.

    Btw for europeans $100 nowadays is quite a lot with the strong dollar. A year ago that would have been only $70 or less.
  • and don't forget...

    cost of 256MB RAM upgrade, 1GHz Athlon CPU and Asus A7V motherboard to run StarOffice at the same speed as MS Office on a Celeron 400: a fucking shitload.
  • --What if she's really cute?

    --If she's really cute then I believe her.

  • I've got all the GPL'd office "productivity" suites I'll ever need. All of these stupid shrinkwraped boxes people seem to value either contain something to counteract some huge screw up of Microsoft's (virus scanning software, the entire norton catalog, etc...) or some badly written resume writer or junky recipe db, except for a few of the games its just a bunch of worthless crap.

    The fact is real programs come via apt-get. The junk comes shrinkwrapped.
  • Wait... I thought you said that the linux distro's would earn their keep selling boxed sets with manuals? But if they cost $0, where's their money?
    Yes. Physical media, books, telephone support agreements... these are all things with per-copy value. It's also separate from the software (and the right to use the software) itself.
    M
    / \ ASCII ribbon against e-mail
    \ / in HTML and M$ proprietary formats.
    X
    / \
  • Linux isn't going to make it in the home market. Think about it... did Unix make it? Raise your hands if you know how to use Unix. Good; now keep them up if your mother knows how. Hey, where'd you all go? There's a reason why Windows sells so well - all the easy apps are written for it. Yeah, Office is a gross oversimplification, and don't even get me started on AOL, but at least you don't have to compile them before using them. And if you don't? Go without needed updates or be at the mercy of others to do it for you. If Linux is to make it to desktops, it'll be in the scientific community, with a support staff to handle this stuff for the researchers. There, its extensibility and ease of modification will blow Windows out of the water. But for Joe Schmo who just wants to e-mail his kids at college? Linux is cracking an egg with a drill press. Wrong tool, too much power - same mess.
  • Redhat, and any other Linux distro companies only hope for survival is keeping their distributions needlessly complex?

    Afterall, that'll be the only revenue they can count on, correct?

    Make the distribution needlessly complex, and nobody will bother with it; they'll install something that's simpler and works better (I've been hearing great things about Debian). The revenue will come from people willing to fork out for a boxed set with a book, because of the backing it has; if something goes wrong, paying for the set gives them someone to call (and makes them feel good about supporting the effort). All of the un-paid "technical support" done by people testing configurations, writing drivers, and doing other things either on their own time or for the benefit of their companies (which they re-release under the GPL so nobody else has to re-invent that wheel)... that comes with Linux at a list price of $0.00.
    M
    / \ ASCII ribbon against e-mail
    \ / in HTML and M$ proprietary formats.
    X
    / \
  • I just got junk mail yesterday from Applix touting their Linux support with an offer to purchase Applix for Linux ... just before they dump support!
  • I've been using Applix Office at home, and I like it a lot. But moving files from home to work, where they have Windows, is tough.

    It's a wonder that they existed this long without full compatibility with Office...not that Office is the best, but it's definitely the most common.

    Actually, it's toughest in the other direction (work to home) because I have to remember to save files in earlier file formats; as usual, I am the weakest link in this chain. What I would really love is one of those programs that seem to grow up around the Mac ecosphere to translate PC files into other files -- even just to plain ol' text would be good if it would help me read it.

    That said, one major flaw for me is the non-portability of spreadsheets with certain types of formulas in them between Applix's spreadsheet program and Excel.
  • ...but what about FreeBSD? AFAIK, StarOffice is only available (natively) for Linux, and according to Sun's FAQ [sun.com]:

    27. Does StarOffice run on Linux PPC/PowerMac/Alpha computers?

    StarOffice needs a Computer with SPARC or Intel processor, but does not run on a Mac or Alpha PC.

    ApplixWare has always been fairly popular among the FreeBSD crowd (and others, I'm sure, but that's where I've heard the most about it), simply because it bothered to support other {U,Li}n[iu]xen than Linux/x86. It's also significantly less bloated than, say, StarOffice.

    It'd be nice if they let their current version float out there for free (Free is probably too much to hope for), but I guess that's unlikely as that would compete with Anyware Office.

    I'm pretty sure I've seen Anyware Office, actually, a while ago. With some significant feature addition, it would be usable, and as long as they don't fall victim to creeping featuritis, it should run fairly quickly on newer JVMs. I have to wonder about how successful it'll be, especially since it's hard to even remember *snicker* Corel's offering...

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