This is one of many short video segments which will be added to the Digital Tipping Point (DTP) archive. Thanks to Thomas King, a writer for Linux.com and LXer, for doing the rough editing for this series of interview segments!

In this series of 18 interview segments, Sun Microsystems Senior Engineering Director Joerg Heilig talks about OpenOffice.org, a project that he was responsible for within Sun. He talks about the economic motivation for Sun to sponsor OpenOffice.org; OpenOffice.org's competition with Microsoft; the importance of free file formats; and how Sun interacts with the OpenOffice.org community council. This is a great interview with the guy who was responsible for what has become arguably one of the top five Free Open Source Software projects in the world. OpenOffice.org fills a critical need for a Free (as in Free Speech) office productivity suite that is capable of competing with Microsoft's juggernaut Office productivity suite. If the real world digital tipping point does arrive and Free Open Source Software reaches 51% on the consumer desktop, it will be in no small measure thanks to OpenOffice.org.

In segment 01 (Tape 150~b001), Joerg says that he is the engineering director for Star Office and OpenOffice.org at Sun Microsystems. At the time of this interview, he was located in Hamburg, Germany. There are 150 employees within Sun working on OpenOffice.org at any one time working on OpenOffice.org. All of the source code for OpenOffice.org is in the public repositories. The public nature of this work is really different from the more secretive way that it was done before OpenOffice.org was open-sourced. He came to Sun Microsystems right before Sun Microsystems acquired Star Division, the company that produced Star Office in 1999, which was open-sourced as OpenOffice.org. Shortly thereafter, they decided to open-source OpenOffice.org. It was a huge change. Joerg switches topic and defines some basic terms, starting with 'ISV', which means independent service vendor. It is difficult for a program to get support by ISVs unless they are widely used.

In segment 02 (Tape 150~001-002), Joerg says that several large ISV customers have actually asked for Star Office / OpenOffice.org solutions. He switches topic to talk about the relationship between Star Office and OpenOffice.org. Sun supports both. Star Office is a paid product. OpenOffice.org is an open source project. Star Office comes with added features to make the paid package more attractive and convenient. He lists these advantages in the video.

In segment 03 (Tape 150~003), Joerg says that it is important that end users use OpenOffice.org to build up a community. Enterprise customers won't use a product if they don't like it, If the workers at a company like the product, they are morely willing to use it at work. They find out about the product from getting it bundled with new computers (OEMs) and from the retail space. Star Office has succeeded in retail and OEMs. Star Suite is really popular in Japan. It sells lots of copies. It is a subscription model. It is a disruptive model of how to enter a market that was dominated by one vendor before [Microsoft]. More than 1 million copies were sold in Germany. There was also a deal in Ontario, Canada, where a large number of Star Office subscriptions were donated. They have donated more than $5 billion US worth of Star Office licenses worldwide. They like to support education because schools are always cash-strapped.

This footage is our raw rough-cut footage. It lacks transitions, music, special effects or finish rendering. It is our "source code". Please feel free to rip, mix and burn this footage consistent with our Creative Commons license as disclosed on this page.

All of Joerg's interview segments can be found here:

http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv150_sf_01_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_modified_b_001.ogg (segment 01)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv150_sf_01_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_001_002.ogg> (segment 02)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv150_sf_01_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_003.ogg (segment 03)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv150_sf_01_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_003.ogg (segment 04)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv150_sf_01_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_003.ogg (segment 05)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv150_sf_01_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_003.ogg (segment 06)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv150_sf_01_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_003.ogg (segment 07)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv150_sf_01_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_003.ogg (segment 08)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv150_sf_01_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_003.ogg (segment 09)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv151_sf_02_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_001.ogg (segment 10)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv151_sf_02_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_002.ogg (segment 11)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv151_sf_02_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_003.ogg (segment 12)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv151_sf_02_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_004.ogg (segment 13)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv151_sf_02_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_005.ogg (segment 14)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv151_sf_02_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_006.ogg (segment 15)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv151_sf_02_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_modified_007_009.ogg (segment 16)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv152_sf_03_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_001.ogg (segment 17)
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv152_sf_03_joerg_heilig_sun_open_office_002.ogg (segment 18)


If you like this segment, please consider typing up a summary for it and emailing that summary to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt@gmail.com. Your work will be credited and posted on this page.

The DTP will be many, many films created by the global open source video community about how open source is changing their lives. We, the DTP crew, are submitting this footage for anyone to rip, mix, and burn under the Creative Commons Attribute - ShareAlike license. We welcome edits, transcriptions, graphics, music, and animation contributions to the film. Please send a link for any contributions to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt@gmail.com.
Or, if you would like to contribute by directly transcribing this particular video segment, you can do so by going here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Tape_150

and typing the audio as you hear it into the wiki. Please be sure to add the transcription for this segment under: Segment 001, Joerg Heilig
You can find other ways to contribute by going to our wiki front page here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

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