Open Source VS Microsoft?

With more and more open source product, and the increment of open source community, the question would somehow arise. Users, especially me, would definately look for free software rather than those with the need to purchase license in order to use it. However, Microsoft is still the one who dominates the software market even with arising free software avaiable..

Clearly, Microsoft continues to define the office space and likely will dominate office software for the foreseeable future. But an interesting question to ask is whether a group of volunteers -- however large -- can ever hope to measure up against Microsoft's millions of dollars. Gates and crew have poured countless programmer hours into Office over the past 20 years, while OpenOffice and other alternative product groups consist almost entirely of volunteers. Is the idea so far-fetched that a group of volunteers can compete successfully with Microsoft?

Because the two office suites are not on the same playing field in terms of development funding, it is difficult to equate Microsoft's programmer dollars against the time provided by open-source volunteers. But there are plenty of those in the open-source community who are willing to give that comparison a shot.

One of those is Jacqueline McNally, marketing project lead for OpenOffice.org. "When volunteers give freely of their efforts and time, it is often mistaken that we don't have value because we don't appear on a balance sheet," said McNally from her office in Perth, Australia. "It would be an interesting exercise if it were possible to put a value on the time contributed to OpenOffice, considering there are thousands of contributors providing millions of hours."

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