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IBM Readies Free Symphony Suite for the Mac: Its Open Source Legacy

IBM announced today that its free office productivity software suite Lotus Symphony will be finalized in a version for the Macintosh later this month. The move will bring more competition for Microsoft Office on the Mac, and it will also represent strong competition for OpenOffice 3.0, which, as we covered here, was a big boost for Mac users of OpenOffice because version 3.0 is a true Aqua application. In addition to being optimized for Aqua in its Mac version, Symphony shares code and history with OpenOffice. Here are the details.

Lotus Symphony is actually very old, first released in 1984 as an integrated software suite for DOS back when Lotus was a powerhouse software company. It was among the first office productivity suites, and ultimately became a free offering known for its strong SHEET spreadsheet (rooted in Lotus' 1-2-3 past), and open standards. It supports Open Document Format (ODF), both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office file formats, and already runs on Linux and Windows. The beta of the Mac version is available now, and you can take online tours of Symphony's individual applications here.

But what few people realize is that Symphony's code has a long open source history. It is based on Eclipse Rich Client Platform, OpenOffice 1.1.4 and OpenOffice 2.0. One major difference between Symphony and pure open source office producivity suites is that IBM offers very low-cost support for its suite, as well as free wiki-based help and support from partners. As we discussed here, Microsoft has a long history of making a major issue out of the fact that freeware and open source productivity suites don't typically offer support while there is support for the Microsoft Office suite.

Mac-based businesses that require extensive support may want to look into Symphony as a cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office. (NeoOffice, a Mac-based, open source fork of OpenOffice is worth a look too, offering free forum-based support.) And, if you're disappointed with the Calc spreadsheet in OpenOffice, or other free alternatives such as Google's, the spreadsheet in Symphony is known to be very strong. There are also many extensions available for Symphony's individual applications, and some of them are already arriving for the Mac versions.

IBM has exerted its own influence over Symphony, and gone with its own licensing options, so even though the suite is free, it's not open source. It does have strong open source roots, though, and strong commonality with major parts of OpenOffice, making it a competitive suite to watch as it is finalized and offered for free for the Mac.

• OpenOffice
• microsoft office
• Lotus
• Symphony

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