Awesome! Awesome to the max! A story like this always makes me happy. Open for the People!

One of my main concerns as a business owner or decision maker would be business continuity. Sure OpenOffice is pretty good but what guarantees does the business have of continued development or support - none.

Don't get me wrong I like the idea of Open Source software but it has it's flaws just like Microsoft.

Either the project is non-commercial and as such has no support or it's commercial and ends up more expensive than MS. Just look at VMWare or Redhat.

Open Source projects have support just like commercial products have support. As long as there's a demand for the product, support will exist. If no one wants to use it, support and development will probably disappear. Imagine if no one wanted to use Microsoft Office anymore and they all flocked to a different productivity suite. Chances of Microsoft continuing to support and develop a platform that wasn't in demand is probably zero.

Look at Windows 98. People *did* want to keep using Windows 98 (and some people still do) but development and support of that operating system went bye-bye anyway. Yes, I'm sure in terms of the standard business applications model, there is a risk of OpenOffice.org support vanishing, but I wouldn't say the risk is huge. "Lack of support" of open source products is very overstated, IMHO.

Personally I like what I've seen of Linux. I think Ubuntu and OpenOffice are doing a great job of making OpenSource more commercial [in terms of the polished finish].

I also think that VMWare has catapulted Linux back into focus of most companies and in the consumer market the EEEPC is drawing new people to Linux.

However I do still have reservations in regards to long term support and development when compared to MS. I know this might not be based on actual facts but it is the sense A I get from the situation.

Another concern I have is the sale of OpenSource projects to commercial entities.

For example the recent sales of Zen and MySQL.