PC World reports that OpenOffice.org’s new 3.0 release has been downloaded 3 million times in the past week, with 80% of these downloads coming from Windows users.
The successful introduction of the open source office suite came despite the group’s download servers being temporarily overwhelmed by demand for the new software last week.
Only 221,000 downloads by Linux users were recorded, leading John McCreesh, head of marketing for OpenOffice.org, to suggest a massive undercount. McCreesh said 90% of Linux users traditionally receive OpenOffice.org updates straight from their Linux distribution’s vendor, which would explain the relatively low Linux count.
Many non-English versions of OpenOffice.org are also distributed by alternate Web sites, and OpenOffice.org is still widely distributed via free CD-ROMs in magazines, said McCreesh.
I think it’s good that more users of proprietary systems are using free software. It reduces the learning curve to switching to fully free systems.
UPDATE: Meall Dubh’s new post (which is PC World’s source) says that that number has climbed to 5 million.