NW Business Intelligence Consulting

Yesterday I came across a posting by Mike Kavis on Open Source Business Resource under the Q&A section. A reader asked how individuals or small businesses could give back to the Open Source Community. Mike's answer struck a chord for me and coincidentally at a time when I'm getting a lot of benefit from the contributions made by the Open Source Community. Mike had one simple suggestion which fit quite nicely with the work I'm doing at the moment, all volunteer. It was simply to pass along the message that Open Source works. In particular OpenOffice works. A lot of people still don't get it or don't know it.

First I have to point out the obvious, I'm in the consulting business. I'm almost always inside other people's work environments and have almost nothing to say about what tools or data formats are used on the job. I'm expected to conform. The client's needs come first. There is very little accommodation for "new" ways of doing things. When people are paying you consulting rates they don't want to pay for experiments! Still, I feel very strongly that as a small business owner I'm being forced to purchase Microsoft Office products that do not meet my needs. I'm not just talking features here. There's too much fat, too much overhead and too little choice. There's a lot more to it than that but my point is not so much why, but that I did choose to go with OpenOffice, the alternative to Microsoft Office.

So, for the last several years I have managed to successfully exist in a Microsoft dominated world as a consultant using only OpenOffice for all my documentation, spreadsheet and presentation needs. In most cases clients never know, or care, I'm using OpenOffice. Occasionally I do get tripped up with Excel spreadsheet formats and have to ask for another copy but if I'm proactive I can avoid that. Sometimes I get a badly formatted Word document that seems to only get worse when it passes through OpenOffice but for all I know that could be user ineptitude on my part. I can usually sort that out by cleaning it up and passing it back in better shape than it arrived with "my compliments". OpenOffice just keeps getting better and I learn more when I'm challenged to despite not really working too hard at it (I'm not really that lazy, I've just got lots of other software to keep up with!).

All in all, I think that if I can do it as a consultant, moving from client to client where I'm expected to fit in that a lot more people can do it too. A lot more people can be free to chose an alternative. I think the very fact that we have a choice is essential. I donate whenever I can to the Open Source projects I make use of. You don't have to but do it if you can. However, just using Open Source matters! Open Source works. Try it some time.

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