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Sapila launches open source OfficeWare

By Stephen Whitford, ITWeb contributor
Johannesburg, 30 Jul 2003

Local company Sapila will next week launch its first open source office productivity suite, OfficeWare. The company describes it as the first open source office program to be developed by a local firm.

"The program is based on open source code from the Sun Microsystems' Star Office Suite," says Sapila MD Mark Mackay. "But we have developed the code further and will also launch an open source Web site that will have all of OfficeWare's source code."

He says by providing the source code, Sapila hopes to include as many local developers as possible. Mackay and two US partners originally launched the company in the US, but moved their base to SA a year ago with a view to working closely with the local market.

"Our aim is to create a local development forum that produces and improves local software for developing countries," he says.

With a program like Microsoft Office Suite selling for around $250, Mackay says developing countries are forced to suffer under the exchange rate when purchasing office productivity suites. However, he says OfficeWare will be substantially cheaper, selling at R650.

Mackay says Sapila will target government, corporates and small to medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as the average man in the street. OfficeWare will be free for institutions of learning.

"By using Sapila software, government would not only be saving money by buying our product, but the money spent would stay in the country as opposed to going to one of the multinationals outside the country. OfficeWare will also help corporates and SMEs by reducing the total cost of ownership.

"While we haven't signed any major deals yet, we are 90% along the road to signing two big local contracts," Mackay says.

Sapila has secured local distributor Eurobyte and Mackay says the company is still looking for distribution partners and a local original equipment manufacturer.

OfficeWare will be available for sale from Monday and can be downloaded from sapila.com. It will have an install size of 135MB and users will have a 30-day trial period after which they will have to pay R650. The suite is compatible with both Windows and Linux, and includes word processor, spreadsheet and presentation programs.

Mackay says Sapila also plans to add an Outlook Express-type program along with a browser to the OfficeWare suite within the next year.

All the source code and binaries will be available from sapila.com or sapila.org, which will go live on 6 August. Online support will be available from the Web site.

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