BNET: Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 4: A Free (and Fabulous) Alternative to Microsoft Office

September 27 2010

Speaking of Lotus Symphony...

Let's face it: Microsoft Office is overkill for a lot of users. And if you don't need Outlook, you can easily get by with a suite that costs less -- a lot less. My Office alternative of choice: Lotus Symphony 3.

Symphony is like a more user-friendly, less feature-packed version of OpenOffice (which, incidentally, is the foundation upon which Symphony was built). ...

I use it on my laptop, and while I do occasionally miss a few of Office's amenities, for the most part it handles all my document needs. For free.
Link: BNET: Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 4: A Free (and Fabulous) Alternative to Microsoft Office > (Thanks, George)

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Symphony Lotus+Symphony  Add/View Comments [16]

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  1. 1  Dale Flannery  | 9/27/2010 4:55:59 PM

    Can it update/integrate Lotus Notes 8.5.2?

    If not, why not?

  1. 2  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 9/27/2010 5:43:55 PM

    Less features than OpenOffice? Is that right? Looking at Symphony 3 beta 4, stuff like the Data Pilot are BETTER than in OpenOffice.

  1. 3  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/27/2010 8:07:09 PM

    @1 Yes, you can install Symphony 3 as a plug-in update on Notes 8.5.2.

  1. 4  Erik Brooks  | 9/27/2010 8:27:59 PM

    @2 - I'd have to agree... overall I'd say it's a step up from OO (which wasn't bad to start with!)

  1. 5  Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 9/27/2010 11:20:20 PM

    Yes, we're only running Beta 3 and we are all very happy with the very improved GUI, the VB script support, and it's stability on the Mac is very good.

  1. 6  Patrick Kwinten http://quintessens.wordpress.com | 9/28/2010 12:26:05 AM

    please make it gold asap. companies do not rollout betas.

  1. 7  Jens Reimann  | 9/28/2010 2:14:51 AM

    { Link } (I know it is german, but I could not find another link at the moment) -> { Link }

    Maybe IBM should step in?!

  1. 8  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 9/28/2010 7:49:19 AM

    Jens beat me to it...

    But for those who haven't followed his link, the leading members of the OpenOffice.org community just announced that they're forking the project, and have set up The Document Foundation ({ Link }

    And leading members isn't just individuals - Red Hat, Novell, OASIS, Canonical, Google and more are listed as supporters.

    IBM Lotus Symphony is an earlier fork of OpenOffice.org's code base, and it's significantly different to OpenOffice.org in its interface, because it's wrapped in the Eclipse Rich Client Platform.

    But that doesn't mean that free exchange of back-end code might not be useful. File format converters, layout engines, scripting - I'm sure that IBM will have much to offer in those areas and more.

    The goal of the Document Foundation appears to be independence from a single company, which was one of the long outstanding criticisms of Sun holding such power over the OpenOffice.org project.

    As the owner of one of the most visible and modified forks from the OpenOffice.org code base, IBM should be in this effort.

    And please, don't let this new community dangle. Someone needs to make the decision today, and the announcement should go out today or tomorrow. IBM joining is the kind of thing that influences how people perceive Oracle's decision to join.

    (And Oracle do have an invitation to join, as the new community wants to avoid bad blood.)

    Symphony shouldn't stand alone in a vacuum, and if nothing else supporting the Document Foundation would be yet more real action behind IBM's commitment to better interoperability between productivity products.

    Go on Ed. Have a word in the appropriate ears. Please. :-)

  1. 9  Alan Bell http://www.theopenlearningcentre.com | 9/28/2010 8:48:21 AM

    Hi Ed, a comment on the document foundation and libre office would be great at this point, IBM's name is conspicuous by it's absence!

    Would a more open community around the office suite benefit IBM by being a better upstream code source for Symphony and the productivity editors? Did Symphony ever get an LGPL code drop from OpenOffice.org or is it still based on the 1.6 SISL licensed code? Does this announcement change anything? Would IBM like Oracle to maintain their OpenOffice.org with copyright assignments and provide a commercial licensed code drop to IBM? Inquiring minds need to know!

    In other news, how are things in the Yellowverse?

  1. 10  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/28/2010 9:51:21 AM

    The right people at IBM are considering the LibreOffice news and assessing how the communities will work. We're already very active with OpenOffice, OASIS, etc. I would say the company that is conspicuous by its absence, without participation in any community around OpenOffice, is Oracle.

  1. 11  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 9/28/2010 10:01:14 AM

    Ed,

    That's good news. Thanks for the update. :-)

    And yes, Oracle have seemed very quiet on this front since buying Sun, and weren't exactly involved before either...

    (And in my comment, I should have said "Oracles decision to join or not". Oh well.)

    I shall cease my Brill Grill, and hope you get no further such grillings today!

  1. 12  Alan Bell http://www.theopenlearningcentre.com | 9/28/2010 10:49:54 AM

    thanks Ed, and I totally agree that Oracle has failed to participate and brought this upon itself. The sands are slipping through their fingers somewhat, the community has moved on. Oracle can make their own mind up whether to follow, they have already decided not to lead.

  1. 13  Henning Heinz  | 9/28/2010 2:24:06 PM

    Sun made friends, Oracle made money. At the end money won.

    I have no use case for another fat desktop office suite but am following your efforts with interest.

  1. 14  Martin Gasparovic http://www.idev.sk | 9/29/2010 3:48:25 AM

    Thank you,

    but what about LotusScript as complement to Lotus Symphony basic and VBA ?

    There is allready a lot of LotusScript programmers.

    And what about open document format as replacement for "classic" rtf field format in Lotus Notes/Domino ?

    That will be nice.

    And web version . Something comparable to Google Docs, Microsoft Web office, Zoho office ?

    It's needed too ...

  1. 15  Henning Heinz  | 9/29/2010 6:28:50 AM

    @Martin,

    I would also like a web version preferable running on my own machines (with acceptable hardware requirements). I have seen references to IBM project Concorde which goes in this direction (cloud approach), see for example { Link } .

    Symphony has Lotusscript support for Office automation (serial letters, document creation ...).

  1. 16  George Paglia  | 10/14/2010 12:29:27 AM

    You're welcome Ed, anytime.

    (sorry I took so long to reply am in China training users on 8.5.x)