A Free Lunch from IBM?

Kudos to IBM for its decision to offer its Symphony suite for free. It�s a nifty integrated office productivity package that�s been around for many years but could never compete against the Microsoft Office juggernaut.Now that it�s free, it will be interesting to see what kind of market reception it gets and what Redmond�s response will be � particularly since it has a respectable corporate ancestry (remember Lotus Development Corp.?) and comes to market from a company with a three-letter name synonymous with business computing. For me, that�s quite a bit more compelling than free offerings like StarOffice (too flaky) and Google applications (too different).

Here�s the link for more information on IBM�s announcement:

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22326.wss