Contributed by Benjamin Horst | osViews This article was syndicated under osViews' Open Content License. April 22, 2005 12:23 AM

By all appearances, Appleworks has been superseded by the newly-released iWork package. While iWork hasn't matched all of Appleworks' features yet, for the things it does, it shines. Throw in a spreadsheet and basic vector graphics applications, and Appleworks will have been reincarnated for the 21^st century!

Meanwhile, Appleworks itself is still available from the Apple Store, yet it hasn't received any major developer attention in years. The program appears to have entered its dotage, but I believe retirement would be premature. New life could be breathed into Appleworks so that its long pedigree and large userbase on multiple platforms would not be lost.

True, it is typical that a program in this position would be abandoned. But today, a more logical option is the open source route. Give it away to a loving family. Let the people who care about it the most decide its ultimate fate.

To further consolidate its position as a champion of the blended open source approach, Apple should put another chip onto the table. Having benefited from open source projects including BSD and KHTML, and given improvements back to the community already, Apple could take another step and release Appleworks under an open source license such as the GPL.

Perhaps Apple is concerned that this could cannibalize sales of iWork, but I don't believe that would happen. In the short term, Apple is innovating at such a rapid pace that it would be extremely difficult for Appleworks to adopt the same features. A community of developers, testers and users would take some time to form, allowing iWork to keep racing ahead in the meantime.

More importantly, in the long term it's likely that an open source community around Appleworks would want to take the software in some new direction that doesn't parallel and compete with Apple's plans for iWork. Nevertheless, what an open source Appleworks community does with the software would provide valuable market research for Apple, and could help define the priorities to be developed in iWork itself or in other Apple products. An open source sibling project is a brilliant market research tool for a savvy software development company.

From the perspective of a potential user, an open source Appleworks would be a great way to guarantee that old documents saved in AW's formats could be opened and used in the future, sparing Apple itself that concern. It would provide continuity while blocking the criticism that users were being involuntarily migrated to a new program.

Finally, it would provide greater global compatibility, because one of the first features an open source development team is likely to add to Appleworks is use of the OpenDocument file formats as its default. (OpenDocument is the newly-approved standard set of file formats for word processing, spreadsheets, slideshows, vector drawing and other types. It is used by OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, KOffice, Abiword and others.)

In the same way that IBM recently released its Cloudscape database to the open source world, yet made it very compatible with the proprietary IBM DB2 database, Apple could release Appleworks, yet make sure it maintains close compatibility with iWork.

This system, with an open source program that provides for the needs of most users, but a simple migration path to a compatible corporate product for niche users, works for the OpenOffice.org/StarOffice duo, the SugarCRM family of products, and a growing number of others. It could work very well for the Appleworks/iWork duo too. In fact, sales of iWork would probably increase, because customers would feel secure that a much broader base of users surrounds and cushions them from being orphaned.

In summary, the logical best future for the Appleworks suite is that it be released into the world under an open source license. Current users of Appleworks, users of iWork, Apple itself, and the open source community will all benefit as a result. Let's hope Apple agrees with this analysis and decides to give Appleworks to a loving family that will continue to care for it into the future.



Related Stories
Appleworks and OpenOffice.org -- A Perfect Match?  January 20, 2004 3:59 PM
Apple Competitors Retire Products and Services  July 12, 2003 12:15 AM
Wordprocessing Without SomethingOffice  August 6, 2002 1:03 AM