if a business cannot afford the standard then it is understandable. otherwise it just doesn't make sense to go with something like 'lindows' that has to change it name every few months or years?
also, I looked into lindows a few years ago & the 'click-and-run' software that was mentioned was a subscription thing that required a monthly payment of something like $10 or $15 a months. Now is that a load of crap or what?
Amateurs? I know some people who code for Linux/Open Source. They are neither amateurs nor partime programmers, quite the opposite in fact.
So be carfull with your labels. The truth will surprise you.
As for budgets, even the largest corps are concerned with the bottom line. If they can get the same bang for the buck or less, you know they'll consider it closely. In fact many large corporations have outsourced their IT due to budgets and the fact that they're locked into M$ and their ever increasing pricing structures doesn't help.
So again, looking for alternatives to lessen those expenditures will *always* be an option.
The Microsoft Office product can hardly be referred to as a "standard". It is not intuitive, lacks functionality, and was specifically designed to bundled so as to destroy some of MS's competition. Corel Office products are vastly superior to MS'.
Once a misguided salesperson for DELL, when I was purchasing a computer, asked me if I wanted to "upgrade" my Corel Office Suite to MS Office. He was surprised to learn that I considered it to be a "downgrade" and that I wasn't interested. Surprising what a little propaganda and the misuse of the word "standard" will do.
OSS gets a lot of corporate support with full-time programmers. And well-developed OSS projects such as Linux don't let amateurs contribute. They can submit, but their submissions don't have a chance in hell of getting into the production code.
go with something like 'lindows' that has to change it name every few months or years?
Microsoft had a trademark infringement suit against Lindows (sounds too much like "Windows") that was going very badly for Microsoft. Lindows changed their name because Microsoft paid them off rather than lose the case.