Ed Moltzen

The Chart

March 12, 2007

The OpenOffice Project has sent a letter to Michael Dell, showering praise on Dell Inc.'s chairman and CEO and asking him to consider pre-loading OpenOffice onto PCs.

The letter is the result of a flood of requests on Dell's online suggestion box, IdeaStorm, for Dell PCs pre-loaded with both Linux operating systems and the open-source suite of desktop productivity applications. John McCreesh, marketing project lead for OpenOffice.org, also asked Dell to consider making a financial contribution to the software's development.

Let's have a conversation about how we could build an "OpenOffice.org supplied by Dell" product to give your customers what they are asking for. We'd also be happy to accept any financial contribution that Dell might offer to help ensure that OpenOffice.org continues to evolve in the future.

After launching IdeaStorm, tens of thousands of people posted requests for the Round Rock, Texas-based PC maker to pre-load open source software onto its PCs. Dell has not made promises, saying it would work to "certify" its PCs for some versions of Linux and would consider taking further action.

The OpenOffice software suite is available for download for free.