The OpenOffice application suite, developed and distributed by OpenOffice.org exceeded the 40 million download threshold, a solid value currently nearing the 10% market share value in the field of office software applications.

The success of this application suite can be explained considering the fact that it's very simple to use, available for all platforms and offered in 76 different languages. The most important alternative to Microsoft Office offers practically the same main functions, for free, and this time around all that's for free is also good, otherwise there wouldn't be an explanation for the 40 million downloads.

In fact, if the reports offered by the analysis companies are accurate, OpenOffice already has a 10% market share, at least according to IDC, Jupiter and Gartner, while Forrester is even more optimistic about the open-source solution, evaluating its market share at 15%.

The performance is at least commendable, especially considering the fact that OpenOffice is only three years old, and Microsoft's Office has been around for almost 10 years now. And the growth tendency of the OpenOffice solution shows no signs of halting, the beta 2 version (released earlier this year) being downloaded at an even greater rate than the more stable 1.1.4 version.

And Microsoft has plenty to worry about, since one of the IT markets with the greatest growth potential has recently discovered the advantages of OpenOffice. India is "guilty" for several million downloads of the open source office suite, this initiative belonging to the Indian government itself, which will be in charge of distributing several million CDs containing OpenOffice, FireFox and other open source applications.