AbiSource Introduces Newest Employee

Abi the Ant accepts position as Open Source Evangelist

SAN JOSE, CA -- Tuesday, March 1st, 1999 -- AbiSource, Inc. appeared at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo today to introduce its newest team member, Abi the Ant. As the company's first full-time Open Source Evangelist, Abi will bring a powerful work ethic to a variety of roles at AbiSource.

Abi's role

"I'm very excited about joining the AbiSource team," commented Abi. "The time has come for the benefits of Open Source to be realized on the desktop. At AbiSource, I will have more opportunities to promote awareness of Open Source applications."

Abi, along with other members of the AbiSource team, will be showing demos of AbiWord, a full-featured Open Source word processor, available on multiple platforms. AbiWord is the first component of AbiSuite, a cross-platform office suite, entirely Open Source, being developed and coordinated by the AbiSource team.

Eric Sink, Founder and President of AbiSource, commented on the addition of Abi to the staff, "The rest of us thought we were working hard, but this ant puts us to shame. There are a lot of advantages to having six legs, not to mention the ability to lift 100 times your own body weight. We're expecting Abi to be a big help in our efforts to bring Linux into wider acceptance as a desktop platform."

Abi at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo

AbiSource invites anyone who is interested in Open Source applications to come and have their picture taken with Abi in booth #1436 at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. The pictures taken will be added to the photo gallery on Abi's personal home page, at http://www.abisource.com/~abi/.

"LinuxWorld should be an outstanding event," said Abi. "I'm really hoping that I get a chance to meet Tux the penguin. I've admired Tux's contributions to the Linux community for several years, and I'd sure like to get some advice from the most successful Open Source icon in the industry."

About AbiSource

AbiSource, Inc. is privately held, and was founded in January 1997 with a management and development team that has six years of prior experience working together. The AbiSource mission is to become the leading provider of Open Source, full-featured, professionally supported desktop applications.

For more information, see the AbiSource Web site at http://www.abisource.com or contact Scott Boesch at AbiSource, Inc., telephone: 217-356-0105 ext. 642; email: scott@abisource.com.

AbiSource, AbiWord, AbiSuite and the AbiSource logo are trademarks of AbiSource, Inc. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. Open Source is a Certification Mark of The Open Source Initiative. Windows and Windows NT are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.