OPEN SOURCE APPLICATIONS MOVE TO THE DESKTOP

AbiSource announces development of fully-supported cross-platform word processor

SAN JOSE -- Friday, August 21st, 1998 -- AbiSource, Inc. announced today its debut into the Open Source community. The announcement was made in San Jose at the Open Source Developer Day sponsored by O'Reilly and Associates.

AbiSource will develop Open Source desktop productivity applications, including a word processor, a spreadsheet, and complimentary tools. All of the company's applications will be fully Open Source, cross-platform, and professionally supported. An early developer release of the company's first product, AbiWord, is available now with full source code under the terms of the AbiSource Public License.

AbiWord

The first AbiSource product will be a full-featured word processor called AbiWord. Full source code for an early developer release of AbiWord is available at the AbiSource website (http://www.abisource.com). Supported platforms currently include Linux and Windows 95/98/NT. Other platforms will be supported in the future.

"We are very excited about this initial developer release of the AbiWord source code," said Eric W. Sink, founder and president of AbiSource, Inc., "AbiWord is well on its way to becoming a full-featured, easy-to-use solution for business and personal word processing."

AbiWord will be available for end users, with professional technical support, by the end of the year. As the end-user releases of its applications become available, AbiSource will begin to derive revenues from the sale of ancillary services and resources, including technical support, boxed editions with user manuals, and consulting services.

The Open Source Movement

Open Source software, such as AbiWord, is freely licensed for widespread, unrestricted usage and distribution, including source code. While the concept has been in use for well over a decade, the recent ubiquity of Internet access has provided a means for rapid, widespread distribution of free software. Unhindered by legal restrictions, Open Source software programs can reach a massive base of users much faster than their more traditional, proprietary counterparts.

The Open Source community has quietly produced some of the most widely-used software in the world, including Apache, the most popular Web server on the Internet, and Linux, a popular full-featured Open Source operating system.

A small but growing number of commercial software companies are successfully building the Open Source concept into a viable business model by deriving their revenues from the sale of ancillary services and companion products.

"Having established itself with dominant market share in several server-side markets, the Open Source movement is ready for the desktop. We believe that just as mainstream PC hardware has become a commodity market, mainstream desktop software will eventually follow the same path," commented Sink.

Tim O'Reilly, founder and president of O'Reilly and Associates, commented on the AbiSource announcement by saying, "It's very exciting to see new startup companies focused on Open Source. This is a strong indicator of the momentum in the Open Source community today."

The Importance of Open Source on the Desktop

AbiSource intends to move rapidly to offer companion products, including a spreadsheet and database, with the initial goal of forming a full-featured office suite which will be marketed under the name "AbiSuite".

"We believe that AbiSource applications will add what has been a critical missing piece for the Open Source movement," added Sink. "With the addition of professionally supported desktop applications, more and more people will be able to appreciate the advantages offered by the Open Source model."

Eric S. Raymond, Hacker, commented, "This is great news. We already know that open-source wins on 24/7 reliability, on performance, on features, and on cost-of-ownership. About all that's been lacking is the traditional Big Three productivity applications, of which word processing is probably the most important. AbiWord may be an important part of Linux's next step."

Collaboration with the Developer Community

The company intends to contribute the majority of the engineering effort necessary to build its applications. In the full spirit of the Open Source development process used with Linux and other projects, outside contributions will be welcomed and encouraged.

Source code for AbiSource products will be released in an Open Source fashion under the terms of the AbiSource Public License (AbiPL). The AbiPL is a new Open Source license which was specifically designed to be in full alignment with the terms of the Open Source Definition.

AbiSource products will be supported on multiple platforms and operating systems. Linux-based systems will be a top-priority supported platform for all AbiSource products.

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. 217; email: scott@abisource.com.

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