Even as such open source software developers as Sun Microsystems and OpenOffice.org wax enthusiastic concerning enterprise deployments of their respective Microsoft Office alternatives, industry analysts are urging caution.

Open source alternatives only make sense "when workers are doing really simple stuff and don't actually need all the functionality of a complex software suite, such as Microsoft Office, said Gartner research analyst Mark Driver.

"But all too often a lot of the more complex documents don't convert, and there are times when 98 percent compatibility is just not good enough -- so you have to be careful," Driver told NewsFactor.

Sometime before 6 October, the Gartner Group published on its central corporate website, www.gartner.com, a series of five reports slamming Linux and predicting that its appeal would fade once the inevitable Service Pack 1 for Windows 2000 came out. These reports quickly spawned Linux-is-doomed articles like this example from 15 Oct on the IDG Australia website, which promoted them as objective studies by independent Gartner.

The articles, however, included the following small print at the end:

Microsoft Web Letter is published by Microsoft. Additional editorial material supplied by Gartner Group, Inc. © 1999.

suggesting (though not proving) that this "Gartner report" was actually written and published by Microsoft on Gartner's own website.

...

* Gartner wrote the reports – even though the copyrights on them explicitly said otherwise;

* A set of URLs on www.gartner.com are "the Microsoft site";

* Microsoft "sponsors" this "site", and paid unspecified fees to Gartner Group related to the content – but nevertheless, in no way did Microsoft fund the reports.