Adopting LibreOffice in Corporate Environments

[Onyeibo_Oku1]

I felt it only logical to make this discussion a new thread. It appears
interesting. I suspect it wont be the first time it is discussed and I
do hope the Devs take such comparative discussions seriously.

That said, I'd like to start with a Quote from At0mic:

Aye. It's just that working in the "real world" as opposed to ranting on a
Linux forum showed me how far Linux and open-source has to go for even
making a dent in the monopoly Microsoft has on the corporate desktop. It
would be NICE of course if Libre/OpenOffice was used more, but it isn't, and
there isn't as yet much imputus to change.

Change, as constant as it is doesn't come easy for the majority. Habits
are hard to break even when proven wrong. Microsoft is both a majority
and a habit and it takes the daring and strong to be free. Linux and
open-source is not a place for lazy people. Change starts when enough
people question status-quo.

When I released this, I decided it's better to stop being so fanatical about
Linux and open-soruce and instead understand WHY people use things such as
Outlook so much, and I discovered it's because Microsoft are damn good at
finding out what their customers want. Implementation needs a little work
sometimes, but they aren't stupid.

That's a good one. Guess what people want? The want to get on with their
lives and really done care how the catalysts get created. So, it follows
that if they're already doing that with Option-A, they wont see reasons
to try Option-B even when Option-B may be more suitable for them. I
speak based on observations from my environs. People here use M$-Office
not because they know about exchange or cool features like automation.
They do so because they first knew M$-Office.

90% of these people cant understand serious formula syntaxes for Excel
or Calc. They are happy with Summations only or a few more basic stuff.
Guess what? I'm discussing business here not individuals. You and I
know that Calc will conveniently replace their pirated bloat-ware
(bloat-ware because they use less than half the features packed into it
... and worse, its a hacked product). These are the people who need
Calc and open-source products the most. They cant afford bloat-ware but
for some weird reason they just want the label -- "Hey, I know/use
M$-Office too" -- Its crazy

Like you said, Microsoft knows how to take advantage of their customer's
inclinations (its about the money eventually). These people are lazy so
'ease' matters. Implementation may not be so good underneath but who
cares ... they don't even see it. So they 'dope' the less enlightened
majority with 'ease' while they tidy up on the hidden mess gradually.
It works because changing the majority's collective choice later will be
harder when the habit is formed.

Here is another example: For instance, I have been porting a tool I
developed for 'easing' the pain of fellow lecturers in creating
grade/result sheets at our University. It was written for Excel 2003 in
VBA. It was relatively 'easier' to develop compared to my route in
LibreOffice (well that, because I chose a different language. BASIC
would have been much the same ... probably). My discovery is that
developing extensions for LibreOffice is W.O.R.K!

What is the advantage? The developer is made more aware of the internal
workings of LibO. What is the loss? Time! The curve is much more and
someone who wants to get going is already gone. So the 'ease' concept
sells again for macro developers in M$ world but that doesn't make for
better/experienced 'black-belt' developers in the long run (... yeah, I
can hear you almost say 'who cares!').

Getting LibO into offices around here means presenting it first before
M$ products find their way into those machines. Then the users will
never try M$ again even with all the vanilla coatings they come with
--OR-- You induce the change by providing 'ease' in form of Extensions
in LibO and install libO with those for those businesses then carefully
silence M$ products. They wont even miss it. I do that here because
those M$ products are pirated anyway. It just makes them more honest
business men (lol!). I bet they wont consider M$ again when they're
told to PAY FOR THE REAL THING!

[At0mic]

Yay! By challenging the preconception that Microsoft can only write crap
software I'm now famous!

Onyeibo Oku-2 wrote:

Change, as constant as it is doesn't come easy for the majority. Habits
are hard to break even when proven wrong. Microsoft is both a majority
and a habit and it takes the daring and strong to be free. Linux and
open-source is not a place for lazy people. Change starts when enough
people question status-quo.

There has to be a point for fighting against the status quo. Unless the
advantages outweight pushing against the inertia that Microsoft has, you're
going to have a lot of difficulting convincing the non-geeks of the world
that you have a better product. I now use LibreOffice mostly because I don't
want to buy Office and yet don't want to pirate it and that I'd like to
future-proof myself such that if I find Linux gets better on the desktop,
I'll be able to convert to Linux and retain my knowledge of LO and its
formats.

Onyeibo Oku-2 wrote:

That's a good one. Guess what people want? The want to get on with their
lives and really done care how the catalysts get created. So, it follows
that if they're already doing that with Option-A, they wont see reasons
to try Option-B even when Option-B may be more suitable for them. I
speak based on observations from my environs. People here use M$-Office
not because they know about exchange or cool features like automation.
They do so because they first knew M$-Office

You hit the nail on the head! People want to get on with their lives. They
aren't interested in trialing some unknown element such as LibreOffice
(unknown in the sense it doesn't have the years of widespread, proven use
that Office has), plus they aren't interested in dealing with the (rate)
compatibility issues which can sometimes arise from using MS Office formats
in LibreOffice.

Not everyone wants to have to deal with battles that are simply easier to
bypass by throwing money Microsoft's way. Given the priorities most people
have in their lives, I can't entirely blame them.

Onyeibo Oku-2 wrote:

90% of these people cant understand serious formula syntaxes for Excel
or Calc. They are happy with Summations only or a few more basic stuff.
Guess what? I'm discussing business here not individuals. You and I
know that Calc will conveniently replace their pirated bloat-ware
(bloat-ware because they use less than half the features packed into it
... and worse, its a hacked product). These are the people who need
Calc and open-source products the most. They cant afford bloat-ware but
for some weird reason they just want the label -- "Hey, I know/use
M$-Office too" -- Its crazy

Time is money. People use what they know. MS Office has its quirks but at
least it's a KNOWN ELEMENT. LibreOffice, unfortunately, is not. Also, it's
been said that people only use a tenth of the functionality in Office. That
might be true, however everyone is different, and that tenth of
functionality can differ from person to person. Having that rare option in
Office might pay off for the one time a person finds a use for it, whereas
if it's not in LibreOffice they might have to make do with a more mediocre
outcome.

Onyeibo Oku-2 wrote:

Like you said, Microsoft knows how to take advantage of their customer's
inclinations (its about the money eventually). These people are lazy so
'ease' matters. Implementation may not be so good underneath but who
cares ... they don't even see it. So they 'dope' the less enlightened
majority with 'ease' while they tidy up on the hidden mess gradually.
It works because changing the majority's collective choice later will be
harder when the habit is formed.

Of course! Why wouldn't you want something to be easy? Why wouldn't you want
to be lazy? It's human nature, and frankly most people hate computers and so
want to take the easy way out. It's why technology progresses yes? To make
life easier for ourselves? Who wants to do things the hard way? It's not
always a bad thing you know.

People can choose to clean their car themselves, or can spend some cash and
get an automated carwash to do it for them. Sure, the carwash won't do as
good a job as doing it yourself, but it's quick, painless and does a good
ENOUGH job. Personally I wash my own car, but only because I enjoy the
physical work (I sit on my ass far too often anyway, so it's good for me). I
can't blame people from spending money to find a solution that's easier for
them.

And that's why MS Office continues to be successful.

[At0mic]

BTW - I won't bother posting any more about the topic because it will require
continual rebuttal and frankly, there's nothing new here that hasn't been
talked about before. I also run the risk of dipping into the "enemy" zone by
not believing in LibreOffice's or Linux's chance to make a dent in the
corporate world, or that I don't believe the "superior nature" of open
source software. Which is not true mind you, I do think open-source software
is pretty good in many cases - I just don't see the rest of the world giving
a damn.

[cornouws]

Onyeibo Oku wrote (09-09-11 08:21)

I do hope the Devs take such comparative discussions seriously.

Many are paid because of corporate use... so they do take that seriously yes.

[jorge1]

+1

[ms777]

Hi,

I lead a department of about 100 people in a German institution. We are on
M$ products. From these 100 people
- 80 to 90 use Excel for making beautiful tables, and using minimum amount
of cell formulas. Lets call them C users.
- about ten additionally use Excel for making medium complex charts. Lets
call them B users.
- maximum 5 use Excel to a large extent, including VBA programming and Pivot
tables. Lets call them A users.
- I guess that this structure is just the average structure in any
engineering related enterprise.

- I guess 5 of my staff do like M$ and 95 do not like M$
- I would have the organizational power to introduce OpenOffice or
LibreOffice in my department. About 99 of my staff would support me in
introducing OO or LO. Most likely, they would even like me for that.

Personally, I use OpenOffice since many years at home. I am active (> 1.000
posts) in the support forums, focusing on Macro / API issues. Personally, I
like Openoffice.

The reason I have not yet introduced OO:
- I want compatibility across all users. I have quite bad experience with OO
/ M$ compatibility in calc and writer. About 20% of my trials required
manual rework, not always successful
- So A, B, and C users have to use the same office suite, even if only the
few A users really use most offered features
- B and C users would be well served by OO/LO.
- Being personally familiar with calc / UNO and Excel VBA, the required time
to achieve a certain programming goal is on average maybe 5 times higher
with UNO. Several Pivot things cannot be done with calc. A users would not
at all be served well with OO/LO.
- This is half due to the lousy documentation of UNO. Even M$ docs are much
better. The other half is due to the lousy implementation. You can never be
sure that what should work from the documentation actually works. I needed
too much trial and error in OO programming.

The costs of the M$ office suite is equivalent to about 5 working hours per
year for each of my staff. I am sure that my staff would loose much more
working time because of the compatibility and programming issues if I partly
or completely switch to OO/LO. This is why I did not (yet) introduce OO/LO.

So, if you want to win in Corporate Environment
- understand that the A users determine the software requirements. B and C
users have to use the same due to compatibility amongst staff
- focus on quality, not feature adding
- get the programming better documented and work as documented. I am afraid
this requires rework the code from scratch.

Somewhat frustrated,

ms777

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
Some people just like to grumble.

Just "guestimates" but if 99 say they unhappy with Excel possibly 9 might be
happy with a change to something else. The rest will either grumble more
about a change or not care. Of the 9 that were happy maybe 1 might make a
little effort if something is not immediately obvious. The other 8 wont
bother to tell you or they might grumble just to avoid being ostracised by
90 that weren't happy with the change.

Regards from
Tom

[Simon_Johnson-Begin]

Hello,
I agree with all of your conclusions about the A, B, C users. But there are also some issues with the C users who learned something in a specific way and do not want to learn another way, even if it is for the best. As a Law student who is writing his master thesis with LibreOffice, I would love to see other students and teachers to switch to libreoffice. Somes does (As I try to promote it), but it's far from being the majority, here in Québec, Canada. As someone who is implicated in some committees, we once agreed, last december, that it was time to implement Openoffice in the law library's computers. I tough that this was a great choice and a good step forwarded for the open community.
The next day after the implementation, lot of students complained about Openoffice, saying that it was not the same as what they were accustomed in the bast. i'm sure that they did not tried it that much. I did not agreed with them, butt he directors decided the next day to go back to Ms Office. Even if it is for the best, it is in the human nature to resist to change.
In my case, the threshold was when Microsoft imposed the ribbons in Office 2007 without my consent and when they restrained the users of Windows 7 starter to only 1 background image. I then switched to Linux/Openoffice and now, LibreOffice and I never looked back. I only use Windows and Office 2003 as a last resort.

Anyways, in my example, the C users were the problems. It is very hard to convince someone who is comfortable with a software to switch to a new interface, even if I do succeed in convincing some from time to time. Just the other day, a friend of mine asked if I had some copies of Ms Office for his computer. I told him that I don't but that I can install LibreOffice, which he never heard about before. Some days later, he told me that he finds Libreoffice interring and that for the future, he will only use Libreoffice.
Other than that, I agree with your conclusions that focus should be first made on quality and documentation and then, new features.
Simon

[planas]

Simon

Hello,
I agree with all of your conclusions about the A, B, C users. But there are also some issues with the C users who learned something in a specific way and do not want to learn another way, even if it is for the best. As a Law student who is writing his master thesis with LibreOffice, I would love to see other students and teachers to switch to libreoffice. Somes does (As I try to promote it), but it's far from being the majority, here in Québec, Canada. As someone who is implicated in some committees, we once agreed, last december, that it was time to implement Openoffice in the law library's computers. I tough that this was a great choice and a good step forwarded for the open community.
The next day after the implementation, lot of students complained about Openoffice, saying that it was not the same as what they were accustomed in the bast. i'm sure that they did not tried it that much. I did not agreed with them, butt he directors decided the next day to go back to Ms Office. Even if it is for the best, it is in the human nature to resist to change.
In my case, the threshold was when Microsoft imposed the ribbons in Office 2007 without my consent and when they restrained the users of Windows 7 starter to only 1 background image. I then switched to Linux/Openoffice and now, LibreOffice and I never looked back. I only use Windows and Office 2003 as a last resort.

Anyways, in my example, the C users were the problems. It is very hard to convince someone who is comfortable with a software to switch to a new interface, even if I do succeed in convincing some from time to time. Just the other day, a friend of mine asked if I had some copies of Ms Office for his computer. I told him that I don't but that I can install LibreOffice, which he never heard about before. Some days later, he told me that he finds Libreoffice interring and that for the future, he will only use Libreoffice.
Other than that, I agree with your conclusions that focus should be first made on quality and documentation and then, new features.
Simon

I think the "A" users and most of the "B" users (if not all) are
probably very computer literate. Switching them to other software is
probably not that difficult and they might enjoy the challenge.

Many "C" users are not very computer literate. They only know the basics
of any program they use and are scared to change because of their
illiteracy. I almost call them "D" level users.

[ms777]

Simon,

I would consider giving up after one day as bad management...either in
preparation or in execution of the migration. On top of that, costs for M$
products are normally quite low at universities due to academic rebates. So
the reward to switch to OO/LO is lower.

The best strategy how OO/LO could help in reduction of migration and
acceptance problems is probably compatibility, compatibility, compatibility.
Even if compatibility means being compatibility to something stupid. Once
OO/LO has reached say 30% market share, trials to be better than M$ products
at lower compatibility might be started, but not earlier. Waiting until that
share is reached is not in the nature of the typical volunteer contributing
to OO, I am afraid.

But my problem is different. I am stuck even before migration because of the
anticipated efficiency loss, not because I am afraid of acceptance or
migration problems.

ms777

Simon Johnson-Bégin wrote:

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
I still think it's best to have both MS Office and LibreOffice installed on machines during the migration process.  An "overnight" change is likely to cause problems.

Step 1 is to keep MS Office as the default while rolling out LO across the company.  Some re-training of a few people at a time.  Show how to access the one that is not default, how to access help and documentation etc.  Maybe a few months before moving to step 2.
Step 2 is to make LibreOffice the default but keep MS Office accessible.  Don't actually get rid of MS Office but just stop buying it in.

Something like that is much less likely to fail. 
Regards from
Tom

[Simon_Johnson-Begin]

Hi,

I just installed LO 3.4.3 on Linux Mint 11 Lxde. I then opened my
thesis file in writer, closed it and then reopened it and never made any
change to the document. Even so, when I reopen the document, Lo recovery mode ask me if I want to launch the file recovery process.

Was this reported before as a bug? Can I continue to work on my thesis with 3.4.3 in a safe way or should I go back to 3.3.4, in which I never had any problem at all?

Thank you all for your help!

Simon

[planas]

Simon

Hi,

I just installed LO 3.4.3 on Linux Mint 11 Lxde. I then opened my
thesis file in writer, closed it and then reopened it and never made any
change to the document. Even so, when I reopen the document, Lo recovery mode ask me if I want to launch the file recovery process.

Was this reported before as a bug? Can I continue to work on my thesis with 3.4.3 in a safe way or should I go back to 3.3.4, in which I never had any problem at all?

Thank you all for your help!

Simon

Did the thesis open "recover" correctly or were errors reported? Some
have reported problems with recovery starting every time LO opens and it
is usually a corrupted file in the user folder

I believe the path is /home/<name>/Documents/.libreoffice/3/user.
The .libreoffice is a hidden folder so you must enable "show hidden
files". The most common recommendation is to rename the "3" folder with
another name. Then open LO, the default 3 folder will be created and you
can move you extensions, etc into the 3 folder from your saved folder.

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
I would go back to the 3.3.4 because
1.  it was better for you
2.  it was released only a few days before the 3.4.3
The different branches seem to have different objectives and 3.3.x seems to match what you need better than the 3.4.x branch.

Why not have both?
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Installing_in_parallel
Just set the 3.3.x branch one as being the main/default one that gets used.

Happy "World Peace Day" everyone
Regards from
Tom

[Simon_Johnson-Begin]

Hi again,
Thank you for your advice, which I finally followed. I installed both version and everything seems to work fine!
Well, I might have one other question. Is LibreOffice 3.3.X still in development or the efforts are now all in the 3.4.X branch and even 3.5.X?
Thanks!

Simon

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
There is one more release due in the 3.3.x branch.  The 3.3.5 is due in mid November
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan#3.3_release
but the more important issue is that the 3.3.x branch was claimed to have 1 year's support from release date.  I'm not sure that will hold for the 3.3.5.  Another important issue is that if a bug-report is posted then it's likely to get resolved in other branches too. 
Regards from
Tom