OpenOffice to be dumped in Freiburg ?

users
#1

Is this the proper forum to look for an informed discussion concerning what
seems to be the Frieburg Municipal Council's impending decision to abandon
OpenOffice and go back to Microsoft Office (
http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/442330/german_city_says_openoffice_shortcomings_forcing_it_back_microsoft/)
?...

Henri

#2

apache.incubator.ooo.user
and
documentfoundation.discuss

are probably better.

#3

NoOp wrote

apache.incubator.ooo.user
and
documentfoundation.discuss

are probably better.

Actually I think this would fit better on the Discuss forum.

It's not an OpenOffice problem only if you bothered to read the article.

It is a bit worrying that they never updated OpenOffice or even considered
LibreOffice.

This is a LibreOffice problem indeed that it doesn't have the public
projection for a city council to even consider it...

Especially because LibreOffice is Germany based...

#4

If you had only bothered to *read* my response, you might have noticed:

*and*
*documentfoundation.discuss*

Which part of that do you not understand?

...

#5

NoOp wrote

Which part of that do you not understand?

This part

apache.incubator.ooo.user

You are correct that I didn't notice the second option (apologies for that).
I wrongly assumed it was another ooo link

But redirecting a LibreOffice issue to an ooo forum doesn't make any sense.
And this is a LibreOffice issue. So much so that TDF's Director bothered to
answer (unfortunately in German)
http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2012/11/16/open-letter-to-the-city-of-freiburg/

There are some translations in the comments.

#6

I hate to say it, but I think in business MS compatibility is THE paramount concern. When I was working for a large business, I used LibO only for documents I knew I didn't have to share with others. For anything that had to be used by others, I used MS Office.

I realize that LibO is highly compatible with MS Office, but "highly" often isn't enough. In my experience there were enough incompatibilities that it just wasn't worth the hassle of trying to clean up documents sent back and forth between the two office suites.

File format compatibility is far more important than similar user interfaces or command structures. I would say file compatibility is the primary reason companies keep buying MS Office.

Virgil

#7

I only can use Virgil's word "I hate to say it" but Virgil is right. File compatibility is very important in our daily business world where we need to exchange editable files within our company and also with external partners.

Whenever I need to exchange files with MSO formats, I additionally attach a pdf-file or ask for pdf-file as reference. This is a reduction of productivity - I am willing to take I, but how many others?

Although I am aware that it is not an easy task and requires dev work,　LibO　must achieve more than a high compatibility with MSO formats. I keep fingers crossed.

#8

In practical use, I would NOT say LO (or OOo) has a "high" file compatibility with MS Office. Virtually every file I receive from MS Office users has some kind of problem (bullet lists almost NEVER convert correctly, at least from MSO to LO). I'm only an occasional Office suite user so I put up with it (plus I'm on a Mac), but I've never been able to convince others to use LO for this reason alone. And I mostly work with non-profits who, for several reasons, should be avid LO users.

I also realize MSO, with it's market share, stands only to gain from keeping it's formatting a moving target. With that in mind, I just can't imagine how a project like LO could hope to keep up and make inroads.

Wish I could help with making it work better, but I know nothing about contributing to development.

Carl

#9

Like Carl. I unfortunately cannot contribute to development work.

I would just like to come back to productivity and my own experience:
LibO has features which are as good or better than MSO in respect to productivity. What reduces my productivity are bugs (first it takes time to find out is a bug or did I make a mistake; second bug reporting) and corrections of MSO files I receive because they open only open with errors.

How can LibO make market shares against MSO?

For my feeling shares can be taken with a high productivity of LibO.

This can be achieved with many bugs less and full compatibility. MSO doesn' come up with a new format every week, thus our devs have a very good chance to adjust LibO to full compatibility.

I am convinced that
- a big part of the reasons why the City of Freiburg considers to dump OO are the above mentioned productivity issues (bugs and non-compatibility)
- above sketched productivity increase would enable LibO to gain substantial market shares from MSO,
- and that the required productivity increase can be released within not too much time.

#10

I was greatly pleased to see the Document Foundation's open letter to the
City of Freiburg (thanks, Pedro, for the link !) and also that it was
written in German - Freiburg is, after all, a German town and the
foundation is a organisation incorporated in Germany ! Readers whose German
isn't up to the task of reading it can make use of tools like Google
Translate to get the gist....

I was even more pleased to see that a discussion has started in this forum
which deals with concrete problems in using LibreOffice in an environment
dominated by MS Office. I can say that in my (limited) experience,
conversion of documents between various versions of MS Word and Writer
usually goes without problems, but that spreadsheets and presentations
often present difficulties.

Hochachtungsvoll

Henri

#11

This can be achieved with many bugs less and full compatibility. MSO
doesn' come up with a new format every week, thus our devs have a very
good chance to adjust LibO to full compatibility.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? Until you realize that the documentation of the file formats is secret.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to reverse engineer a binary file
format spec (even the new XML formats contain binary code).

In practical use, I would NOT say LO (or OOo) has a "high" file
compatibility with MS Office. Virtually every file I receive from MS
Office users has some kind of problem (bullet lists almost NEVER
convert correctly, at least from MSO to LO).

In our experience (smallish company with base of 50+ users), file format
compatability was actually very good *until* Microsoft came out with
their new 'improved' XML formats in office 2007. It got *much* worse
with the newer version in Office 2010 - so much worse that many files
were totally crashing Libreoffice.

It was this that caused the boss to mandate that new PC purchases come
with an Office License, and we buy 5 additional ones until everyone gets
Microsoft Office.

We will continue to install LibreOffice side by side, but the days of
only our Accountants having Office are over, I'm sad to say.

Whenever I need to exchange files with MSO formats, I additionally
attach a pdf-file or ask for pdf-file as reference. This is a
reduction of productivity - I am willing to take I, but how many
others?

Although I am aware that it is not an easy task and requires dev
work, 　LibO　must achieve more than a high compatibility with MSO
formats. I keep fingers crossed.

I don't see this happening any more. Microsoft is on a roll now, coming
out with new versions *far* more often than they used to (which means they can 'improve' the file formats much more often). My understanding is they are actually pushing ultimately to a subscriptions based model - but this could end up being good news, because imnsho, dong this could actually back fire on them though (fingers crossed)... when I discussed this with my boss, he commented that the day Microsoft *forces* us to have to 'renew' our licenses annually is the day he will never upgrade again (just stay on whatever version we currently have until the world ends).

Charles

#12

An excellent exposition of the methods used by Microsoft to «protect» its
«intellectual property» - more accurately described as using its
quasi-monopoly to exclude others from the market....

Henri

#13

<snip>

I don't see this happening any more. Microsoft is on a roll now, coming
out with new versions *far* more often than they used to (which means they
can 'improve' the file formats much more often). My understanding is they
are actually pushing ultimately to a subscriptions based model - but this
could end up being good news, because imnsho, dong this could actually back
fire on them though (fingers crossed)... when I discussed this with my
boss, he commented that the day Microsoft *forces* us to have to 'renew'
our licenses annually is the day he will never upgrade again (just stay on
whatever version we currently have until the world ends).

An excellent exposition of the methods used by Microsoft to «protect» its
«intellectual property» - more accurately described as using its
quasi-monopoly to exclude others from the market....

There is one more hing that could turn this around - if the EU (or some other major governmental entity) were to engage in and win an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft and force them to *fully* document their file formats, as happened with their Windows Server SMB protocols (which I understand has benefited the Samba project immensely).

#14

<snip>

An excellent exposition of the methods used by Microsoft to «protect» its

«intellectual property» - more accurately described as using its
quasi-monopoly to exclude others from the market....

There is one more hing that could turn this around - if the EU (or some
other major governmental entity) were to engage in and win an antitrust
lawsuit against Microsoft and force them to *fully* document their file
formats, as happened with their Windows Server SMB protocols (which I
understand has benefited the Samba project immensely).

A consumation devoutly to be wished....

Henri

#15

The truly maddening part is that, if more people used LibO, then the .ODT format would become "standard" and MS would be relegated to irrelevance.

So, Office wins because corporations buy it, making its file format "standard," which forces the rest of us to conform.

It's absolutely crazy.

Virgil

#16

Tanstaafl wrote:

"There is one more hing that could turn this around - if the EU (or some
other major governmental entity) were to engage in and win an antitrust
lawsuit against Microsoft and force them to *fully* document their file
formats, as happened with their Windows Server SMB protocols (which I
understand has benefited the Samba project immensely)."

It would help immensely if the Open Source folks would combine their efforts on one excellent MS alternative. The twin development of AOO and LibO (with each having its own advantages over the other), only helps MS.

Virgil

#17

Hi,
Carl Paulsen schrieb:

In practical use, I would NOT say LO (or OOo) has a "high" file
compatibility with MS Office. Virtually every file I receive from MS
Office users has some kind of problem (bullet lists almost NEVER convert
correctly, at least from MSO to LO). I'm only an occasional Office
suite user so I put up with it (plus I'm on a Mac), but I've never been
able to convince others to use LO for this reason alone. And I mostly
work with non-profits who, for several reasons, should be avid LO users.

I also realize MSO, with it's market share, stands only to gain from
keeping it's formatting a moving target. With that in mind, I just
can't imagine how a project like LO could hope to keep up and make inroads.

Wish I could help with making it work better, but I know nothing about
contributing to development.

You do not need to be a developer to help. One idea for interoperability I heard on LibOCon, is to make templates, that can be converted nicely. So if you have access to MSO, then examine, what kind of things are dangerous for converting and what kind of things convert without problems. Make a Wiki site with your observations and create good templates based on this rationale.

Kind regards
Regina

#18

Thanks, Regina. I know there are other ways to contribute, but I don't necessarily know what they are. Templates is one way, but the real issue I see is going from MSO to LO/OO. We can't control the other end.

So is there a simple list of SPECIFIC ways users can contribute (templates is a good example) that is easily found? I've seen some general lists of how to contribute, but I haven't searched much for more specifics. In any case it should probably be front and center on the website (again, not the develop, donate $$, etc. generic list, but more specifics).

Carl

#19

I contribute to LibreOffice by working on the North American Community DVD Project in creating English distribution DVDs. Also I have created the largest [so I have been told] spell checking dictionaries for American English, British English, and Canadian English. Also, I try to help people out on some of the lists.

There is a project that is getting started, by some of the users, to create a 4 page cheat sheet to help new users learn and use LibreOffice. That is in the initial "idea" stage and needs help to get it going.

So there are options out there than could use some people who do not have any programming skills, or marketing skills. If you have the ability to explain how things are done in LibreOffice and get that down on paper, you are needed. I know that the documentation people are looking for people to do various things. Heck, if you can go to the NA-DVD project and help make it better, I would be most grateful.

Tim L.
webmaster@libreoffice-na.us
http://libreoffice-na.us/English-3.6-installs/install.html

#20

The truly maddening part is that, if more people used LibO, then the .ODT format would become "standard" and MS would be relegated to irrelevance.

So, Office wins because corporations buy it, making its file format "standard," which forces the rest of us to conform.

It's absolutely crazy.

Virgil

ODF formats are the international standard so technically MS is not being standards compliant. This may be very useful if someone where to sue MS for monopolistic practices.

Sent: Monday, November 19, 2012 7:32 AM
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: OpenOffice to be dumped in Freiburg ?

<snip>

I don't see this happening any more. Microsoft is on a roll now, coming
out with new versions *far* more often than they used to (which means they
can 'improve' the file formats much more often). My understanding is they
are actually pushing ultimately to a subscriptions based model - but this
could end up being good news, because imnsho, dong this could actually back
fire on them though (fingers crossed)... when I discussed this with my
boss, he commented that the day Microsoft *forces* us to have to 'renew'
our licenses annually is the day he will never upgrade again (just stay on
whatever version we currently have until the world ends).

Subscription based models are probably better for the vendor not the user over the life of the product. I suspect the fees will be charged monthly instead of annually to lower the sticker shock and even out cash flow.

Implicit in this model is that users will being using the "Cloud" to access the programs rather than having it installed on their machines. This raises another set of issues about the "Cloud" versus local installation.