The Microsoft exec in charge of Office has dismissed last week’s tie-up between Sun and Google as allusion rather than substance. “That announcement didn’t have anything,” Chris Capossela, corporate vice president Information Worker Product Management Group of Microsoft told a crowd of reporters last week. “It had something about a toolbar and Java Runtime, and it alluded to a potential thing some time in the future. OpenOffice isn’t hard to get, just go to their website and download the software.”
OK, what exactly do you mean by using the word “allusion?” I can’t figure out what “allusion” has to do with substance.
It’s interesting that an MS exec would comment on OpenOffice being so readily available for download. Do they truly not view it as a threat? I find that hard to believe. Was he just speaking without thinking it through?
I know I’m just a random person, but when MS came around campus last year I had a nice chat with one of the head office dudes. He said back in the Office 97 days they were shitting bricks about thought of free, OpenOffice…
But then he said
“You know what, when it came out, it sucked! And nobody used it, and its not really as big a threat as we thought”
Interestingly, this was at the time when MS said publicly no IE updates for anything but Longhorn.. and when I was asking him about IE / Firefox and how IE was such a pain in my ass, he said that it would definitely be focused on more and given to non-Longhorn XP etc..
So I think that OSS is a threat. Maybe OO.o isn’t immediate threat, but neither was Firefox necessarily. But it definitely changed MS’s direction. I wonder about if any OEM’s went with OO.o…. how that would change things.
Amazing how compaines sit up an notice when they realize that customers do indeed “givas**t.”
I was interested to hear him saying this as well. It does seem out of touch with their MS vs. Mass. pronouncements.
After a moment’s thought I realized that this may be because MS sees the Desktop fat client environment as everything, so a web based office suite amounts to nothing from their perspective.
From the article:
“We see Office as a front end to business processes,” Capossela says. “There is an opportunity to take the unstructured world of MS Office, and the very structured world of ERP and CRM systems and integrate them more deeply. The best example is MS CRM, which we will release shortly as version 3.0. It is build directly into MS Outlook.”
Another possible perspective on this is: “It’s free, so it can’t be worth much. Go get it, or don’t bother, it’s all the same to me.” That was a common way of dismissing F/OSS when it was first starting to reach popular awareness levels.
It was, after all, a PR/marketing announcement rather than a review of a web-based office productivity suite which wasn’t actually announced as anticipated. By the way, how would you go about reviewing a product that wasn’t announced or released? Oh, right! Vapor!
Google and Sun made commercial announcements, so I have to dismiss it and make another article for my own products. aka. Office 12, SharePoint, Groove… What interest do they gain in doing such things ? /me is really wondering who would fall for it.
Nothing really interesting here. Except maybe this funny sentence : “Sun makes very expensive proprietary hardware, while Google offers free software for the masses. Is that a marriage made in heaven? I don’t know.”. This phrase has clearly no sence, since hardware is mostly proprietary and google offers moslty free (as in beer) services and not software. What’s the relation between this ? O_O
It’s a sad day for Sun when they’re hyping Google tool bar as an install option of the JRE. What’s even worse is how desperate Sun looks trying to cozy up with the young upstart Google in order to get attention or pump the stock…or something.
And was reported last week, Google has no plans for an office suite at this time.
Who is MS trying to convince, themselves?
Who is MS trying to convince, themselves?
Shareholders?
What’s delusional is people thinking that the craptastic code base of OO will have any significant impact on Office.
What’s delusional is people thinking that the craptastic code base of OO will have any significant impact on Office.
I know, it’s the same people that thought that craptastic code base of Mozilla would have any significant impact on Internet Explorer.
I know, it’s the same people that thought that craptastic code base of Mozilla would have any significant impact on Internet Explorer.
The difference between Mozila (Firefox) and OpenOffice is that Firefox had the advantage of competing with a program that hasn’t seen a major update in 5-6 years, and it still probably doesn’t even have 10% marketshare yet despite that fact. Firefox is probably the best desktop app that OSS has ever created, and it’s not even that great. Rather sluggish and its plugin archecture sucks (the extension breakage from release-to-release is a royal pain in the ass).
As for OpenOffice? It’s ok for something that’s free, but MS Office it is not, nor will it probably ever be.
The difference between Mozila (Firefox) and OpenOffice is that Firefox had the advantage of competing with a program that hasn’t seen a major update in 5-6 years, and it still probably doesn’t even have 10% marketshare yet despite that fact. Firefox is probably the best desktop app that OSS has ever created, and it’s not even that great. Rather sluggish and its plugin archecture sucks (the extension breakage from release-to-release is a royal pain in the ass).
Yeah, that doesn’t bode well for open source desktop efforts when you consider that the most popular desktop open source program is around 7% and IE has been stagnant for years.
I know, it’s the same people that thought that craptastic code base of Mozilla would have any significant impact on Internet Explorer.
Haha, you mean the legacy of Netscape that once dominated the browser market down to 7% or so.
Excellent point! As noted by others, it is true that the market share of OpenOffice, Firebird, TBird, etc. is low compared to MSOffice, IE and Outlook; however, the absolute values that statisticians may scoff at belie the emerging threat that OSS has on a closed proprietary model.
The condescending taunt to download OOo is a fairly transparent insinuation portrayed to the public that “we aint skeered”. I doubt it represents the corporate view. They will fight OSS until it has no choice but to join it. Its just a matter of time. The feature set gap of core OSS apps is narrowing at an incredible rate. Nobody can dispute that.
I know, it’s the same people that thought that craptastic code base of Mozilla would have any significant impact on Internet Explorer.
Has Firefox had a significant impact on IE’s market share?
“Has Firefox had a significant impact on IE’s market share?”
yes.
do your own reasearch though.
“Has Firefox had a significant impact on IE’s market share?”
yes.
do your own reasearch though.
Haha, but its Netscape legacy is down from almost owning the browser market to 7%. You need to do some research.
yes.
do your own reasearch though.
I have, and figures reported that Firefox has 5% market share. This is not significative for me. There are web sites out there that IE shows 95%+ access.
“significative” is relative.
From my perspective the only way for Firefox to impact IE’s market share would be to decrease (or increase) sales of MS operating systems since IE is not only bundled but also so tightly integrated with the OS.
This is a bit like asking if FF has impacted Windows Media Player’s market share.
So, those are my delusions on this…
Has Firefox had a significant impact on IE’s market share?
Depends .. on my non-tech website, IE usage last year was around 92% .. this month it is at 62%. Firefox’s usage went from <1% to 26% (other browsers such as Safari, Mozilla, Netscape and Opera make up the remainder).
Is it significant? Well sure .. it is the first browser to take market share away from IE consistently over an extended period of time. It has forced Microsoft to release IE7 earlier than they wanted to. It has put web standards to the forefront and I have noticed many sites striving for and validating against the w3c validator which is a *good* thing.
Even according to the IE blog, IE7 will have significantly better compliance to the CSS and XHTML standards (Though no ACID2 compliance the last time I checked) — hopefully this will ultimatley lead to more sophisticated websites and shorter site development times.
Hopefully OOo can do a similar thing for office suites .. push an open standard for file formats and data interchange and rejuvinate this rather stagnate aspect of computing and get some innovation occuring 🙂
The problem to Microsoft is that not even their own products have any significant impact on their installed user base. There is very little reaoson to upgrade to anything better than Office 97.
Today Openoffice/StarOffice have about as high market penetration as the latest offerings from Microsoft and most of that was mainly achieved with the old OpenOffice 1.0 that was extremely compatible with MS-Office but not close to the compatibility that StarOffice 8/OpenOffice 2.0 is/will be.
This means that in the old days, Microsoft could drop support for previous versions and people would upgrade like sheep. Today they have options, and in the case of Office 12 these options will look better than usual, as Star/OpenOffice looks and feels much more like the Office people are used to then the new Microsoft Office 12, and thus will use up much less money in training costs.
My Standard Disclaimer:
The content of this post, right or wrong, pleasant or aggrevating, silly or serious consists entirely of my own views. It is not an official Microsoft opinion, and does not in any way, shape, or form represent an official Microsoft stance.
Now down to business…
Today Openoffice/StarOffice have about as high market penetration as the latest offerings from Microsoft
I would love to see the professionally produced market data that proves this.
and most of that was mainly achieved with the old OpenOffice 1.0 that was extremely compatible with MS-Office but not close to the compatibility that StarOffice 8/OpenOffice 2.0 is/will be.
Features that get used every day by millions of customers which OO doesn’t support:
– Access applications : the actual .mdb files are commonly VBA solutions which just work today. Why should departments pay a contractor/ISP to reproduce them on a different platform? Would it suprise you to learn that the customer experience improvement program tells us that 70 million unique users boot Access at least once each month? 40 million use it at least once each week.
– Full SharePoint integration : SharePoint is the fastest growing product in the history of Microsoft. Every time I talk to any IT representative from any fortune 500 company, they want to know more about SharePoint and SharePoint Portal
– IRM : Information Rights Mangement – encrypted email, calendar, contacts, documents, etc… all federated for access under a single Kerberos identity through Active Directory.
– Excel Calc Add-ins : Wall Street relies heavily on custom analysis engines which require Excel.
– File format just works. For the PowerPoint pitch book scenario, it is necessary that the content for each slide be pixel positioned exactly. In fact, we’ve had customers specifically refuse to use the OLE for embedding spreadsheets in PPT files specifically because of this requirement. Too many existing documents just don’t work 100% perfectly when you open them using OO. A great example of this is Word documents that contain schema-mapped XML.
– Applications that OO just doesn’t provide: Publisher, Visio, OneNote, InfoPath, Project all integrate with the existing MS Office suite and SharePoint.
– Support : This is the 10,000 lb. gorilla. What team of 5 open source developers is going to jump a plane at a moment’s notice from the west coast of the U.S. to Munich when BMW decides it needs the code in a certain part of OO to be changed to meet their needs? What does Boeing do when it all of a sudden turns out that Open Source software is also succeptible to virii? Where is the team of developers who patch the code plus the on-site representatives who get it deployed? MS provides a central services organization for large corporations with dedicated points of contact who have intimate knowledge of their customer’s needs and can offer a single, coherent solution to solve their business problems. What is my mom going to do when the church newsletter she opens isn’t readable because the table layout is messed up because someone used a feature in Word that isn’t fully suppored by OO (I mean besides call me)?
This is by no means an exhaustive list of what makes Office more attractive that OO to most people. Every day I learn something new that people are doing with my product that amazes me. If OO works for all of your needs, that’s great. Just because it works for some of the more straight-forward home user and small business scenarios does not mean it is a robust and feature-equivalent out and out replacement for Office for the world of big business.
“Access applications : the actual .mdb files are commonly VBA solutions which just work today. Why should departments pay a contractor/ISP to reproduce them on a different platform? Would it suprise you to learn that the customer experience improvement program tells us that 70 million unique users boot Access at least once each month? 40 million use it at least once each week. ”
Agreed. Access databases is a major asset for Microsoft in order to prevent migration to other system, as well as an important productivity platform. It will however be possible to use run-time versions of the databases. And as inhouse application approach the end of their lifetime, they are often being migrated to Web-solutions.
Where I work, the number of Access applications & access users have been severely cut down in the last 3-4 years.
“- Excel Calc Add-ins : Wall Street relies heavily on custom analysis engines which require Excel.”
But Wall-street is hardly representing the majority of customers.
“- File format just works. For the PowerPoint pitch book scenario, it is necessary that the content for each slide be pixel positioned exactly. In fact, we’ve had customers specifically refuse to use the OLE for embedding spreadsheets in PPT files specifically because of this requirement. Too many existing documents just don’t work 100% perfectly when you open them using OO. ”
I have faced plenty of MS office format problems between versions of office. And as long as we are talking one version of Office, sure it works. But our customers and suppliers happens to use other versions than we do, which is causing problems. If we need to make sure that we retain the intended layout, we will convert the document to a better presentation format, such as PDF.
Documents just don´t look the same across versions of Office.
“- Support : This is the 10,000 lb. gorilla. What team of 5 open source developers is going to jump a plane at a moment’s notice from the west coast of the U.S. to Munich when BMW decides it needs the code in a certain part of OO to be changed to meet their needs? ”
Opensource is hacked together by a bunch of amateurs that provides support via usenet. At least, this is the way that MS (and especially Steve Ballmer) would like to portrait the OSS environment.
Well, if support is your need, you can always go for StarOffice. Or if you go for OO and your problem is of general interest, you can work with the OO developers. You can even fix the problem yourself. There is simply no need to have a team of OSS developers standby to take the next plane to Munich.
Ironically, it should be pretty easy to get OO support in Munich…..
“If OO works for all of your needs, that’s great. Just because it works for some of the more straight-forward home user and small business scenarios does not mean it is a robust and feature-equivalent out and out replacement for Office for the world of big business.”
You are right that OO is not an out-of-box replacement for enterprise customers. And I also agree that much functionality provided by sharepoint, Onenote and InfoPath are of importance to high-end customers.
But the point is, that the main share of the customers are not high-end customers. They are customers with fairly limited needs, or fairly limited budgets. Some of these customers might bee:
– SMBs
– Public sector
– Developing countries
– Emerging markets in Asia
– Non for profit organizations and entities (including schools)
These are the customers and markets that OO caters for.
You sure make some faboulous margins on high-end customers. But most of the growth opportunities are found elsewhere than the enterprise space. Just ask SUN what its like to be undercut by high-volume/low margin competitors, while your are focusing on the high-end market.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of what makes Office more attractive that OO to most people. Every day I learn something new that people are doing with my product that amazes me.
Good post.
I only have one thing I’m curious about, though I don’t expect nor demand an answer. (It would probably get you in trouble just answering it here unless you said what your official spokesmen have already said — and, well, I don’t believe them so there’s no point in repeating it here and make me think you’re just an astroturfer.)
Here it is:
I really truely and honestly would like to know when Microsoft Office will support^ the OASIS OpenDesktop standard for text, spreadsheet, and presentations.
(^ Full-fledged support, mind you. Not some half baked incompatable or restricted attempt. Personally, I don’t care about any of the other OD formats, just these three.)
I’m not being dense or combative here. I realize that support is highly unlikely in the next 3-5 years and impossible for marketing reasons in the next few years.
I really do want OpenDesktop just so I can have a single format to work with and rely on over the next few decades. (No, ‘Microsoft Office Open XML’ is not acceptable for the same reasons outlined in the Mass. tech meeting two weeks ago.)
Don’t reply here. Just send that message back to your co-workers and bosses at Microsoft — that OASIS OpenDocument support in Microsoft Office would be greatly appreciated. I really hate having documents that are locked up as they currently are. It makes me nervous. That’s the main reason I write everyting in OpenOffice.org and only save things in MS Word or Excel format when an editable copy is required and the person seeing it doesn’t want to use OpenOffice.org.
If you don’t have any detailed experience with OpenDocuement, take a look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opendocument
–An almost 20 year vetern of software development and custom projects, mostly in contracting for banking and government systems with a 6 year stint at a company that did an OEM tool that was bundled in Microsoft C++. Customers have been in and usually the governments of the US (coast-to-coast), Norway, England, Netherlands, France, Germany and others.
Scratch “OpenDesktop” where it appears…should be “OpenDocument”.
can microsoft tell the file specs and OSS can make sure it just works even on the toaster that runs on Net BSD
Well, it will. You can already bet your house on that MS will have to bow down before open document standard… yes, this won’t kill MS Office, though.
hmmm… me thinks the “DaNile” isn’t just a river in Egypt.
Until OO.o can make inroads into corporate America (which isn’t likely to happen), MS absolutely has nothing to worry about. Their office suite is clean, polished, mature, and engrained on the desktop in most businesses…and they simply have no reason to move to another platform. Corporations == MS’s cash cow.
just go to their website and download the software.
This sounds like an endorsement to me
Its pointing out the obvious. OO.o is free and easy to get. But it’s not taking over. Heck MS even points out its not hard to get. Do people run to it? No. Thus MS makes its point. They have nothing to worry about.
They can do that with linux in general. MS could put a URL link on the front page of Microsoft.com to Redhat, Debian, Mandrake and so forth and in big letters say “go ahead, try it, it’s free” and not suffer any ill effects. They know that, and thats why they make such a comment.
And he’s right, so what did this announcement from Sun and Google mean. Well, no one seamed to come up with a answer yet. So to say there was no substance sounds right.
Contributing to and supporting organizations like Mozilla and OpenOffice.org is far more productive than coming to a site like OSnews.com and posting trivial comments and nay-saying.
It doesn’t matter what Microsoft says. We have the power to contribute to OSS and make it what we want…
Open Technology for all.
Open sourcing Staroffice has done nothing for Sun. We know from previous stories here on OSNews that there’s basically one volunteer working on the code because it’s such a mess. So Sun naively thinks “If we open, they will come” and gets burned.
At least if Staroffice would have remained closed and sold they could be OASIS-compliant and they could have funded development on that craptastic codebase.
Oh well, Sun has drank the koolaid and there’s probably little hope of them ever coming around.
But SUN is a hardware company first not a software company. Office software is just a diversion for them anyway… giving it away neither helps nor hurts the bottom line in the long term. What they can do is marginalize Microsoft’s Office position! That’s worth more than any amount of sales they could get. The damage sun is doing is that most of the bigger OSS projects are jumping on board with the OASIS format. If SUN hadn’t taken the first step it would have been harder to get the support.
As a hardware/OS maker, SUN needs open standards to stay in business. Otherwise they’re just another “white box” windows clone company. It’s the same reason IBM is becomming Pro-OSS… they sell hardware & hardware support, that can’t be marginalized overnight by microsoft.
The majority of computer users are stupid, mindless sheep.
They are the ones whose eyes will glaze over with delight when they fondle the next Wintendo offering in the stores.
They are the same who when asked what kind of computer they have respond “Windows“.
These are the people who are nothing more than virtual nipples to be milked for money and spread the dark philosophies coming from the Electronic Mordor.
Chains fall upon us all by the rule of big corporate devils because of the permissiveness of the mass public.
In time if this idiocy continues, all open source will be illegal at the whim of corporation number one with the votes in the politicians pockets.
Lovers of open source need to make their voices heard peacefully before it’s too late.
Open source hippies they call some of us, failing to realise that the hippy culture served to stir more action and thought than much of the current generations of pale skinned, overweight, ipod clutching couch lizards who whine if they’re not in an air conditioned environment and forced to walk further than a block for anything.
Attack my spelling, grammar, abuse of the Enter key, what have you, but you know deep down in your soul that I am right, and because of this you will either ignore this post, or attack it.
The vast majority of people will never join your cult. It’s just a tool
“The vast majority of people will never join your cult. It’s just a tool”
Wrong, a hammer is a tool, and so are you.
The “vast majority of people” already belong to a cult, a closed source one at that. They sign their souls away with a new EULA.
They sign their souls away with a new EULA.
Yes, and you wonder why you people are laughed at.
He said: “They sign their souls away with a new EULA.”
You said: “Yes” [..]
Pwned!
You said: “Yes” [..]
Pwned!
Yeah, I love slips like that!
Yes, and you wonder why you people are laughed at.
Is that really laughter? Check again.
Are you hearing “ha ha ha ha”, or baaaaaaa? (;
OMG! What am I saying? MS Office at least 300% cheaper than OpenOffice!? Yes, that’s what I’m saying. And I’m not talking about SunOffice, I’m talking about the free OpenOffice.
Most people that never go out of their basement are way too much disillusioned when it comes to “real life”.
I want to make it clear for good, so you better open your ears and listen. Maybe some of you will start understanding the difference between something “theorical” and something “pratical”.
Here’s the story. You run a business and you have few workers that do most of their work using Microsoft Office. You pick one of them and you start analysing his/her case. Imagine now that Microsoft Office 2003 just came out and you must make a decision: buy Office 2003 or move to OpenOffice (free).
Going Office 2003 will cost you around $200 (more or less, depending on the number of copies you’re buying, the edition, ect). A basement fanboy will tell you: you have 2 choices dude, $200 versus free! But if you think about it for more than 30secs and you soon remember that you pay this worker at least $400 per week (that’s not alot…), you will quickly realize that he/she has maximum 2.5days to learn OpenOffice. 2.5days is alot in the “geek calendar”, but in “real life”, it’s…nothing. We all know that it will takes at least a month before the worker will be as efficient as he/she was when he/she was using MS Office. Thus said, OpenOffice is more pricey.
But there’s even more than that. When you go MS Office, it comes with support. You can easily deploy updates (serious tech people know that) and if something goes wrong, you can call Microsoft and bitch. That’s just not the case with OpenOffice. Right now, I doubt there are valuable deployment tools for OpenOffice. You will have to keep all your workers computers up-to-date by hand probably (unless you have a good networked infrastructure). And if you discover an annoying bug in OpenOffice, there’s simply no phone number to call to (well you can try to call Sun but since you’re using OpenOffice I doubt they will help you). You will end up having to submit a bug report on the internet and if you’re lucky, the issue will be addressed by someone someday somehow… But the thing is, searching information on misc forums, filling bug report, ect = time consuming. Remember, you have only 2.5days to do all that crap.
At the end, you will understand why going Microsoft is cheaper. You will understand why smart people don’t go Linux. You will understand why free isn’t really free in “real life”.
All hot air, dude.
“At the end, you will understand why going Microsoft is cheaper. You will understand why smart people don’t go Linux. You will understand why free isn’t really free in “real life”.”
Bullshit. If I run into a snag, I can pick from any number of several on-line Linux forums and post a question and wait for an answer, or a mailing list, or, if I’m really pressed for time, I can jump into IRC at places like irc.freenode.net and /join a channel like #linux for example, or run a /list and choose from thousands of them with thousands of people who can and do volunteer their time to help other Linux users quickly and easily.
I’ve never had to wait more than a minute or two to get an answer to my question, for free. No calling a corporate support line which will usually charge me an arm and a f–king leg. Smart people go to FOSS, fools lick the tits of the coporate giants who support them in some way. The ONLY backers of closed source from the beastly monopoly come from those who fool themselves into thinking they need it, which is two groups: 1) Those who know nothing else, and 2) those who make money from coding buggy and bloated shit software that only runs on Win/based platforms.
These two groups are scared of learning anything new, because doing so means they either have to 1) use their mind (that hurts, why not just watch survivor and rub thyself with some clean tissues handy?), 2) lose money because they’d have to take their programming knowledge to an operating system which has no user base for their shitty work, or both.
Then of course there’s group #3, lurking in the shadows: those who are paid to troll against FOSS communities and spread FUD.
To me, you seem like really ignorant.
You’re one of these twats who believe that FOSS people are smarter than everyone else. This is what I call bullshit.
Most best programmers are enrolled by big corporations that target the Windows platform. Windows programmers arent known to be stupid like you were saying. You’re making a fool of yourself. We all know in real life that most Windows applications out there are rocksolid and deliver way more features than the rip-off equivalents for Linux. This is just a “FACT”. Let’s compare Photoshop to The Gimp, Nero to K3B, MS Office to OpenOffice, Winamp to XMMS, ect. Thus said, Windows programmers are way more smarter than you might think. And this is coming from a programmer. You will never convince me and many others that GTK is better than like MFC, that Mono is better than .NET on Windows, ect. All the Linux equivalents are just small mimics. Maybe you just don’t know eh?
Anyway, having used Linux for a long time (and still using it for specific stuff like prototyping), I can tell you that FOSS people like you are not well informed. You really need to sit and think about it.
It’s nothing to do with platform, I guess your that stupid you didnot even catch what I was talking about. Let me just tell you again what I meant, instead claim i’m ranting about OSS.
Weather it be Photoshop, Corel, Paintshop pro or The GIMP, I can use it just as good as Photoshop because I have a brain to do it. I can write a letter in ANY office program, I dont need to be trained, what has that got to to with OS platforms? did it go over your head again?
[i]Weather it be Photoshop, Corel, Paintshop pro or The GIMP, I can use it just as good as Photoshop because I have a brain to do it. I can write a letter in ANY office program, I dont need to be trained, what has that got to to with OS platforms? did it go over your head again?[i]
Like I said in my first comment, you’re one of those basement fanboys. You simply DON’T understand that non-geek people need ALOT of training everytime they have to face something new. AND THIS IS JUST NORMAL. 50 years old women weren’t born with a nintendo controller in their hands. However, their job depends on computers. THIS IS WHAT I MEAN BY REAL LIFE.
I dont claim to be any different but this is the bullshit. How easy is it to type a letter and put finger to keyboard in OO.o the same way as MSoffce. I’ve not used MS Office much at all, but I bet you I can use it to do my work without a six week collage course.
People who know MS Office know how to use a office program anyway, OO.o is not much different. We are all not retarded morons needing training just because something works a bit different. Even animals can adapt to something different quick, but I guess Microsoft think we are all ameba’s.
Like I said in my first comment, you’re one of those basement fanboys. You simply DON’T understand that non-geek people need ALOT of training everytime they have to face something new. AND THIS IS JUST NORMAL. 50 years old women weren’t born with a nintendo controller in their hands. However, their job depends on computers. THIS IS WHAT I MEAN BY REAL LIFE.
…and the same people can cruise around various different web sites with no problem.
IF they are motivated even slightly, they will learn quickly. If they have no motivation, you can’t teach them anything no matter what you do; they’ve already given up before you start to help.
I say this as a former tech support person and someone who has designed UIs as well as specifications for about 20 years. I’m not a programmer. I sit down and listen to people who use computers for work and I take each concern seriously. I try and make everything as simple as it can be but not so simple that the tools are useless.
Every single person I talk to can figure out a word processor and a spreadsheet if they know one already. If they don’t, they will need training anyway — regaurdless of the wordprocessor or spreadsheet.
If they don’t want to learn, it doesn’t matter what program it is.
“To me, you seem like really ignorant.”
Couldn’t think of a better insult? I’m underwhelmed.
“You’re one of these twats who believe that FOSS people are smarter than everyone else.”
That wasn’t implied enough, you have to parrot it to understand it?
“This is what I call bullshit.”
Copycatting my initial post by reusing my words to fit your context, sad.
“Most best programmers are enrolled by big corporations that target the Windows platform.”
Most greedy, money driven programmers are attracted to those who pay them the most, under the guise of “everyone has to eat”
“Windows programmers arent known to be stupid like you were saying.”
Everyone has access to a mirror, it doesn’t mean they look in it enough or at all to take in the full view.
“You’re making a fool of yourself.”
You are?
“We all know in real life that most Windows applications out there are rocksolid and deliver way more features than the rip-off equivalents for Linux.”
How much are you being paid to defend closed source? What a joke, much of the Linux programs out there support more formats, more features, and are open source and free at that with more documentation. Someone should tell BorgSoft about man files.
“This is just a “FACT”.”
No, it’s bullshit.
Thus said, Windows programmers are way more smarter than you might think.
“And this is coming from a programmer.”
You see? They all fit into one of the 3 groups, usually #2, the vocal ones that is, they’re out to defend their closed source because if free open source prevails, their crap will be forced to be given away for free as no one would buy it otherwise.
“You will never convince me and many others that GTK is better than like MFC, that Mono is better than .NET on Windows, ect. All the Linux equivalents are just small mimics. Maybe you just don’t know eh?”
A shark will do what it has to to defend its meal, likewise the big corporations and their sheep.
“Anyway, having used Linux for a long time (and still using it for specific stuff like prototyping), I can tell you that FOSS people like you are not well informed.”
No facts, all opinions and hot air, that’s what we get from those protecting their interests. Whereas in the FOSS communities you have people interested in bringing other people, nay, HUMANITY, free and open source software WITHOUT LIMITATIONS. When the majority of the world flips to FOSS, you will have even more quality applications developed with OPEN SOURCE. Then we can look back in hindsight and compare the years of development with the old closed source majority, to the years of development with the new open source majority, and really compare with clarity.
Right now, we’ve seen more innovation from individuals working for free in the world of open source than we’ve seen in the corporate world of slime. One side is celebrating freedom, the other is quickly trying to seal the red tape as fast as they can, because after all, money is the root of their worship.
“You really need to sit and think about it.”
If you were to really ‘sit’ and ‘meditate’ about it, it would become clear. But you don’t yet understand what it means to rid the ego from the beastly monkey mind of ‘Me’, ‘I’, and ‘Myself’.
When you care more about others than you do your own code and profits, the beauty of FOSS is revealed.
The problem is, they don’t want to understand, they want what they want, and that’s it. They’ll reply, they’ll throw chairs and scream about it all, but in the end, who are they trying to defend? Themself, their money. They don’t give a shit about you or me or humanity at large, if they did they would see the truth for what it is.
Instead their bitterness will force them to continue trolling in defense of coporations who don’t care whether they exist or not, so long as they profit.
Big bad corporations? You’re such a hippy.
Just wanna let you know that the hippy movement failed 30 years ago. Just like communism. We all know that everything isn’t free and beautiful. You have to live with that. Quality comes with a price tag.
Thats why Microsoft are using OSS technologies, folowing the free OS’s in security. Yer quality comes at a price, the price of others.
ROFL.
Microsoft using OSS technologies? You’re kidding right? Maybe they got inspired by some of them, but proove me they are using it directly. Don’t tell me that the “less privileges” mechanism Microsoft plan to use in Vista is OSS technology. This is just an idea, a way of doing it. They are not using the Linux implementation for example.
On the other side, we all know that many Linux alternatives are rip-off. Mono comes to my mind, the Wine project in some way, OpenOffice as well (they imitated MS Office alot), ect.
You’re spreading FUD.
“ROFL.
Microsoft using OSS technologies? You’re kidding right? Maybe they got inspired by some of them, but proove me they are using it directly. Don’t tell me that the “less privileges” mechanism Microsoft plan to use in Vista is OSS technology. This is just an idea, a way of doing it. They are not using the Linux implementation for example.
On the other side, we all know that many Linux alternatives are rip-off. Mono comes to my mind, the Wine project in some way, OpenOffice as well (they imitated MS Office alot), ect.
You’re spreading FUD.”
Well someone has to punch a hole on the monopoly board dont they?
Q: How can Linux runs apps that are only used on Windows?
A: Write a Windows layer
Q: How can Linux/OSS make a application that Microsoft monopolies with a non standard format?
A: Make OpenOffice and use a format that every other program can use.
Q: How can Linux/OSS get programers who are used a .net to do Application in Linux/OSS?
A: Make a Opensource version of .net called Mono so they can develope applications not just on on platform.
Have Microsoft brainwashed you that bad?, yes just liek the other zombee’s
“Just wanna let you know that the hippy movement failed 30 years ago.”
Wrong, it was quieted following the passing of JFK, otherwise it would have succeeded, try reading history or did you fail that class too and that’s why you’re here?
“Just like communism.”
Commune ism predates communism. The former means people getting together and sharing in community, which exists and flourishes today in monastic communities and the like. Communism the latter is evil, and unrelated (think china/north korea) Again, please read history
“We all know that everything isn’t free and beautiful. ”
Yes, it is, only the evil segments of humanity turn things for at cost and ugly.
“You have to live with that.”
No, I don’t, I don’t use Windows nor do I support companies who release commercial products for Windows. I don’t buy Xboxes and I spread the word about boycotting any purchases of ms products.
“Quality comes with a price tag.”
Price tags are inventions, an illusion.
Is your basement your world? Seriously…
rx182, the guy, 216.17.243.—, is completely crazy – a real basement dweller. But this is the state of OSNews these days. So sad.
I soon realized that. Too bad.
No one’s fooled, using an account and posting anonymously without one as two seperate individuals makes you crazy, and sad.
No one’s fooled, using an account and posting anonymously without one as two seperate individuals makes you crazy, and sad.
WTF are you talking? FUD again?
“Just wanna let you know that the hippy movement failed 30 years ago.”
“Wrong, it was quieted following the passing of JFK, otherwise it would have succeeded, try reading history or did you fail that class too and that’s why you’re here?”
Are you freakin kidding me? This is already way off topic, but you have to know you are a moron. Do you know who JFK was? Do you know when he was assasinated? Last I checked the hippie movement lasted long after 1963. Vietnam ring any bells for ya?
“Right now, we’ve seen more innovation from individuals working for free in the world of open source than we’ve seen in the corporate world of slime. One side is celebrating freedom, the other is quickly trying to seal the red tape as fast as they can, because after all, money is the root of their worship ”
And pray show us some such innovations
“No facts, all opinions and hot air, that’s what we get from those protecting their interests. Whereas in the FOSS communities you have people interested in bringing other people, nay, HUMANITY, free and open source software WITHOUT LIMITATIONS. When the majority of the world flips to FOSS, you will have even more quality applications developed with OPEN SOURCE. Then we can look back in hindsight and compare the years of development with the old closed source majority, to the years of development with the new open source majority, and really compare with clarity. ”
Cut the crap. Its just some software. Not your religion . You are worse then some of our swamyjis. Grow up, no software will ever bring nirvana in anybody’s life or eliminate poverty from the face of earth. It is just a tool used to solve some problem
“If I run into a snag, I can pick from any number of several on-line Linux forums and post a question and wait for an answer, or a mailing list, or, if I’m really pressed for time, I can jump into IRC at places like irc.freenode.net and /join a channel like #linux for example, or run a /list and choose from thousands of them with thousands of people who can and do volunteer their time to help other Linux users quickly and easily”
And you belive all this will be done by a secretary or a clerk in the organization. The same person who did not figure out the feature in the first place. The the required feature set of a Word prcessor is quite limited. a secretary or a clerk should be able to figure out all the required feature list in a new word processor. It should be trivial and it is trivial in OO. But it is also a fact that a lot of them will not have the inclination/motivation to do the same. So do you honestly belive people like that will go and do what you have suggested. They will just sit and whine about your new office software and you lose all the productivity.
I suggest you run a small business and see. I run a very small business in India. The MS Office is extremely costly. But still we prefer to buy it because in the final cost analysis we do benifit. Especially when we
1) receive a numerous macro ridden excel workbooks from our customer and not able to open the same. Remember the customer is always right and i can’t advise him to get the OO or refrain from macros
2) word documents with large number of tables, pictures etc are difficult to open in OO
3) All the third party apps that we have depend on one way or other on MS Office. Do you think a small business like us can negotiate with the software development company to create a version based on OO. Even a nudge towards OO gets funny looks
Not easy…. belive me Not easy.
Thats why companies can develope OO.o themselve’s and suport it in there own. Any moron who used MSoffice can use OO.o, and they dont need to learn it from scratch, thats just BS.
When I used Gimp, it must have took me a day to get going, do you think i’m a simpleton who cannot uses anything but Adobe Photoshop?, Trainning people to use OO.o after using MS office, give me a break. Thats Microsoft telling eveyone again they cannot use a application other then there’s without years of training.
Microsoft like to treat people as morons saying another application needs training, not I can write a friggin letter in ANY office program, i’m not a simpleton.
100% wrong.
OpenOffice.org and Linux are free!
The Microsoft trolls are out today.
If you are right, in your assumptions, this really spells trouble for Microsoft. When they release Office 12 next year, it will be a significantly different from the current MS-Office version.
If you think your users need 2,5 days to adapt from current MS-Office to nearly lookalike OpenOffice.org 2.0 then they will need at least a month to deal with the massive changes in MS-Office 12 that will not look close to anything they have seen before.
Not to mention that Office 12 in many cases most likely will require you to upgrade your OS or even your hardware. Switching to OOo will seam like a bargin, The old trick of ending support for older versions to make people upgrade will not work as it used to.
When it comes to support, if you run MS-Office you can call Microsoft support if you have problems. The support person will then have to decide on whats best to do 1) fix your problem 2) Tell you the problem will be fixed in the next version. In most cases the support person thinks that 2) is the best option as you will pay for that upgrade. If you don’t agree, or MS-Office somehow damages your business e.g. by leaking information Microsoft will be happy to compensate you by refunding all the $400 you paid for their license. Well, happy is perhaps not the right word, you will probably need a good lawyer to get them to refund you.
Also, remember another key principle of Microsoft support is, that whatever the problem is, it is your fault. By definition Microsoft have no faults. That is why they releace service packs instead of bug fixes.
By the way, what makes you think that reporting a bug to the OpenOffice.org bugzilla is less effective than reporting it to Microsoft in both cases it is the developer who decides when and what to do with your report. The only difference is that in the OpenOffice case you yourself have the possibility to fix the bug yorself or by hiring sombody who fixes it for you.
However, the best alternaive is probably not to upgrade at all, unless Micorosft decides to cut the support for your current MS-Office version.
It’s a well known fact that MS has full time employees that spend most of their time posting on forums like these, and constantly trash all open source software. MS has never been an honorable company, has always relied on FUD, and they are smart enough to know that constantly trolling on popular forums is great for the FUD machine.
It’s plainly obvious here, by the completely moronic, dishonest, misleading, inflammatory comments that are being made here by the MS trolls.
Anybody who has ever used both MS Office and OpenOffice, as I have and millions of other users and professionals have, knows very well that OpenOffice stacks up very well with MS Office. OpenOffice, other than being a bit of a memory hog and taking a while to launch, is a damn fine piece of software, that is very easy to use, has a full feature set, and is very very productive. Also, so many people who have used MS Office have come to to hate it’s feature bloat, it’s extreme bugginess (perhaps the buggiest piece of software I’ve ever used), and it’s steep price (at least $500 for a full featured copy – and then subsequent forced upgrades).
Ignore the MS trolls. The only things keeping OpenOffice, Firefox, Linux, and other fine open source software from taking over equivelent MS products faster are user ignorance, apathy, and the insideous MS FUD machine.
But don’t take my word for it. Download a copy of OpenOffice, Firefox, or a Linux distro (or other free software), and give it a spin, and see for yourself. I’m confident you’ll be glad you did, and you’ll see just how full of dung the MS trolls really are. The MS trolls don’t want you to do so, they’re afraid.
Yes, too bad openoffice and firefox run better and faster on windows than they do on linux.
“Yes, too bad openoffice and firefox run better and faster on windows than they do on linux.”
Yes, too bad (program name) and (program name) run better and faster on (operating system name) than they do on (operating system name)
How about we all pull more facts out of our asses?
Are you thinking before you type or was your cat walking across your keyboard?
It’s a well known fact that FOSS has basement kids that spend most of their time posting on forums like these, and constantly trash all Microsoft software. Open source zealots have never been honorable, and have always relied on FUD, and they are smart enough to know that constantly trolling on popular forums is great for the FUD machine.
It’s plainly obvious here, by the completely moronic, dishonest, misleading, inflammatory comments that are being made here by the FOSS cult zealot trolls.
Ignore the FOSS zealot trolls. The only things keeping OpenOffice, Firefox, Linux, and other fine open source software from taking over equivelent MS products faster are open source religious nuts that people don’t want to be associated with and the software being inferior
But don’t take my word for it. Buy a copy of windows and Microsoft office and see how professionals do their work. I’m confident you’ll be glad you did, and you’ll see just how full of dung the open source cult zealot trolls really are. The open source cult religious zealots don’t want you to do so, they’re afraid.
It is the myth that people think MS office is a bad product, no it’s not. I am a linux user, I dont trust Microsoft but MSOffice is a good product. The point is that people find OO.o more suited because,
1. It’s free.
2. It’s Opensource
3. It does what they want and they dont need to spead £200 on just writting a letter.
You can appy MS Office point to OO.o, but thats choice because for years there has not been one like this.
“Buy a copy of windows and Microsoft office and see how professionals do their work”
No thanks, instead I’ll continue to switch over professionals to free and open solutions like Open Office.
Companies are just beginning to sell computers without Windows, the tide is turning, and eventually the monopoly will be another boring page in the history books.
“Buy a copy of windows and Microsoft office and see how professionals do their work”
No thanks, instead I’ll continue to switch over professionals to free and open solutions like Open Office.
Companies are just beginning to sell computers without Windows, the tide is turning, and eventually the monopoly will be another boring page in the history books.
Judging by the number of MS FUD/Trollers posting on this thread, MS must be quaking in fear at the new Sun/Google initiative.
Thank you MS trollers for informing us just how scared and paranoid MS is.
Judging by the number of MS FUD/Trollers posting on this thread, MS must be quaking in fear at the new Sun/Google initiative.
You linux nuts are going crazy over Sun shipping an option for Google toolbar in the JRE installation. No wonder you are so delusional
Thank you MS trollers for informing us just how scared and paranoid MS is.
haha, yeah in your fantasy, zealot basement world Microsoft would be quaking in their boots because of the craptastic OO code.
Okay, if you run/make decisions for a REAL business you would know that OO is a horrible choice. Word documents never look right and .doc files made in OO never look right in MS Office. When you are sending information to customers or vendors, you don’t want to look incompetent, it reflects poorly on you and the company you work for/own. Until I see a significant improvement in OO I wouldn’t consider it a real choice. MS has a better product. Maybe that will change one day but, until then I’ll stick to MSOffice
Brillant.
#1 — why send .doc or .xls files to a customer or vendor? seems like .pdf works pretty good for that.. oh yah, OOo has built-in .pdf support.
#2 — if you don’t like .doc exports from OOo.. then send your customers/vendors a .sxw if .pdf doesn’t work .. its not like your forcing them to spend $$$ on getting an office suite (like you are by sending them a .doc or .xls) — OOo is a free download. Its really easy to install and click on a document.
#3 — so your conclusion: MS Office is a better product because they have a closed format and does not provide any specifications for 3rd parties to create import/export filters for their formats. So if Microsoft went out of business and MS Office no longer worked (activation.. no Microsoft no way to activate your software) then your documents are locked in a propietary format with no options. Great feature on a “better product”.
You obviously haven’t used OO calc, its a piece of DogS**t!
If Microsoft are reading the comments on this thread I am sure they are trembling before the altar of such gods as the FOSS advocates posting here.
Good god – “I can go online and too irc to get an answer”. Its fine when you are in your moms basement or your college dorm. Do you think Nancy the fifty year old secretary who struggles with a cellphone is going to go on IRC for a “quick answer”. If you want a reason why oss is not going anywhere on the desktop take your comments and bring them to a small business owner. And watch the business owner laugh their ass off at you.
“If Microsoft are reading the comments on this thread I am sure they are trembling before the altar of such gods as the FOSS advocates posting here.”
Aren’t you on the payroll? You tell us
“Good god – “I can go online and too irc to get an answer”. Its fine when you are in your moms basement or your college dorm. Do you think Nancy the fifty year old secretary who struggles with a cellphone is going to go on IRC for a “quick answer”.
Do you hate women now? Jesus Christ, first they bash freedom lovers, now they’re bashing the opposite sex! Tell Nancy to send me a /msg when she’s on, k?
“If you want a reason why oss is not going anywhere on the desktop take your comments and bring them to a small business owner. And watch the business owner laugh their ass off at you.”
OSS is the future, and it’s coming faster than many expected, which has many paid trolls typing scared.
Freedom for humanity is the future – that’s something big corps would love to keep confined to a basement.
OSS is the future, and it’s coming faster than many expected, which has many paid trolls typing scared.
The future for who? You don’t dictate the future for anybody.
Freedom for humanity is the future – that’s something big corps would love to keep confined to a basement.
“Freedom for humanity” ehh? lol. See, that’s the problem with you people and why you’re considered nuts. When you take a tool like software and worship it like you do then you have problems existing in reality.
Maybe you don’t take your freedom seriously. I consider a lot more other things more fundamental to REAL freedom than freaking source code.
You are not fooling anybody by your idiotic theatrics.
“The future for who? You don’t dictate the future for anybody.”
That’s what the big coporations want us to think.
For every corporate stooge, there’s dozens of us or more who are spreading the word every day, handing out copies of Linux and information to people, because we care.
Those who defend closed source are paid to, the end.
Well, I tried virtually all the versions OpenOffice came up with within the last few years, (not counting StarOffice back in OS/2 days) and I have to tell you:
MS Office is a product, which works. No matter how much I hate Microsoft, I have to admit this.
OpenOffice: It works most (Say %99) of the time, but in that %1 (and that happened to me), you may loose your new spreadsheet. More importantly, no matter how compatible it is (And yes OOo 2 series are quite good at it), until it is %100 compatible, there is Zero room for OOo in serious businesses.
Case Study: Imagine JPMorgan. These guys live by Excel, Word and Powerpoint. Make it 1000 bucks, they will still buy it. A single problem in a pitchbook that lost its formatting because of a silly bug in OOo can spell disasters for these guys…
Given this, I can see where OpenOffice would shine: New generation of businesses. Startups. These guys build offices with no legacy, no beforehand training. In this case, OpenOffice totally makes sense…
So, to sum up:
1) MS Office, is irreplacable (For %90 of the businesses).
2) OpenOffice has to create a new market for itself (like iPod sort of..)
3) If sun wants to make something out of this, they have to fight strong.
What MS does right all the time is: When they decide to do something. They do it till they die. They do not care about immediate losses, they do not change plans on the fly. Look IE, look Windows Media, for gods sake, look Windows. These are all very difficult battles won.
So what does Sun do? Throw few coders and expect the product to win all the trophies. Instead, they should push hard… Yes , they may loose 10 million more, but if they don’t invest that additional 10 million, they loose the 100 million they invested soo far…
My 2 cents.
Cheers
Some of you people really have lost the plot, you seem the think that once Linux or OSS is in a sentence then it must be a troll. Did anyone acually say MS Offcie was a bad product?, didn’t make you money?, is a worthless peace of crap OO.o rules?, NO.
Nobodies attacking Microsoft’s there quality in office, just that OO.o and Startoffice are just another alturnative to get the job done. So please read proper before you post a rant about OSS, since it runs on other platforms as well not just Linux.
allusion as in to allude
An indirect reference to some piece of knowledge not actually mentioned. Allusions usually come from a body of information that the author presumes the reader will know. For example, an author who writes, “She was another Helen,” is alluding to the proverbial beauty of Helen of Troy.
illusion
1. An erroneous perception of reality.
2. An erroneous concept or belief.
The condition of being deceived by a false perception or belief.
Something, such as a fantastic plan or desire, that causes an erroneous belief or perception.
Sorry, but the article you linked to got it right
I read through all of these comments, and seeing people go back and forth over petty bullshit is just so funny. Here’s an idea, use what you think is the best tool for the job.
Don’t just mindlessly choose an application because it’s made by Microsoft or OpenSource. Use what you think is the best tool for the job.
For me, word processing, Presentation and Number crunching are done on OpenOffice. Nothing against MS Office, but 2003 is such a resource hog on my P-III 600 with 256 Mb of memory at work. OpenOffice runs nicely.
On the other hand, if I need a database, I will write a PHP app, and if I do web development, I use a combination of TopStyle, FrontPage and dev-PHP. It’s about using the best tool for the job. Hell, I have frontpage and photoshop on my linux machine…. why?
NVU sucks, and I don’t feel like hand coding HTML (I used to). As for Photoshop, it’s what I use at work…I used to use Paint Shop Pro, but now when I use it I miss Anti-Aliasing and a bunch of other goodies.
I do have to say that I will be fully switching to my Linux box when Crossover supports Frontpage 2003. Windows is nice and all with it’s easiness, but I’ll never be able to afford Vista, or the hardware it needs to run.
…and for everyone who says “Sun copied MS Office” I have to inform you that you are incorrect. StarOffice 5 was released along side Office 97. The technology came from the Unix World. Look up StarDivision.
Have a great night, and keep up the “Epic Battle of MS FUD Packer vs Linux Zealot” I love reading these posts!
I read through all of these comments, and seeing people go back and forth over petty bullshit is just so funny. Here’s an idea, use what you think is the best tool for the job.
Its not petty if your an IT manager or director. The problem with using the “best tool for the job” is the lock-in factor. I think OOo is the “best tool for the job” most of the time. I love the stylist, I like the cross-platform capability, I like the non-intrusive interface, I like the regex features, etc.. HOWEVER, document interchange can be a PITA due to the lock-in to the MS Office market dominance. This is the BIG issue. Without healthy competition in this area, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for picking the “best tool for the job” if document interchange is a requirement.
Don’t just mindlessly choose an application because it’s made by Microsoft or OpenSource. Use what you think is the best tool for the job.
I agree. Use of the best tool is what should happen. But be knowledgable in your choice and further implications of that choice (ie lockin to vendor formats, limit of future choices, etc..)
MS Office has market dominence due to the MS monopoly, people not being given a choice, FUD, and maintaining lock with proprietary file formats that constantly change. People make their documents with MS Office, and they have to have MS Office to be able to open the file 100% (although OO.o, Abiword, Gnumeric, Koffice, StarOffice, and WordPerfect in MS file format compatibility).
But with Massachecetts going with the open document format exclusively, MS won’t be able to rely on file format lock in. And many other governments and corporations are watching what Massachusetts is doing very closely. Many will soon follow suit. And guess what Office products already support ODF? OO.o, StarOffice, and KOffice, with the others soon to follow. And guess what office product doesn’t support ODF? That’s right, MS Office.
With a large government entity turning away from MS proprietary formats (to help avoid vendor lock-in, and increase competition, and thus innovation, customer satisfaction, and value), and many to follow suit, the leak in the MS monopoly ship will turn into a flood and the Titanic nose diving to the bottom of the sea, before long, and unless MS learns to compete, play nice, and deliver what customers want.
You keep missing the biggest thing about the Massachusetts issue. The odds of Mass. being able to pull off this switch are low. All MS has to do, is not change, and Mass will find themselves with more headaches then it was worth soon enough and just go back. MS can hold out on Mass. Far longer then Mass. can hold out on MS supporting OpenDocument.
For someone to think Mass. will pull this off and not find themselves switching back is being extremely optimistic.
You are 100% correct.
Massachusetts will…
1) Lead the way
1) Succeed in it’s agenda
1) Provide a road map for all others to follow
Now THIS is what I call a GOOD OL’ FASHIONED
FLAME-WAR
We need some OS-X and BSD people here pronto. Mabey some GNOME vs KDE people? Since this a flame war that has been done repeatedly to the ground why dont we bring some Nvidia and ATI people along for the ride.
I have never seen a dead horse beaten down like this before.
linux, google, firefox, openoffice, apple, [insert any other competitor] are no threat to microsoft.
we heard that all before. calm down, people. did you really believe that microsoft would tell you something else – eg that they fear their competitors?
I wish OO was better so I wouldn’t have to dual boot into windows to view a spreadsheet.
Try filtering a large spreadsheet in Calc, then deleting filtered rows. You would figure a simple procedure such as filtering and deleting rows would work flawlessly, IT DOESN’T, OO WILL CRASH! Hopefully its fixed now. The last version I tried was 2.0 in Suse 9.3. I am so disgusted with OO/StarOffice and all the time I wasted using it.
I’m not a MS supporter, but Office is a vastly superior product if you actually use the product. I’m not talking about people who just use the basic features in Word such as typing and saving. Those people can use OO just fine.
“You keep missing the biggest thing about the Massachusetts issue. The odds of Mass. being able to pull off this switch are low. All MS has to do, is not change, and Mass will find themselves with more headaches then it was worth soon enough and just go back. MS can hold out on Mass. Far longer then Mass. can hold out on MS supporting OpenDocument.
For someone to think Mass. will pull this off and not find themselves switching back is being extremely optimistic.”
This is complete nonsense. All Mass. has to do is use the new formats, and use software that supports the new formats. They will require all vendors and consultants to conform to the format, and they will easily train employees to use OO.o, StarOffice, or whatever else (the learning curve for a new Office product is very very shallow). In so doing, they will be free.
You forget that Mass. is the customer, and the customer always (should) call the shots. MS is not the dictator (although they think they are).
And all the other governements and businesses thinking about the switch and watching Mass. will soon see how easy and painless it truly is. Then it’s only a matter of time before MS’s leak turns into a flood. Then finally, finally, MS will have to play by the customers rules, and compete like everyone else. This is good for everyone (allows choosing the best tool for the job).
Massachusetts has done a great service to it’s state and country by making the move to an Open Document format.
This is exciting news for all!