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Is The Microsoft-Free Office Possible?
One Clan Anonymous Coward member asks this question regarding viable alternatives to the entire suite: "The company for which I work is presently deciding on software and hardware standards for employee desktops. A couple of days ago a radical thought occurred to me: could the company use Sun's StarOffice suite in place of Microsoft Office? If so, it might save the company a lot of money! So I cadged some free copies from the local Sun sales office and spread 'em around. For an integrated office suite, it doesn't look half bad. And it may allow some of us to keep our 'nix desktops :-). The question is: can StarOffice really be used in place of Microsoft Office? The big concern is, of course, exchanging MS-Word and MS-Excel files with customers and vendors. Does anybody out there have any experience with deploying StarOffice in place of MS-Office on a company-wide scale?"
TigerPlish asks: "[I wish to] find or develop a cost-effective e-mail solution that'll support Microsoft Outlook. All the functions MS-Exchange provides must be supported, in particular, the ability to migrate an ACT2000 database into an Outlook contact list..complete with searches, etc. So far, the other geeks at work are pushing for MS Exchange, and Lotus Notes, both running on NT. My suggestion is HP's OpenMail, which I'm now starting to play and get familiar with - and it's turning to be quite a bear to configre. At least it sends and gets mail from the internet - tho the x.400 to internet name mappings are truly hideous. Other than HP's OpenMail..are there any other Outlook-compatible server solutions for linux? They can be either payware or open-source..."
Compatibility with Office's contact management features has been a big issue with many of the submissions I get regarding Office replacements, unfortunately I didn't get much information in this regard from the last time this question was raised. It would be interesting to see how much has changed in this area over the past 18+ months.
Lumpy asks: "Is there a program that I can use from Perl (or as a daemon/ etc..) that will converse with an Exchange server for sending and receiving email? Our corporate servers are only Exchange based, and will not open up a POP3/SMTP server for use by non-MS systems."
Which is, as most of us know, another way Microsoft locks offices into their infrastructure. Has there been any progress made on solutions to this problem? I ask this primarily for cases where where administrators are unwilling to go through the trouble of enabling POP3 and SMTP services for their all-Microsoft networks.
Here's a similar question from OldGrover: "Does anyone know any information on the format Outlook uses to talk to Exchange? Where can I find this info? I'd love to have a perl module that talks to an Exchange server and I see no such beast on CPAN, so I'm perfectly willing to write one, but obviously I need the data. If the data isn't available, what are my potential liabilities if I just figure this out myself? (Watching packets, or whatever). Where are the Evolution guys getting their info? If I could, I'd use something else, but there are an awful lot of companies out there using Exchange. My biggest beef with it is its lack of scriptability and transparency and a Perl module with all the power of Outlook (mailing list updates, querying, mailbox manipulation) would go a long way towards helping me resolve that. I'm willing to put in the time on this, but I have to know the lay of the land first. Comments?"
Decyphering the Outlook<->Exchange dialect would go a long way into opening up the office to other systems. A Perl module implementing such a thing could almost directly plug into CSCMail, for example. However, reverse engineering the protocol might prove problematic, even if it was done in countries where reverse engineering is legal, since Microsoft can still put heavy pressure on anyone choosing to use that information. What legalities would be involved here? Could such a feat be performed legally?
What about Calendar sharing? I know Outlook has functionality for scheduling meetings and appointments via e-mail. Are there any Open Sourced applications that perform something like this? Would such a thing be difficult to implement?
So there are still a few issues that need to be addressed before a Microsoft Office-free environment is practical, but it's currently possible with varying degrees of success. Now that the itch is being felt, even among the average user, getting it scratched is a matter of "when", not "if".
I've been using Star Office at home for most of a year. I can say that I have yet to have a problem opening ANY Microsoft Office 97 (or older) document, be it Word or Excel. The calendar portion of Star seems to have the same functionality as Outlook, except for the Virus-friendly scripting. There is some scripting support, but I've never investigated it. Who needs it, really?
Sun is getting ready to release Star Office 5.2, from the preview pages it looks good. They claim the M$ Office filters are much improved, and will support Office 2000. I am looking forward to checking it out. If it's as good as they say, I am going to try to convert our office at work to Star Office. We are currently a M$-Only workplace, including Outlook and Exchange, and it really sucks. The "ILOVEYOU" script brought our Exchange server to it's knees for days.
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
That said, its only a matter of time before M$ changes file formats to force everyone onto the vicious upgrade cycle of death ("Uh oh, my client just sent me an attchment in MSOffice 2001 format - must pay M$ tax now!") and the current release of StarOffice becomes useless.
Though I heard some rumblings (here on /. - so it must be true) that the new format might be HTML (or XML) based? If so, expect strange new tags to appear in an undocumented way...
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Yes, it's official: The average user doesn't know how to use linux. This is your single, biggest challenge. People do not like change. They have used Windows "for X goddamn years, and goddamnit, I'm not going to switch!" I worked tech support for three years. I dealt with thousands upon thousands of callers. I can safely say that less than 1% of them are currently capable of doing anything much beyond logging in. Most would even protest that.
Yes, linux has many alternatives to MS products available but, like most linux offerings, comes up short on UI. Oh, and for those who are already hammering in their replies - I'd like to remind you I've used linux for the past four years, as well as NT, W2K, Windows 98, hell, I've been on computers since the DOS 3.3. So yes, I do know what I'm talking about here. Your average desktop user has the IQ of a lobotomized flatworm.
If you want corporate acceptance of linux, I have two pieces of advice for you: Don't force it, and don't evangelize it. There are alot of reasons for this, but the simplest one is that if you can't show your boss how to use it, you're not going to get it deployed. The other reason is that despite what people say about this industry moving at warp speed, corporations move about as fast as dark molasses in the dead of a minnesota winter. Most corporations don't upgrade until they have to - they have no time for training, IT is usually busy resetting passwords and deleting that #$@! office assistant from the desktop.
You want linux in the workplace? Code it. Use it. Debug it. Repeat. Linux will not get in the door by simply mentioning it... it must win by proving itself superior. We have no marketing department, our sales department is an FTP server in North Carolina and our programming department spans seven continents. Am I getting through?
OK, here's my $0.02....
1. Mail: Exchange servers will generally talk IMAP. I can read my mail from an Exchange server just fine using any IMAP reader. Of course if your company doesn't do it this way you're hosed. A lot of places shut down POP support since it's "insecure" or something...(no more than anything else....)
2. Documents: For 90% of the documents that most people in an office environment use/create/read, etc., they're probably not using any of the 'advanced' features that would normally break compatibility. It's the other 10% who've got all the macros, templates, graphs, OLE links, and undocumented file format features that will have trouble.
3. Presentations: Unfortunately a big hurdle is all the PHB's whose time is spent created powerpoint slide shows to yammer on about at meeting after meeting. Until we get a powerpoint clone that can 100% handle powerpoint files (these are probably the MOST incompatible between versions) then forget it.
Any spreadsheet will work fine for simply formatting data columns and doing simple charting. Any word processor will work fine for the simple letters, memos, etc. etc. But the above issues are where the problem lies.
This is a slight side track to the original question but recently I have started to feel strongly that a small alteration to current monopoly law could allow everyone to compete on a level playing field. I have found their to be some misunderstanding as to the purpose of monopoly law, it is not illegal to hold a monopoly but it is illegal to abuse one. I would propose that once a monopoly in an area such as software/operating systems had been established (such as in the current Microsoft case) the company in question should be forced to open it's specifications to file formats, protocols and other proprietary systems that limit interoperability.
If Microsoft were forced to open all it's specifications it be far easier to build an office environment in which other systems played a more crucial role. I personally feel that options currently on the table to deal with Microsoft's abuse of power could adversely affect the software industry in ways that will harm everyone. If instead the kind of forced sharing of information I propose was in place the balance of power would change gradually. Software would appear that could talk to an exchange server alongside server software that outlook is happy communicating with.
I don't want to see MS free offices in favor of some other emerging stronghold of power, instead a rich environment where software from many different sources can be used without serious compatibility issues would be infinitely preferable. For the time being this is just pipe dream I know, but that is no reason not to try.
I've been playing with StarOffice (both 5.1 and 5.2 preview) recently, and it looks to be a good, functional office suite, that converts Word and Excel documents fairly well (still some bugs here). Still, I think that Sun (or anyone else for that matter) has a long way to go before they can unseat Microsoft Office from the workplace.
Asking geeks and the computer savvy to switch office suites is no big deal. We've all had experience learning new software, and are not afraid to have our productivity suffer in the short term, if it means benefits in the long term. The real challenge will be getting everyone else (Mary in HR, Bob the CEO) convinced that switching office suites is a Good Thing.
Most users have a hard enough time switching between different versions of Office, let alone Office to StarOffice (or other). True, the up-and-coming office suites are designed to look and feel like Microsoft Office, but it's the little differences that matter. You can type a regular letter in anything without much trouble: but it's the way things like tables, columns, and other page setups are implemented that tend to confuse the common user. If your average user can't figure out how to perform their important tasks in a new office suite, they'll start crying for the old Office.
How many millions of dollars have been spent training the rank-and-file of businesses around the world to use Microsoft Office products? How many training classes have secretaries been sent to? How many Word for Dummy books placed on their desks? The point is that businesses have invested a lot of time and money to train their people to use Microsoft Office: the decision to switch shouldn't be taken lightly.
One of the biggest problems, however, is the fact that learning a computer takes a lot more time and is done at an older age than learning to walk or potty training. Driving is also pretty much a neural activity.
In other words, nothing you stated requires a college course.
Computers have yet to become that good. I mean, a lot of people get confused with a VCR, much less a computer.
I have experienced this rather sad elitism myself, on a different level. I occupy what I call a "middle tier" of programmer--one who has a good working knowledge of high-level languages such as CFML, VBScript, and SQL, but has a lot of trouble dealing with lower level ones like C+ and Java.
Another big problem is that the higher up on the "elite knowledge food chain" you are, the harder it seems to be to communicate with those in need of training. I have found that the commercial products like Microsoft and Allaire have better documentation and teaching tools than anything from the open source movement.
Thus, I think there is merit in comments about usability and seeing the corporate view as a whole before undertaking a quest to remove Office from the workplace.
Ultimately, the goal of computers are to be used as tools for the masses to business, entertainment, education, and research. Our ultimate goal is for them to be used by as many people as possible. That involves making them easy to use, and not just reserved for a select few members of a cyber-intellegensia.
We should never forget that.
To whit: documents generated using Word 2000 and saved in MS Word 95/6.0 RTF may not be useable with Word 95/6.0 because of add-ons to the RTF "language"... I hesitate to call it a language, really because it's just one big ugly spec that keeps getting added to (e.g., Word 2000 prints out table definitions at both the beginning and the end of a row "to maintain compatibility" with readers that expect it at one end or the other - all the while breaking readers that don't expect it at the end).
Sorry, I'm writing a document conversion/creation app right now that is due in one week and is just a tad frustrating because of this very reason. To the point...
What we need are open source document formats that can be implemented relatively easily (look at XML, it's the way to go) and will not allow companies like MS to bastardize them with implementation-specific "features". (again, look at what MS is doing with their Word2000-generated "HTML" docs. If they're displayable in anything other than IE5, I'll be highly surprised)
Calendar and task sharing is not difficult when you have your organizer built-in to your email client. This isn't an ideal solution though, because your organizer and email client should be separate, IMHO. Why not have a centralized organizer/planner running that other applications can communicate with via CORBA or some other communications scheme? Hell, you could bundle it into the OS and beat MS at their own game.
Now I must play Unreal Tournament and cleanse my mind of these foibles.
"He treats objects like women, man!"
- The Dude, The Big Lebowski
\begin{slashdot_reply}
\include{positive_karma}
I don't think that your office printer will have any problems if you use a \{em post-script} printer and force the whole office to use VI and \LaTeX. \\
Believe it or not, 99\% of the people who call tech support {\df ARE} capable of understanding the innerworkings of both VI and \LaTeX. They will also enjoy the {\em simpler, non-graphical} interface by running these on machines without X installed. \\
Finally, in the last 10 years of computing, I don't think that VI or \LaTeX have crashed a single computer. \\
So again, here's the reasons for switching to \LaTeX...
\begin{itemize}
\item Easier to use then cake!
\item Employees will find it fun, and will love it
\item Employees aren't locked into VI for all of their text editing needs. Other solutions such as VIM, emacs, or xemacs exist.
\item Printing the resulting postscript file will solve your printing problems and provide elegant printouts
\item It won't crash computers.
\end{itemize}
\end{slashdot_reply}
%% Just for the sake of people about
%% flame me, this was intended as
%% sarcasm. I love VI and LaTeX, but
%% I also worked in an office environment
%% and fully understand that Hell would
%% freeze over before even 1% of them
%% attempted to learn LaTeX!
Well, if you want to avoid an MS-based office, you basically have a handful of options.
Option one: Set up Linux workstations (or Solaris, or whatever). Install StarOffice, Applixware, or WordPerfect (if you're using Linux). Teach your users the basics of operating in a Unix environment, and build their login environment to be as simple as possible. Then accept the limitations you'll face on peripheral usage, software, compatibility, etc. There are workarounds for a lot of it.
Option two: Buy a whole load of Macs. Use AppleWorks, Netscape, and Eudora as your operating environment. Apple's stopped including Office translators, though, so you'll have to buy them from Dataviz. There used to be other options on the Mac, but Office steamrolled Lotus and Corel right out of the ballgame. Office has a higher competitive marketshare on the Mac than it has on Windows even - because there's no high-end competition. StarOffice is supposed to be on the way now, though.
That all said, it's not necessarily practical to go MS-free. For the most part, Office on Windows is the easiest, most practical way for the average office drone to get things done. It's bloated, granted, and it comes from Shub-Redmond, but it still works quite well for what it is. If you also put your users on NT (not servers, mind you, but users), you have enough tools to lock the systems down sufficiently to keep the users out of trouble and still let them think they control their systems.
Where it is easy and practical to go MS-free is in the back end. NetWare is still the slickest file & print server out there, and their directory services work real well and give you nice admin tools that can control systems across platforms. Linux, xBSD, or Solaris all also run well on the back end, and are tremendously robust and flexible. Not as easy to administer as NetWare, and without the cross-platform (Windows included) directory tools, but a viable option. Exchange is easy to replace - you can use Notes, GroupWise, or a Unix-based system like OpenMail. Presto. Eliminating Exchange/Outlook has just rendered you significantly less vulnerable to nasty virii and worms that plague Windows users. Besides that, you can easily avoid running Microsoft databases - Oracle, Sybase, Informix, or a host of others run very well, cross-platform, and have all sorts of development tools available.
Basically, it's easy to ditch MS for a lot of applications, but Windows probably makes more sense today for the average office worker. Ask this question again in a year, and there's a real good chance my answer will be different.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."