Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft FUD Machine Aims at OpenOffice.org
Roblimo writes "If you're using Microsoft Office and considering a switch to (free) OpenOffice.org, Microsoft would like you to read their Open Office Competitive Guide first, in which they tell you how much better/faster/cheaper MS Office is than OOo. Taran Rampepersad, an IT consultant in Trinidad, believes this "Competitive Guide" is nothing but FUD, so he wrote a detailed rebuttal to it -- and released his article under the FDL so you can feel free to republish his piece or share it with anyone you like, however you like." A followup to this story. Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
and my MS Office-using (on a Mac even) advisor is sixpence none the wiser. Total FUD.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I read that document actually. In short, it shows the disadvantages of OO: which there are- and then it shows the advantages of MS.O. It only goes head to head with OO on one point, the point of integration with the Outlook suite. Unfortunately, MS makes the assumption that we want more than a write-clone and a basic spreadsheet.MS believes in the extreme abundance of features. I don't care for gazillions of features, myself. I want essentially Write from Win 3.1. Anything more tends to be utterly unused. Spreadsheets need to have math functions, coloring, some decent copy functions, and a decent grapher.(Excel ain't a great grapher) Anyway, it is mostly FUD.
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
It appears you are contemplating jumping $hip. Do you wish to:
[ ] believe our obfuscation of your choices?
[ ] wait until you don't have any choices?
[x] make your own mind up?
Given how many times MS has talked about cross-compatibility of Office one has to wonder why that document itself is PDF???
OpenOffice does not have an e-mail client, so customers may incur a licensing cost associated with buying an e-mail application.
Why don't you use this 'free' software?
Because it doesn't come with an email client!
Why don't you use a 'free' email client?
Because it doesn't come with a web browser!
Why don't you use a 'free' web browser...
Ensure that their mission-critical information is adequately protected from virus attack.
Over the last month I have been sent over 20 virus infected MS office files. I hardly think this argument could possibly hold up.
OpenOffice does not have a dedicated development or support rteam. Consequently, if bugs go unresolved, users have the option to resolve problems by scouring through numerous community sites and chat rooms.
As opposed to what? Finding out you have a bug in your software and waiting till the next version or patch two years down the line? OOo is bad because thee is a community of people happy to help you.
All in all its pretty pathetic. I doubt the person who wrote it was convinced.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Often it's not even possible to use Office formats between versions. Try to edit an MS Office 2003 file on a system that's using MS Office '97.
And the muscular cyborg German dudes dance with sexy French Canadians
I'm no fan of MS (I'm browsing from FireFox within Linux), but he gives short shrift to the problem of macro/VBA conversion. The fact of the matter is that the documentation on the OO API absolutely stinks, and any business with a substantial investment in its current automation would have to think not once, not twice, but long and hard about the costs of conversion.
A couple of things to note about Microsoft's
fud:
1) It's not in Word format. Why not?
Not everyone can afford Microsoft Office,
although everyone can afford Open Office.
2) Microsoft office doesn't export to pdf.
A third party app is required --- unless
of course you open the word document
in Open Office 1.1 and export it as pdf.
3) The fud was written in Quark express on a
Mac --- looks like Microsoft doesn't use its
own tools.
4) Had they written it in Word format, folks
who couldn't afford Microsoft Office would have
to download open office so they could
use open office to view a word document
telling them why they shouldn't use
open office to view word documents.
I don't know if any of you read SysAdmin or Dr. Dobbs Journal (I get both) and the Microsof tFUD machine doesn't stop at OpenOffice. In my latest issue of SysAdmin was a pack containing a 180 day time crippled copy of Windows Server 2003 and a "Learning Resource" CD.
I went through part of the CD before I raised the "bullshit flag" over the following:
1. Poor Plug and Play support based on Solaris 2.6 and an equally ancient version of Linux. Did not mention HP-UX, IRIX, or AIX.
2. The only way to have a remote desktop similar to Terminal Services was to use VNC, what about a remote X session?
Microsoft would not get in so much trouble over this stuff if they simply told the truth. Or are they expecting Linux and Unix admins and developers to "jump ship" for some crippleware (not including "Windows Services for Unix" which Microsoft had to Interix to develop!First of all, it's OpenOffice.org, not Open Office (trademark issues).
Secondly, even though I am a participant on the Marketing list for OOo, I must say that the disk space comparison between OOo and MSO is unfair. MSO comes with fonts + clipart, which OOo lacks. Maybe SO vs. MSO would've been more fair. (we want our products to win through honesty, not FUD).
Jay | http://oldos.org
Reading some of the more key points with OO it reminded me of some of the reasons that I am such a big fan of OSS and the OS movement. With these open (or at least more open than MS and the like) standards it gives a good feeling that you are in control of your data and the documents, etc. you create. When I would use a tool such as MS Office I would feel that I'm making the document for it or as a kind of expansion of it rather than as a self-created work for me. This sent a tinge of concern through me for quite some time. I know it is probably silly for me to feel a sense of liberation and it's really not anything I can describe properly. I guess I just enjoy the freedom permissible by using a standard that is not owned and controlled by an entity that has little to no desire for openness. With quality suites like OO I feel that once users get this feeling that they are in control of their own works - or at least more-so then they were - they will make the migration which will only bring futher support to the OSS community.
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
FYI I FSCKed up my PC on RH9 (I take full responsibility, thus PEBKAC) but DLed MDK and installed OO.o and now I say STFU to MS FUD. YMMV though.
OO.o is better TCO and ROI. If you use MS (including IE), you'll need to visit NAI or get AVG ASAP or your machine will be DOA.
Huh?
"Microsoft feels compeled to insult openoffice.org by saying how wonderfully better MSOffice is"
So, anytime anyone says anything is better than something else, they're insulting that 'something else'? "Best hamburgers in town!" is an insult to every other burger place?
That's the stupidest logic I've ever heard.
How, exactly, is it an insult to anyone using OpenOffice for Microsoft to say their product is superior? What else would you expect from *ANY* vendor of *ANY* product over their competition?
Open Office: Cold-blooded Communist
Microsoft Office: Compassionate Capitalist
Open Office: Created by nerds living in their parent's basement.
Microsoft Office: Created by techies in Microsoft's underground bunker.
Open Office: Has naked code on prominant display.
Microsoft Office: Code is decently compiled and hidden from prying eyes.
Open Office: Bugs are reported loudly, increasing fear in users.
Microsoft Office: Bugs are kept hidden from users, so only those who wish to exploit them need worry.
Open Office: Terrorists and dictators can copy it whenever they want.
Microsoft Office: Terrorists and dictators must spend their money purchasing licenses, decreasing the threat to the free world.
Open Office: Uses GPL.
Microsoft Office: Uses EULA, an acronym with 33% more letters.
Open Office: Doesn't make any money for Microsoft.
Microsoft Office: Makes lots of money for Microsoft.
Statement's like this are totally, well, retarded:
*Training: OpenOffice is, for the most part, the same as Microsoft Office XP for a user, but there are things that they will need to learn how to do differently. All things being equal, if a company's staff need formal training for OpenOffice, then they probably need it for every new version of Microsoft Office. Therefore there is a cost on both sides, and they are at least equal.
So, the whole paragraph is an assumption to start off with. But it is also contradictory and misleading: "but there are things that they will need to learn how to do differently. All things being equal,", for example.
And the next paragraph:
Therefore, this is a valid point and would be part of a migration cost, yet one has to wonder at how complex such macros would be in a SMB.
Um... many companies base their entire inventory tracking and accounting systems on complex macro programs. (Not a good idea in my opinion, but hey, what can we do).
I'm not going to go on but the article is not exactly something I would use as a reference... even for a grade 5 project. The whole article is saying nothing but "well, yeah but I think", and is obviously heavily anti-microsoft. It's what is known as "junk science".
My staff recommended including it in an XP distribution kit I'm puting together for a new promotion. I declined only because OO didn't work in XP as a limited user, and that it didn't support multiple users' settings.
.whatever files), but still set per-user.
I realize OO's built from a common source code base that should work for multiple platforms, and such proprietary things as The Registry would be verbotten territory. That doesn't forgive the designers, though, who have access to per-user environment variables, per-user home directories and common areas to store information as defined in Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
Of note:
%userprofile% is the equivelant to $home. Store per-user settings here, or in %appdata% which is hidden normally (like
%allusersprofile% and %ProgramFiles% point to common areas that are at least read-only to all users.
Minor programming changes to look for these environment variables would let OO be multi-user and secure on current and supported versions of Win32. How hard is that?
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
The points are aimed at people who actually buy software. The fact that you can write a thesis without using word is not a great surprise. I wrote mine using LaTeX.
The marketting points look reasonable enough to me, OpenOffice does not do everything that Word or Office does, it does provide a clone of the core functionality. But what happened to open source being innovation and Microsoft being only able to copy? Is there anything that OpenOffice does that is new?
When the VA Linux puts these stories up on slashdot they do so with all the objectivity of a Congressional hit squad. When it comes to Microsoft the editorial line at VA Linux is even less objective than Matt Drudge. At least Slate tells us that it is owned by Microsoft before they comment on stories that affect their employer, heck Slate even bites the hand that feeds it. But not Slashdot, there they stay on message even more comically than a Whitehouse press spokesperson.
Is this the most important tech story going on in the world? I don't think so. The editorial diet today has been pretty thin, recycled stories published a week ago on the BBC, the fascinating news that Mozilla Foxtrot is going to allow the users to choose the name for themselves. Well whoop-de-do, Internet Explorer went through that phase roung about release 3.0, you could download a tool that would let you brand it any way you chose, stupid icon and everything. I used to annoy my Netscape friends by running a version that announced itself as Netscape Navigator complete with N icon. The sometimes took quarter of an hour or more before they realized they were having their chain yanked.
I still think the Wired story on how to get casual sex via bluetooth was more interesting. Oh and that virginity auction in the UK. Or how about Boeing being about to launch high speed internet service via WiFi on planes next month?
Sure the latest discovery of some perfidious Microsoft marketting litterature was desperately more important and interesting. Does it tell us anything new we did not know before?
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
The big deal is that Microsoft is finally admitting they're threatened.
Creating marketing material that directly targets OO is quite an admission and they probably resisted doing it as long as possible because simply naming OO like that actually has the negative affect (for MS) of elevating them into the ranks of "serious competitors" - which will make people start talking. It also telegraphs to investors and stock analysts that there may be choppy waters ahead in the Office margins.
Remember, Sun didn't give away OO just to be nice. They did it to make a dent in MS's margins in their #1 cash cow. Looks like it's working.
So sure, that's what their marketing dept is supposed to do, but until now, they'd never needed to. In fact, up until now, the only real competition Office had was Office - pirated.
Exchange business transaction information externally with customers and vendors.
Now IMHO, THAT is funny! So I need MS Office for this, when Microsoft's OWN solution is to use PDF. Talk about making your own counter-point!
It's amazing that Microsoft is still saying with a straight face that you can call their support line and get help. Admittedly half of that statement is true, but not the half that matters to most businesses. Microsoft's ineptitude on the phone is legendary. Their developer's site is nice and quite useful, but that's not going to help the average clueless Joe who wants to know why Office is reformatting all of his documents with the tagline "0wn3d by PH3rN4nd0!," or keeps crashing with the words "missing vsdl95.dll." They charge ludicrous hourly rates to provide the kind of tech support a jr. high school student would consider incompetent. Come to think of it, I sense an opportunity to revitialize our schools...
Furthermore, their document reads like a argument against closed protocols. "If you leave us, you leave your data. You leave your database. You leave your correspondences. You can't leave us. You're ours." If your file cabinet supplier came to you and told you that your business histories and documents would be shredded if you ever thought about leaving, you would consider it blackmail and would find a new supplier right away, threats be damned. Why do we take this as a viable argument in the computer world?
The ______ Agenda
Hmmm.... Maybe these guys should learn LaTeX and concentrate more on the content, not formatting of their papers.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Adobe Acrobat
Not to be confused with the Adobe Reader that just about everyone has.
Every place that I have used or maintained Samba, I've also installed a network PDF printer for the client workstations to use (using this guide as a reference). Of course why stop there, you can also use the same concept descibed in the above link to install various printers like jpg, tiff (color and group 4 fax), and just about any other printer that gs can export to. These virtual printers make a great document converter for those people that you want to share stuff with that may not have the specific application to print or open the native file you may have to send them. Another advantage is printing confimations, receipts, web pages etc.. in electronic form instead of on paper.
Substitute ps2pdf in the above linked guide to gs for other printers, examples below
RGB color tiff at 300dpi:
gs -sDEVICE=tiff24nc -r300x300
Standard Group 4 Fax (tiff):
gs -sDEVICE=tiffg4 -r100x100
300dpi Jpeg:
gs -sDEVICE=jpeg -r300x300
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Where I am working, I have a Suse Linux desktop, and can use a Microsoft Terminal Server should I need it. I could have had a Microsoft Windows desktop, if I chose so. People at work can use Microsoft Office or OOo.
I am aggressively using OOo file formats in my daily communication. That is, all documents that I am sending are being sent out as sx? files, and if I am receiving MS office documents, I convert them to OOo anyway in order to work with them, and send them back in sx? formats. Usually, I include a customary copy of a PDF export with the document.
This strategy works nicely. Almost all the people I work with now have OOo included in their installation. In fact, new machines in my workplace will soon include OOo as a standard installation, I hope. Some people are starting to send documents in sx? formats as I do.
External communication is the next target. I will force our suppliers and partners to learn what OOo is and how to use it as well.
This is how you establish a standard: Document it (OOo file formats are nicely documented) and then use brute force to publicize it.