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OpenOffice Gets a Toe-Hold in The Netherlands
ChristW writes "Several sources in The Netherlands report that the city of Groningen will invest 160.000 euros yearly to switch its 3650 computers to OpenOffice. They are saving 330.000 euros per year by making this switch. The other 170.000 euros will be saved up to use for new Microsoft Office licences if it becomes necessary to renew them. The city plans to renew software every 5 years, as opposed to Microsoft, who 'forces' an upgrade cycle of 3 years. Switching from Windows to Linux is not seen as an option at this point in time, so those licenses will be renewed."
I've always found OpenOffice to be a fairly good alternative to the Microsoft Office Suite. The biggest problem I've run into with it is the fact that OO 1 cannot open documents that were saved in OO 2 format. This was originally an issue here at my university because they took quite a while to migrate to OO 2. All the documents I tried transfering one day to print off in the labs had to be converted back to a format that would open on OO 1, which was a PITA to run on several dozen documents.
As for compatability with Office Documents, I've had some problems when the documents have strange formatting, but it seems to only occur when you try to print out the documents.
Dutch people care very little about buzzwords and corporate promises.
If something is cheaper and does the same thing our cultural cheapness kicks in and ditches the old crap.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Corporate site licenses expire and need to be renewed.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Yes, it's called "Software Assurance." It is not possible to get upgrade pricing with Microsoft open licensing. You are either required to purchase SA with your licenses, or buy future licenses at full price. This keeps you locked in. Sometimes you save money if the next version comes out before your SA expires and your company decides it wants the new features. Sometimes you don't save money if you decide that you don't need the next version, or there's a lovely four year gap between versions and your SA is only good for 2 years.
It works because if you *could* have saved a lot of money but chose not to, then you're going to look like a serious idiot. If you don't save money but pretty much break even, you stay off the CFO's radar. So you might as well purchase SA, with the one serious drawback being that you're stuck with MS Office because you've not only paid for it, but you've prepaid for the next version. Bonk.
This doesn't affect individual users. It also doesn't affect companies that are quite content using very old versions of MS Office.