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IBM Policy Switches From MS Office To OO.o
eldavojohn writes "It's frequent that we hear of a country or city or company switching from Windows to Linux, but it's rare that we hear of one third of a million employees being told to use Lotus Symphony (IBM's OO.o variant) over MS Office, and also to use the Open Document Format when saving files. The change has been mandated to take place in the next 10 days. Of course, they are doing this to illustrate that they actually offer a full-fledged alternative to Microsoft. With i4i stirring stuff up against MS Office and absolving OO.o from litigation, are we on the verge of a potential break from Microsoft's dominant document suite? Hopefully IBM supports OO.o past Sun's acquisition by Oracle instead of concentrating on Lotus Symphony."
O_oo
In the old days, years before OpenOffice or even StarOffice existed, Lotus Symphony was an office suite. So unless this is another "SBC buys AT&T and then starts calling itself AT&T", how can Symphony be described as a variant of OpenOffice in any way, shape, or form?
#DeleteChrome
Previously, the used MS Office but actually recommended their customers to use Symphony. That's just a laughable position.
I'm glad the finally changed this, but i'm not sure if this actually means anything. IBM's slow as molasses in regards to everything. Want a server from them? Better wait 4-6 weeks.
and its always good to see people switching to openoffice :)
". . . past their acquisition of Sun . . ."
I think someone's been misreading recent headlines.
All these Oo.o's remind me of family guy
Peter: Oh my God, Brian, there's a message in my alphabets... it says Ooooo!
Brian: Peter those are Cheerios.
Sound Clip
In my dreams, Microsoft Word got replaced by a word processor that naturally creates beautiful documents, that lays them out consistently every time you open them (and between versions), and has a simple easy to use interface.
Open Office is not that program.
However, the beauty of open file formats is that now someone else can write that program, and there will be no barrier to entry, we can start using it right away. In fact, if I am the only person in the world who thinks emacs bindings in a word processor is a good idea, I can use them, and still interoperate with the rest of the world.
Because we all have different ideas of what the perfect word processor will be, this is one step closer to a happy software world.
Qxe4
According to this article Lotus Symphony is based on OpenOffice.
http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/IBM-Throws-Out-Microsoft-Office
I guess they felt they should get something from the acquisition of Lotus Symphony so that's what they call their version of OpenOffice. Perhaps Microsoft should offer their own version of OO and call it "Microsoft Bob".
Way to go IBM. But I am guessing that the support staff is going to have a huge job on their hands. Nice to see a big company take the plunge of moving out of M$ Office. I like the statement in TFA that they are just practicing what they preach and not doing the switch to save on license fees ROFL.... I like the idea but there is no need make saints out of IBM. B U T is in the I of the Bee Holder
Not long ago, IBM's standard word processor was Lotus WordPro.
I have a load of .LWP files lying around from my IBM days, that I can't read...
It goes to show that a company like IBM can function using a "minority" office suite.
I want to see them succeed beautifully first, and to actually show meaningful improvement after the switch. :)
I'm all for switching to open source software. But MS Office works extremely well. And OO.o is no Firefox.
Firstly, this is nothing new. Getting a license for Office 2007 at IBM is an impossible task and has been so since it was released. Office 2003 was the last version that IBM had a volume license for.
Lotus Symphony is an unholy abomination. Coming from the same people who gave us that paragon of usability Lotus Notes, now they mixed eclipse RCP with OO.o and came up with what can possibly be the worst productivity set of tools ever. The only benefit it has is it integrates well with Lotus Notes and that's about it.
It's genius.. by actually using the product day to day, they will discover it's strengths and weaknesses and know what changes they need to focus on. That they have not done this from day one is the amazing part.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
I used be an IBM employee, and I can remember the corporate mandate that ALL IBM internal documents had to be made in Lotus SmartSuite instead of Microsoft Office. Guess what... most folks still used Office instead. The primary reason was that SmartSuite sucked, and was about five years behind Office in terms of ease of use and functionality. IBM never bothered to regularly update it as well, leaving it in some 1997-era timewarp when the rest of the world was using Office 2003.
I haven't tried Lotus Symphony myself, but if it's anything like OpenOffice 3, I doubt that most IBM'ers will be raring to convert all of their documents over in a timely manner. Combine that with thousands of customer facing workers that NEED to use Microsoft Office to ensure total compatibility, and you're going to have a hell of a time getting everyone to switch.
Those parts of my career that were in support of software, either as a help desk or as network admin with additional duties, required a large amount of support for every program we used. In corporate environments to small business the use of Office required significant support efforts by everyone. Claims that OOo requires more support than others is specious. One can make a heavy bet and know that you'd win in judging that those people making that claim have no experience supporting others on either platform or have never used Open Office. I've watched many firms take OOo, and though there was a learning curve, use it to good advantage.
Because you don't like OOo doesn't mean it doesn't work and do the job it is supposed to do. I use it. Millions of others use it. The few people here disrespecting it (without showing proof they actually know anything about it) demonstrates the specious nature of anything they might write about it or any competing product.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Not like IBM's "version" of OpenOffice is free. Its proprietary and costs you money, like Microsoft's Evil Office. Seriously stop calling it OO.o, it makes 90% of military acronyms actually make sense, and that is messed up.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
As well, as a Mac user myself, and for others using non-MS systems, it will be nice to be able to tell people that IBM uses OpenOffice.org (which will be the shortcut way of telling them that they are using an in-house customized version...) as an incentive / emotional proof that OOo is viable for their own use.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
When will Oracle decide to stop funding anti-competitive ventures and switch fully to ODF and OpenOffice? The trouble that M$ causes Oracle directly, can be added up, probably accurately. For every 1 penny spent on MS Office or helping maintain the market share of MS Office formats, n more is lost from Oracle from M$ antics.
And software isn't worse just because it's free.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Are you as stupid as your post appears? IBM are switching to Lotus Symphony which, although it shares a lot of code with OO.o, is an IBM product, developed by IBM staff. This is not 'getting something for free' this is 'using your own products'.
Honestly, Microsoft needs to pay its shills more. The current crop really aren't trying.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I just have a hard time taking /. seriously. Oracle is buying Sun. IBM isn't.
How the hell are we supposed to trust this source for any news when it's always wrong.
It rather annoys and even pisses me off that so many important business tools are written with dependencies on MS Office. That is, of course, Microsoft's intention and the primary reason for the existence of a programming language built into the office suite.
I once worked for a firm where a contract writing program that requires MS Office and, if I recall correctly, Adobe Acrobat Professional. What a huge waste of money!? Not only was this "application" quite expensive, but so are the dependencies involved... and on top of that, the application was only valid for a year. Upon learning about this situation, I had two thoughts. One was related to the old saying about a fool and his money, and the other was that my hopes of saving the company any money by going to OO.o was a lot more challenging.
Using more F/OSS in business requires that people are mindful of the applications and the dependencies [lock-in] that they bring. Moving away from commercial and proprietary isn't as simple as replacing one app with another. There are often deeper considerations.
The danger of lock-in isn't usually apparent or obvious to people who buy apps. Quite often IT isn't even involved in that decision.
Well, since with FOSS, the investment is zero, then any return makes infinity percent return so that's a pretty sweet deal for any business, right. Right?
See, we can both make ridiculous claims about FOSS, but I suspect the truth is somewhere between the two viewpoints.
First, i4i in no way "absolved" OO.o of anything. What they DID do was say they don't "believe" it infringes. That's code for "we're going milk all the money we can out of MS, then we'll figure out who else we can sue".
Second, the MS i4i suit has absolutely NOTHING to do with the topic at hand. Why was it even brought up? Cmon guys, enough of the MS bashing. It's to the point it has to be brought up in stories about completely different products now?
A paid for Word Processor would have suggested Feeble
From Wikipedia: "OpenOffice.org version 1.1.4 was dual licensed under both the GNU Lesser General Public License and Sun's own SISSL, which allowed for entities to change the code without releasing their changes. Therefore, IBM does not have to release the source code of Symphony."
This is about as open as MS Office. I defy anyone to find me the source code for Symphony posted on the net.
While this only makes sense that IBM uses it's own office suite it's not a win for open source.
...one third of a million employees being told to use Lotus Symphony...
This is actually an ingenious way for IBM to stress test its hardware - a third of a million internal Symphony bug reports all hitting the server at the same time. Beat that, Oracle.
But it is worse when its worse, in spite of it being free.
"His name was James Damore."
This is just another in a very long line of people wanting something for nothing.
Give me a break. It's more important to have the capability of reading and writing documents everywhere and not having to worry about information surviving past the arbitrary economic lifespan of some corporation.
By focusing on the ROI on document software, something that should be as prevalent and available as air, you're letting a fixation on the rocks in the road cost you your awareness of the horizon. Look up for once and stop muttering at your shoes.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
A bit of a disclaimer here: I work for IBM.
With that said, the change wasn't as much as an ideological shift to OO software more than it was a licensing issue. The simple fact was that it is quite expensive for MS Office licenses for the entire company. Lotus Symphony has been available to employees for years, but it hasn't really been forced until three or so months ago when a program was pushed to workstations that removed MS Office and installed the Symphony suite if you did not already have it(default builds come with Symphony on it anyway, so it didn't really need to be installed on many workstations). Now if you want a copy of MS Office on your IBM workstation, you have to have a legitimate business need to order it or you can use your own personal copy if you so choose. There are hardly any instances of the former case happening.
It was stated before by another thread here by an ex IBMer that SmartSuite was the default for IBM documents and that people used Office anyway. Yes, that is true. The reason that is true is that Office had become the defacto standard across other industries, and that IBM offered it to employees for free on their workstations, so it was the logical choice to make. Couple that with the fact that SmartSuite was not nearly as developed as Symphony was a few years ago, people couldn't be hassled with converting between file formats, or sending files to other employees or clients and pray that the recipient could actually open it. SmartSuite was a boon on productivity and hence the broader use of Office within the company.
Now IBM is in the market for software. As was stated earlier, the best place to start promoting your own product is from within. In all honesty, a LOT of employees never used Symphony simply because no one knew it existed, and if they did, they did not have the time to learn it. Now that IBM has shifted away from Office for internal uses, our customers may see this and may want to investigate -- that's the theory at least.
The article is a bit misleading in that Symphony is an OO.o variant. Here's a hint: it's not in no more than a humvee is a variant of a boat. The real only similarity is that they both use open standards as their default file types. With that said, however, Symphony still supports MS Office formats and many people DO switch to using those formats as the default anyway. Having said that, there is not much of an uproar as one may think about this switch. Symphony supports both open standards and Office standards, which is the best of both worlds for us.
I guess the bottom line is that this was a BUSINESS decision and not one further the development of open standards. IBM is a business and the business will do what is in its own interest to stay in business. I'm sure it is saving us lots of money, and to be honest I thought this sort of change would be forced down years ago. Either way, it gets the word out on Symphony and gets us off office which saves money. It's the best of both worlds, no?
Eh, I was joking mostly. I really don't know why I got modded insightful
Let me explain.
Practically everyone on Slashdot is a linux loving, MS hating, pro-GPL geek with no social life.
Now, everyone knows that the previous paragraph is not true. That stereotype applies to rather small portition of slashdotters. However, many here think that the other Slashdotters believe that stereotype to be accurate.
As such, they easily mod anyone posting against that (anti-GPL, "MS has done good stuff too", etc.) as insightful. By doing this they believe that they are helping others see that the stereotype doesn't really apply to everyone here.
Conversely, it is very easy to get funny mods by using that stereotype. If you claim that Slashdotters have no social life, you get modded either as troll or funny. The latter is not because mods think you actually are funny. It is because they think "Hah. That guy joked about our lack of social life though he really knows it's not that accurate. He is one of the people who get that! I'll give him a funny mod."
Think this post is not correct? I bet you that you could post practically identical posts to each and every Linux or MS related story about how MS products are occasionally rather useful and get modded insightful every single time.
-AC
I'm not sure what the consequences of this would be at the consumer level. The OP talks about breaking MS's monopoly on word suites, and the largest benefit of that would be moving away from .doc formatting. I think the largest concern I have about Microsoft's dominance of the market is that most people seem to assume that .doc is a standard format, and think that it supports any kind of interoperability. Of course it really doesn't and isn't. As far as I can tell however that's only an issue at the consumer level. Sure my friends, and my boss might send me .doc, but any kind professional publisher expects .rtf formats. Basically anything with any legitimacy at all will call for .rtf, which while still spawned by microsoft is at least a standard format that encourages interoperability. A much bigger win would be OpenOffice suites actually supporting .rtf formats properly, so that legitimate work could be done through them.
Value seems to be a theme for you. I figured I'd check your recent posts to see if you really do behave like a MS sponsored poster... Which as far as I can tell, you aren't. Kudos.
I think you are ignoring something quite basic here. IBM is the maintainer for Symphony. I think they *should* use their own product. They get value out of it by extending the testing cycle to all the phases of the SDP. They also get value in not having to pay off a competitor to use a product that they already have. Furthermore, I expect there to be a great return on this investment simply because of all the complaining I hear every day about Microsoft Office. If IBM can truly make a better wheel, use it, refine it and hopefully distribute it, then I'm all for it.
It's not a matter of not paying for it, it's also not a matter of monopoly busting... It's about making a better product. I think most of the office software out there is terrible. I'm also pretty sure that as long as nobody tries to make a better product, we won't see it magically appear from the dominant player. Someday I hope upgrading to a new version of a suite won't completely break what's working in an old edition (See Office 2003->Office 2007... They are similar in name only). I hope that there ends up being a way of defining a document such that you can just freaking open it later regardless of what software you decide to migrate to.
Nope, it's worse when it has fewer features, fewer developments, and fewer compatibilities. It's worse when it doesn't have in-roads into the given user's industry practices too.
All I'm saying is that OOo is late-to-the-game, and simply isn't quite as advanced yet. They've got a long way to go, and others have had a substantive head-start.
Now why would I support a lesser product? Why would I support a late-comer? Why would I risk my hard-earned business on a product that simply isn't as mature yet?
There's one reason -- it saves me money. That becomes a value proposition. Value propositions are straight-forward business decisions. Those are easy.
"Of course, they are doing this to illustrate that they actually offer a full-fledged alternative to Microsoft."
There's more to the post than simply the facts. And certainly other comments are available to me as inspiration.
.R.O.I. is only a percentage-of-investment calculation when you can vary the absolute value of that investment, thereby effecting a greater return via a greater investment.
In this case, you can't really invest more, and you can't really save more. So the only thing that matters is the absolute amounts -- as perhaps it always did.
So what's the greatest amount able to be saved? You get to calculate it for your own needs. And what's the greatest productivity improvement available?
Aside from maybe ascii text files, and possibly RTF, you're going to be hard-pressed to find any format which will survive for twenty years. That said, I give you my personal and professional guarantee that in fifty yeras from now, you'll be able to find a Word .doc converter to just about anything. PDF too. Simply because they are popular enough.
It's got nothing to do with open versus proprietary. The "open" part of open is the source code, not the availability. It's not that complicated.
(Incidentally, thanks for checking up on me. that's awesome. few people do that.)
I too agree that every company should use their own product. Not only for testing purposes, but also because they have enough power over the product to benefit from internal changes quickly and effectively -- moreso than their users.
But in this case, I focus most on the "alternative to ms office" part of teh post, as well as many comments. IBM didn't make the software, IBM only adapted it. Your point about someone making a better wheel is a great one. But in this case, I view it more like IBM's making designer spokes, and putting the playing card in them, rather tahn actually building the wheel.
You can already open a document anywhere. Ascii text files, even RTF, well-formatted HTML, and sometimes PDF. Everything else suffers from the wonderful world of layout efforts.
And it's simple to see why. Imagine, if in March, North American businesses switched to a slightly different size of paper -- let's say for environmental reasons, whatever. Let's say the new paper size is 9.5" x 10". Someone studied that more of today's content can fit better that way.
Now every single format that isn't based on free-flowing content is totally useless. And every existing document you have, independent of program or format, is just useless, because it simply won't look right.
There are advancements to be made, and they aren't in interface, file format, and general features. Everyone trying to build the "better wheel" as you call it, keeps trying to build the better wheel for yesterday's roads, forgetting that the existing solution leaves the problem solved-enough.
I'm reminded of the old concept of square wheels on cars. Wheels aren't round because square wheels don't roll. Wheels are round because square wheels don't roll on flat pavement.
But there is a rolling-hill, moggle-style road surface on which square wheels rool smoothly, and round wheels do not. This road surface would actually allow cars to break in a much shorter distance -- because locked-wheels simply couldn't slide.
Of course, creating those roads would be incredibly costly, and certainly not worth-while.
Re-inventing the wheel is worthless when all you do is consider the problems that are being solved by the current wheel. You need to solve problems of the future -- problems caused as a result of future improvements. Because if you do exactly that, you get to have those future improvements, and that's called advancement.
I see OOo in much that way -- "let's do what microsoft did ten years ago, and let's do it better". That's great. If I had a time-travel machine, and could send OOo to 1998, then it would be a great boost. But in 2009, OOo, if it's better at all, isn't better enough. That makes it just another alternative -- a less mature, less expensive one at that. That's a value proposition, which is a business decision, and nothing more.
I hope that there ends up being a way of defining a document such that you can just freaking open it later regardless of what software you decide to migrate to.
That's existed for the longest time^H^H^Ha while now: It's called Unicode.
$ make available
I can appreciate the drive to adopt open source.
However, the money I spent for Microsoft Excel has been worth every penny. There's just simply no comparison, and I find it amazing that all of IBM would be willing to abandon it completely, regardless of cost.
/* No Comment */
Nothing on IBM's internal homepage, nothing in my email, no notification from my management.
This coming week is "Open Client Awareness Week", with activities at more than 80 IBM sites. The idea is to show how far the Linux based clients for laptops and desktops have advanced. Even that is focused mostly on Linux, with no mention of Symphony that I can find.
A version of the infobox (a flexible properties panel that can stay open while you move around in the document) exists in the Mac version of Microsoft Office and in Apple's iWork suite.
Lotus Notes is some of the shittiest software I have ever used. It makes that bloated hideous POS Outlook look good.
And it's better when it's better, despite it being free.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Again they are imposing Symphony on us. First it is dog slow. None of the other folks (i.e. partners in other companies) want to use it. So again we end up trying to save documents in 'MS office' formats. And it is a mess. Spend time correcting fonts etc because it is not equivalent. Above all, most of the features from MS Excel are missing.
So thanks, no thanks.
I went to IBM's site, downloaded it and as I was trying to install it, dpkg (or frontend) told me a newer version was available in the repo. Sure enough:
~$ sudo aptitude install symphony
[sudo] password for (me):
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
symphony
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 7 not upgraded.
Need to get 189MB of archives. After unpacking 455MB will be used.
Writing extended state information... Done
Get:1 http://archive.canonical.com/ jaunty/partner symphony 1.3-1jaunty1 [189MB]
Cool!
Let us know when Open Office becomes better that Microsoft Office.
"His name was James Damore."
As it's common knowledge that there was and is a lot of annoyance and extra work involved in going to the last office, so either you'd have to be very critical of Microsoft for laying that extra cost on their customers or you'd have to give IBM a pass on what you assume is a 2 week cost.
I don't know if anyone else has posted this info yet so I apologize if it's redundant.
With release 8 of Lotus Notes IBM migrated the Notes client to an Eclipse base. In an effort to provide an all inclusive product to SMBs they resurrected the Symphony name integrated OpenOffice functionality into the Eclipse based client. This has the effect of providing the end user with a consistent UI - a shocking development I know. Today a Lotus Notes user can access mail, docs, spreadsheets etc from within the same client via tabs like Firefox. It's pretty slick and a very welcome move into current day UI (always a poor area for IBM in the past). People at IBM have stated their intention to add functionality found in the old Symphony (1-2-3 etc)to OpenOffice where it makes sense. If IBM follows through it could be a huge bump to OO. As OpenOffice supports MS97 formats in addition to odf the transition should not be a big deal. Novell made a similar switch to OO over a year ago. The most significant effect will be on MS revenues, even if MS was giving Office to IBM for 10 bucks a seat - that's over 7 million lost to Stevie boy.
Microsoft Office was nothing special when they bundled it with soundcards
and it still isn't. There is just a sick cult following behind it that
fixates on whatever is perceived to be the "herd choice" while tearing
down anything else. It doesn't have to be "free software". It can be
well established "best of breed" software that it's users still pine for
today 15 years later.
Some of us don't like MS Office and never did and would like it if we
didn't have to ever be bothered with having it forced down out throats
ever again.
The difference between a monopoly a market leader is that you are at
your liberty to completely ignore a market leader.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That condition is ENTIRELY artificial.
It is an artifact of planned obsolescence. This is something
that companies that sell software use to artificially create
demand in their product so that people will continue to buy
something when they don't really need to.
RTF became popular because real requirements allow it to be
useful despite the fact that the format is ancient.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
WE were given a lot more than 10 days. I've been using Symphony for at least six months, after a email came down telling us to switch over. I have not yet received any emails giving me just 10 days. Of course, I still have to keep MS Office installed because of the occasional PowerPoint presentation that makes its way to me.
Two things. First, "herd choice" is a good thing, and a feature, when you want to do something as a herd. That's the world of business -- it's all about the herd.
Second, WordPerfect was, and probably still is fantastic. Where'd it go? Why did OOo appear when WP was already mature?
Is anyone here using the new Corel WP? I'd bet way more are using OOo. So your point about choosing a non-market leader just doesn't fly. You can always cohose WordPerfect.
It just so happens that in the business world, you want to be using the same software as everyone else -- the same as your clients, the same as your suppliers. It could be anything, but it has to be the most popular. That's a bonafide feature, and it can be a very important one.
If you want to say that ms office is a monopoly in so far as it's the only one to be able to offer that one feature, then sure that's true. But there are plenty of other office suites out there. Use them if you like. And if you can get a vast majority of people to use it, then it can become the new herd choice. And then you can complain that that new company is evil.
Perhaps the only way to satisfy you would be to have multiple companies produce multiple suites which all read the same file format, in exactly the same way. Well then by all means design that format, put together your rule book, and get people to follow it if you like. But you can't force an existing company to alter their products to suit your new rule book if they don't want to.
That's their freedom, and it's important to them -- and to me for my business.
But that's their right to do. That's a freedom that any company gets to exercise. You are free to build a product that becomes useless over time.
And hey, virtually every tangible product does. Your washing machine likely doesn't survive 5 years. A good one ten years. And a really good one twenty years.
MS Office 1995 files still work just as well. And Office 2007 can still produce '95 files.
So it would seem that your complaint is that a company's products don't last for, what, 100 years? 200 years? 2'000 years?
I own and operate two companies. My products don't last 100 years either. I'm not interested in supporting them that long; and I'm not interested in having them cost enough for me to build them quite that well.
What product do you produce? How long does it last?
Now I certainly see your desire to have *information* last for thousands of years. And that's cool. But I don't think it's appropriate to have the creator of an office suite be responsible for ensuring taht retention, do you?
It would seem that _historians_ and _librarians_ and an industry of archivers would be responsible for taking whatever is the current format, and neutering it into an archivable format -- and converting those archives into modern formats as things change over time. You know, just like the way old paper books are kept, maintained, archived, and restored.
I build metal boxes. My metal boxes are designed to serve a 5 to 10 year purpose, with maintenance and cleaning. It's a metal box. If you want to keep it for 200 years, you probably can. It's a metal box. It will likely last. But I don't sell it with a 200 years warranty, nor with a 200 yeras service plan. If you use it as a time-capsule, you're not going to hold me responsible for any anti-worm features, or anti-corosion features, or anything else. That's not what I'm selling.
So if you were to look at MS Office as a program used to create files for present and medium-term future use (10 years), then it serves your needs quite well.
If you want software that is designed to have its files used for hundreds of years, then MS office isn't the right choice. Make a better one. But don't blame ms office. It was never designed for long-term historical features. It was designed to print resumes and reports. It does that well.
When OO 3 came out, it severely broke spreadsheets in Symphony. It wasn't until Symphony 1.3 came out, something like 9 months later, that Symphony gained the ability to handle spreadsheets from OO 3.
Yet if you Google for information on the problem, you'll find pretty much nothing. That one thing in the Lotus forum is the only mention I've found of it.
I conclude from the fact that such a major incompatibility could go virtually unnoticed by most of the OO and Symphony user communities for so long that either almost no one uses Symphony, or Symphony users are closed groups that don't need to exchange documents with outsiders who use OO.
Rockoon wrote:
I think a more important question is: Does OpenOffice.org meet the needs of the user? If OpenOffice.org meets the needs of the user, why not choose it over MS Office?
Please tell me how to use Lotus Symphony instead of ANY office suite or even a basic Word processor if it has this "known issue":
"Graphics with text cannot be copied to other applications
In the Lotus Symphony SpreadSheets and Lotus Symphony Presentations, inserting a graphic and inputting text into it, and then copying the graphic to another editor, or to Lotus Notes, the text inside the graphic may be lost."
Do you realize Apple Lisa (pre Mac) could do it? Or MS Office on Win 3.1? Or OS/2's great, wasted Office suite? (IBM Works)
Last time I checked, it didn't support OS X PowerPC , even a G5 which its official name is IBM 970XX. Does it support IBM POWERPC at least?
Oh my God (a.k.a OMG) this articles sumary says one whole third of a million!!!! Way to bump the number and make it sound like a whole more. I mean, dont get me wrong, 300k users is a lot. but one third of a million sounds bigger... you have got to love the well chosen words...
Wondering what would happen if guy buys his own MS Office, iWork or installs Abiword? Of course, an "admin" would install it for him.
Not a MS office fan but it seems like a bad idea to make choices for employees. For example, lets say there is a huge bank mainframe contract and guy has to prepare his papers in 48 hours. Will he struggle with a totally new, unpolished "open" thing or finish the damn papers? It may cost IBM millions of dollars at the end, just a single mainframe sale especially in this economy and there is still FUD about mainframes.
Ministry of Defence (Singapore) made the switch (http://www.zdnetasia.com/insight/specialreports/0,39044853,39230757-4,00.htm) back in 2006 and now the entire defence sector is using it. That's a couple of magnitude as compared to IBM's switch.
I love the Mac version of Word (which I use at home) compared to the work version on a PC. I love the infobox feature, that makes working so much easier. I am glad MS allows a separate development team for the Mac.
I used to work for IBM, but that was when we had to type .im to get a picture to print on the IBM 3820 printer using BookMaster. So I say use whatever is going to keep the stock price up and produce a better pension check. Keep up the good work boys...so far so good.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
There is just a sick cult following behind it that fixates on whatever is perceived to be the "herd choice" while tearing
down anything else.
For a minute there, I thought you were talking about GNU/Linux. Now that's truly cult-like software.
But the difference in perceived or actual quality might not justify the difference in price. This is especially true for business, where what matters is return on investment.
After all, I am strangely colored.
holophrastic wrote as part of a post:
I think what happened to WordPerfect is that it wasn't able to make the transition to Windows 3.1 fast enough, while MS-Word was ready when Windows 3.1 launched. That delay cost them the leadership in the word processor field at a time when it was competition with many other DOS word processors, including MS Word, WordStar, Professional Write, AmiWord, and PC-Write.
Another factor that worked against WordPerfect (and other word processors) is the integrated office suite. Based on my experience, for a time the integrated office suites had individual applications that tended not to be a good as the standalone applications. This changed with the introduction of MS Office, and the standalone word processors were now competing with an entire suite of applications.
Returing the the subject of word processors, WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS is one of the best word processors I've ever used. However, I gave WordPerfect 5.1 for Windows a try and disliked it so much that I returned to the DOS version after 30 minutes. For a time I worked in an office environment where MS Word, WordPerfect, and WordStar coexisted, but once Windows became the standard PC OS the only word processor that was available to us was MS Word.
I think I may be at the critical point in my life when I become disillusioned (or just tired) of some of the /. posters. Are we finally seeing the death throes of M$???!?!?!?!???? NO. We are not. Yes Microsoft charges for their software, but COME ON. The anti-microsoft slant is fine (as an opinion) but I'm quite tired of seeing it in every /. posts summary. If nerds can't be objective (as in not trying to influence the reader with a certain take) then who can?
lotus symphony is not open source.
And as the source is not available, there is no proof that it is a open office variant.
Somebody prove me wrong.
Yes, this is good for ODF, but symphony is not yet open source.
...if it's not better than Microsoft Office (or at least equal).
A thing can be sufficient and yet surpassed.
I used to work at Microsoft and even though I was not working with MSOffice, I still followed the market. Every two years or so, IBM would come out with "an order" for everyone inside of IBM to use something else than MSOffice, so claiming this is something new is kind of ludicrous. I imagine that even IBM are having trouble weening their organization off of MSOffice.
Because needs change. It used to be that I didnt need an office suite at all.
..and for the record, I'm using Open Office at home.
"His name was James Damore."
\begin{cough}
\LaTeX
\end{cough}
VI FOREVER!!
I hate to say it, but MS is the lesser evil of the two these days. I just cannot stand IBM.
"Linux/Mac users are also happy. Maybe there are Solaris users around even"
Don't forget those lucky enough to use a workstation-class AIX box! But yes, all of those exist here.
As an anonymous insider here let me say I welcome this. I use one of the several linux variants (semi-officially) supported for use as a main workstation within IBM and this is good to hear. Whilst I'm no huge fan of symphony, the mandate for ODF allows me to use OO.o as a first class citizen without worrying how my .doc is going to render in someone else's MS Word instance. From now it is they who are wrong! HAHAHA!
LyX could loosely be called a LaTeX editor and can be sanely called simple and/or easy to use.
My understanding is that oo-writer, and oo-calc, are pretty good applications, and they can replace ms-word, and ms-excel, for most users.
But, oo-base is another story. As I understand it, oo-base is very slow, and about ten years behind ms-access in features.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Funny, but they had a similar position with OS/2.
Back in '95? I interviewed with them and they said they were using NT4, but still trying to sell OS/2.
I work for IBM and have installed this on my laptop, mainly because its a mandatory download. Its another great example of IBM taking something that works, and making it unworkable. If you try and use it, it will virtually stop your PC from working for about 10 seconds, while it starts, then, while it is running, you can barely do anything else but work in the app. I still use OpenOffice instead of this IBM "offering". They have truly mess it up.
He should be teaching them how to use a generic keyboard layout.
Documents aren't washing machines, and metaphors only go so far. We're not talking about reliably cleaning clothes, we're talking about the preservation of knowledge and the passage of information that defines civilisation. When most of the information is in the MS Office proprietary format, there's a huge inertia against changing it to a more neutral format. The problem of one corporation's control over the format may be obviated if there is some way to legally ensure the appropriate version of the reading/writing software will always be available, but that currently isn't the case is it? MSFT has arbitrary control.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Stop telling we complainers that there's something better available which meets our desires! You smug, self-righteous Apple fanbois make me sick with all your infoboxes, features, and awesomeness.
IBM has been spending millions of dollars lobbying for governments to mandate the use of Open Office, and yet they couldn't internally dogfood their own products? Sorry, but that's just too funny.
Maybe they thought those government types were going to turn in good bug reports so they wouldn't have to!
A sig?!? I don't think so.....
But that's just it. You're wanting to force a commercial company to build a product that they aren't building. Certainly that's how MS Office is being used, you're correct, but that doesn't have to be what MS is creating/selling.
If they are just creating a washing machine, or an office suite designed to print documents, and layout resumes, then you can't force them to support your more lofty uses.
Look at it another way. There is a perfectly neutral format that comes out of MS Office. It's called the printed page. And when MS Office was first created, in what, 1985?, the printed page was the long-term storage standard.
So if you were to use MS Office the way that it was originally designed, you'd be printing all of your work, and storing it forever in a perfectly neutral format -- ink and paper.
There may certainly be better ways of doing things, but you can't force a company to be the best. This is the product, take it or leave it. It looks like an aweful lot of people have taken it. Maybe every single one of those users knows that it's a compromise in long-term digital storage, or maybe some of them don't realize what they're sacrificing, but in either case, that's their own decision.
Hey, I drive a car that isn't really as safe as it could be. Quite frankly, it's not very safe at all when compared to other cars. It's a convertible, it's a sports car, and it's only two seats (it's a Mazda MX-5 Miata, and it's more fun than I've ever thought a car could be.).
But obviously, without a roof, it's not very safe if I roll it. And it's very small so it'd get crushed in a collision with a larger vehicle. And, and, and. And the government even lets me put children in the front seat, because there is no back seat. That's right, I'm permitted to endanger the lives of my children in a way that you are forbidden from doing so.
But in the end, we all know why I bought the car. I wanted a convertible. I wanted a sports car. I didn't want to pay for something that is both of those things and also just as safe as something else.
And that's Mazda's right to create such a product. And that's my right to purchase such a product.
At some point soon, IBM's going to have to choose whether to move the standard desktop to Windows 7 (ie committing huge revenues to Microsoft over the next N years). I guess that will only happen if it thinks that its internal Linux client isn't mature enough.
The post is a little inaccurate. 1/3rd HAVE NOT been asked to use lotus symphony. Old timers, who joined the company before have the license to use M$ office. However, anyone who joins new will not be able to use m$, and will have to use OO or Symphony. Also, this is nothing new. As far as I know, this has been going on for some time in IBM (about a year???)
Now they can claim to have over 300,000 people using Lotus Simphony, because I don't see the need of a lotus clone of the good Open Office