OpenOffice Tops 21% Market Share In Germany

hweimer writes "A novel study analyzes the installed base of various office packages among German users. (Here is the original study report in German and a Google translation.) While Microsoft Office comes out top (72%), open source rival OpenOffice is already installed on 21.5% of all PCs and growing. The authors use a clever method to determine the installed office suites of millions of web users: they look for the availability of characteristic fonts being shipped with the various suites. What surprised me the most is that they found hardly any difference in the numbers for home and business users."

Comments

If you consider...

[brennanw]

... that StarOffice was a wildly popular office suite in Germany in the 90s (before Sun bought the code), I'm surprised the percentage isn't higher.

Re:If you consider...

[Hurricane78]

That’s reeealy long ago. Also, most people do not know at all, that they are related.
Plus, I find OpenOffice to be a badly-designed sluggishly slow and crappy Office suite. Different than MS Office, but not better or worse.

The reason is, that they both are waaaayyy over their maximum lifespan. They should have had a complete rewrite about 5-10 years ago.
Until that is going to happen, they will become more and more the upside-down pyramid of software design, that killed pre-NT Windows with ME.

Or in short: It needs a revolution. (And I’m on to one, actually.)

Forget openoffice

[OzPeter]

I use neooffice on my mac!!!!!!

I have introduced a lot of people to OO.org

[MarkWatson]

I have used OO.org to write several books, and it is what I recommend to people.

That said, I prefer Latex :-)

Re:I have introduced a lot of people to OO.org

[Maxo-Texas]

I maintain a 500 page RPG rules book with Ooo which has complex layout, cross referencing, tons of graphics (going to OOo shrank the size of the documents by 75% because of how I could treat the graphics).

I went to OOo because 2007 would NOT print the 2003 version of the documents.

The first document took me about 8 hours to convert.

It finally dropped to about 2 hours to convert 100 pages.

First thing was to set up default styles, ( finally had a template document which I just opened empty and pasted the content into).

Then I would rip out all the sections and put them back in manually (it's mostly dual column but with occasional single column for headers and the conversion engine created sectioning which was way to complex).

The toughest thing for me to solve each time was 1-3% of the graphics which were at the top right corner of the page. They would float incorrectly and randomly until I nailed them down.

I can't see going back to Word now. Even at $10 for a legitimate corporate user, home copy.

Newsflash: Linux users install fonts, too!

[Alan426]

What about everyone who installs msttcorefonts for compatibility? Not to mention all the other random fonts you have to accumulate to open documents?

Re:Newsflash: Linux users install fonts, too!

[Japher]

I don't speak or read German, so I'm relying on the Google translation and a little intuition here, so please bear with me.

They mention testing for the Open Symbol font as the indicator for an OpenOffice install. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most Linux boxes come with Open Symbol installed? I know Debian does. How can they know that OpenOffice installed the font? I have a laptop on which I have never installed OpenOffice, but I do have XMing and it's font package. Guess what... my system has Open Symbol.

Take that along with the fact that they admit an error of +/-10% in the Microsoft numbers and it's clear that this study is seriously flawed.

Even if the font they're checking for could only have come from an OpenOffice install, the best they can say is that 21% of the computers had OpenOffice installed on them at one point. There is absolutely no guarantee that it wasn't removed but left the fonts behind.

I also couldn't find any information about the website they used to collect data. They could have a HUGE sampling bias here. What if, for example, the web site promotes open source software? Or is a resource for programmers and developers? Those users are far more likely to have OpenOffice installed than the average user.

Take this study with a grain of salt.

Re:Gee...maybe

[girlintraining]

Wow...you are one easy-t-please individual - would you also be surprised if you found out they are one and the same...?

Well, that's rather prejudiced! Germans know how to separate home and work life, and as soon as I find one, I'll give you an example.

Problem is

[Darkness404]

The problem I see with OOo is that it is marketed and used as "hey, there is a free (as in beer) MS Office clone!" rather than "Hey, this is better than MS Office" but the problem is the second statement isn't true. Firefox won out over IE not by "hey, we have a clone of IE" but by being -better- than IE.

Re:Problem is

[scdeimos]

The problem I see with OOo is that it is marketed and used as "hey, there is a free (as in beer) MS Office clone!" rather than "Hey, this is better than MS Office" but the problem is the second statement isn't true.

I'd say OOo is already better than MS Office because it doesn't have those annoyingly stupid ribbons. What a way to complicate usage - makes it difficult to find anything. (I have to use the MS version at work, unfortunately - damned SOE's.)

If OOo *ever* gets ribbons I'll stomp on the feet of the developer who added them!

Re:Problem is

[Totenglocke]

All ribbons did was take the menus and turn them into tabs, then the items buried under the menus are now out in the open once you select the tab. Most normal people actually find the ribbon much easier to use because they (and I as well) never wasted the countless hours to memorize how many menus deep you had to go to find X rarely used feature. Now X rarely used feature is out in the open once you select the tab for what general thing you're trying to do - no more digging for it.

Re:Problem is

[Ethanol-fueled]

The problem I see with OOo is that it is marketed and used as "hey, there is a free (as in beer) MS Office clone!" rather than "Hey, this is better than MS Office"

It's not going to be "better" than MS Office as long as .doc remains the de facto format. There are headhunters who require .doc resumes, entire departments who use only .doc, and there are professors who require .doc assignment submissions.

One infuriating "feature" of OOo is the inability to permanently disable that annoying auto-numbering and auto-bulleting. The help and searches reveal that you have to manually turn one or the other off each time it thinks you want a list when you don't. It's especially annoying for writing code-style, where tabs and indents are done manually.

And, in Math, formulas don't render correctly when converted to .doc, at least not when printed from a Windows computer. Multiplication symbols show up as hollow checkboxes. It's impossible to use superscripts and subscripts simultaneously, as when using chemical symbols (in before "use TeX").

Re:Problem is

[ratboy666]

But... openoffice.org is better than ms office. And, it's not an ms office clone.

Right now, I am giving presentations with impress. Slides to the projector, and my presenter screen on the laptop has the slide, the next slide, presenters notes and a clock.

openoffice.org actually runs on the platforms I use (Solaris and Linux).

openoffice.org integrates with LaTex.

openoffice.org offers PDF/A-1a export. openoffice.org font selection shows the font in the pulldown. (maybe recent MS stuff does these things too -- but MS needed to catch up).

Since openoffice.org runs on Solaris and Linux, and MS Office doesn't, it's absolutely a no-brainer. openoffice.org is better.

Re:Problem is

[blind biker]

All ribbons did was take the menus and turn them into tabs, then the items buried under the menus are now out in the open once you select the tab.

That's a notorious lie and people should really stop parroting it! No, a lot of commands are not now available, at least not through the ribbons. And worst is, you can't even add them to the ribbons, even if you know they exist (and they do, because you can find them when you try to add buttons to the button bar, which however the new Office discourages you from using).

So please, just fucking stop repeating this mantra that you can access all the commands through the ribbon - any even slightly advanced user of Word or Excel knows that's bullshit on a popsicle stick.

Re:Problem is

[jacquems]

The ribbon is fine for average users; it has the tasks that average users need to do on an average day. However, the REALLY rare tasks are now so hidden that I had to enable the Developer tab to be able to do things like work with templates. As a professional user (I'm a technical writer. We mainly use Framemaker, but sometimes have to use Word for some documents), I find the ribbon horrible inconvenient.

Re:Problem is

[Rashkae]

Insightful? Office has been able to customize Button Bars *and* menus since 95, at least!
And I'll tell you, whoever invented the damned thing never worked a day of phone support in his life. "Click edit menu, and Undo" (Yes I know this is a bad example because of the standard keyboard shortcut). Pretty simple to explain to someone. Now you have to either describe the icon, or have the poor slob over mouse over each icon to read the quick tip!! ARRRGh

Re:Problem is

[ais523]

This is my major problem with the Ribbon. Yes, after a while it makes things easier to find; my issue isn't with that. It's with the number of clicks it takes to do something. It used to be that all the commands you used frequently were in the toolbars (one click each); and everything was in the menus, in case you wanted to do something unusual (and maybe you had to hunt around for it a bit; that didn't happen that often, though). Now, there's only one way to find things: via the Ribbon. But you have to select the tab you want first; and even if it's obvious which tab you need, if that tab isn't selected right now, that's two clicks. So in short, the Ribbon's faster for people who aren't used to the UI (because they take less time finding things). But if you're used to the old UI, and also used to the new UI, the new one's slower (because it requires more clicks, and they aren't in particularly faster-to-click locations).

All about the fonts, baby

[damn_registrars]

That's right. As long as Microsoft controls Zapf Wingdings, OpenOffice will never take off.

Information leakage

[Arancaytar]

they look for the availability of characteristic fonts being shipped with the various suites.

I love that my web browser can broadcast which office suite I am using.

Getting through the university barrier in the US

[hedgemage]

I was perfectly happy using OpenOffice for all my home needs, but then when I started up a master's program, I could digitally submit assignments (depending on the prof) for most of my courses. The only problem was that even though I would save things in OpenOffice so that they would be readable on MS products, not a single one of my professors could get them to open, and weren't really interested in going through any additional steps aside from double-clicking to open them up. So, because I needed to submit deliverables in a format that they could read, I was forced to purchase MS Office. Ribbons bleh.

Re:Getting through the university barrier in the U

[Totenglocke]

If they couldn't open your documents then either one of you were screwing things up - perhaps they only had Office 2003 and you were saving as .docx? I've sent files back and forth between MS Office and Open Office with no problems plenty of times.

Re:Getting through the university barrier in the U

[iammani]

Why not submit them as PDFs? They can open it in any platform and it will appear as I intended. Besides it would make you look cool.

Its working fine for me at my university.

Re:Getting through the university barrier in the U

[Anonymous Coward]

simple. word counts.
universities often require writing intensive courses to have x amount of word written a semester. professor will often dock major points (being 100 words under for 15 hundred word document can fail you) if they can't just see how many words are in a paper at a glance.

that and he plagarism checker databases like turnitin lack the ability to parse anything but word files. hence you see why many universities just tell students to shut up and buy MS office.

(I personally think its stupid and counterproductive)

Re:Getting through the university barrier in the U

[amiga500]

I managed to complete a post-graduate course using Open Office. Assignments were given as Word documents, and needed to be submitted as the same. I always saved in Word 2000 format and my professors never had a problem. If Word was offered at the same price as OO, I would buy Word. I've only used OO because I'm too cheap and don't using office apps enough at home to justify the price. I wish OO were better than MS Office, but it's far behind. When ever I try to format text Writer never does what I want. I've tried drawing diagrams in Draw but soon gave up due to the poor interface, and Impress, well that's the worst of the lot.

Open Office getting worse?

[Animats]

Open Office may have peaked in quality. Open Office Draw 3.1 crashes for me about twice an hour, while older versions never did. Draw also has some weird intermittent bug in selection, were suddenly everything goes grey for a few seconds. The last 2.x versions were solid.

I'm always amused that the crash reporter program wants the user to type in which OpenOffice program they were using. The crash reporter ought to know that.

Re:Open Office getting worse?

[je ne sais quoi]

That's strange, my experience has been the opposite, but I don't use draw. I dominantly use calc and I think the 3.x versions are much more usable. A lot of that has to do with the fact that charts are now anti-aliased and you don't cringe after making one any more. The charting ability in general has been the one area of weakness for me as to why I needed Excel. With the 3.x versions, that reason is pretty much gone because they're much easier now and the axis labels and scales don't freak out as often.

Re:Getting through the university barrier in the U

[plague911]

Open office and Microsoft office have significant formatting differences. Ive had 0 success loading saving a file in OO and having it look the same in Microsoft office. Additionally ive tried several builds of OO and I have again had significant problems with saving in OO and having it open the same the next day in OO...

My Anecdotals

[BlindBear]

FWIW, my anecdotal, non-flaming stats on my OOo experiences of myself,my three adult kids and two grandmothers converted from Windzzz/M$office to OOo over the last few years... Six happy users of OOo ... Five happy Linux users (one kid just won't let go)... Eleven missing licences at Redmond!... Priceless!... I can hear the chairs crashing now. All of us only do the odd letter and I run a spaghetti spreadsheet to track some finances.I figure we have collectively saved somewhere between A$2000-A$4000 over the past five years. YMMV.

Re:Getting through the university barrier in the U

[esmrg]

plagarism checker databases like turnitin lack the ability to parse anything but word files

I didn't believe this statement so I looked it up.
According to their student guide at http://www.turnitin.com/resources/documentation/turnitin/training/en_us/qs_student_en_us.pdf

At the top of page 2:
" We accept submissions in these formats: MS Word, WordPerfect, RTF, PDF, PostScript, HTML, and plain text (.txt)"

So while I think plagiarism checkers are kind of a waste of resources, your statement is still false.

Re:Getting through the university barrier in the U

[Ethanol-fueled]

BTW, do those word-counting universities have a stated goal of "simplifying" the language? Are they the same bitching about poor literacy of students?

In the American university setting they're about bloating, not simplifying. They wouldn't use word count as a metric if they cared about the clarity and substance of what was written.

Re:Repeat...

[quangdog]

You must be new here....

File format is the real problem

[LordAzuzu]

Microsoft proprietary formats are the problem.
Everyone actually is used to .DOC, .XLS and such.
Many government/agencies/business only accept submissions in "Word" format. Until we "fix this issue" in the whole world, no way OO can take over M$ Office.
That's sad, you know.