Why Microsoft Is So Scared of OpenOffice

GMGruman writes "A recent Microsoft video on OpenOffice is naively seen by some as validating the open source tool. As InfoWorld's Savio Rodrigues shows, the video is really a hatchet job on OpenOffice. But why is Microsoft so intent on damaging the FOSS desktop productivity suite, which has just a tiny market share? Rodrigues figured out the real reason by noting who Microsoft quoted to slam OpenOffice: businesses in emerging markets such as Eastern Europe that aren't already so invested in Office licenses and know-how. In other words, the customers Microsoft doesn't have yet and now fears it never will."

Comments

Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Once Open Office (particularly Calc) can compete with Microsoft in terms of performance, stability, and features, then and only then will Microsoft need to worry about Open Office.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[0123456]

Once Open Office (particularly Calc) can compete with Microsoft in terms of performance, stability, and features, then and only then will Microsoft need to worry about Open Office.

Probably 90% of people use Office for basic word processing and the occasional basic spreadsheet, for which a ten-year-old version is overkill.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Maxo-Texas]

A Honda Civic cannot compete in every way with a Hummer.

And yet, a lot of people find it does well enough for the price.

I'm sure many would like a Bugatti Veyron too. But since the support costs are too high, they usually go with a less expensive car without such high required costs.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been competing like that for a long time. I've actually used it at work, and there is little that one can do that the other can't. As for the Eastern Europeans, Well, they do try MSOffice, but the "free" version, and when they want to go legal, instead of buying a licence that costs as much as two months worth of minimum wage, they look to alternatives and take the obvious choice.

I live in Eastern Europe, I used both at work. My employers have done what I've written above, just like many others.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Requiem18th]

Why? The arrow is the standard pointing cursor, the cross adds nothing to the usability.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Frosty Piss]

I realize you're probably just trolling, but in what way can Open Office not compete with MS Office?

And GIMP is every bit as good as Photoshop, if not better, right? Right?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Knightman]

I abhor the use of macros in Excel because companies that use Excel usually ends up building datamining tools or some complex spreadsheets that calculate whatnot related to their business. They are usually a big mess of macros and VBA that ends up being supported by the internal IT-department and is one big headache. And just to make it more fun they can have some badly implemented Access "database" coupled to the spreadsheets.

Being able to do macros and/or script applications is usually a good thing since it can automate a lot of tedious work, and if properly implemented it wouldn't be a problem, but the majority of "applications" in Excel is just horrific in my experience. Usually someone makes something "nifty" then it spreads to the whole department and suddenly it's something that has to be supported and the feature creep sets in.

That's my experience anyway.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[careysub]

Once Open Office (particularly Calc) can compete with Microsoft in terms of performance, stability, and features, then and only then will Microsoft need to worry about Open Office.

I have found Calc indispensible for it allows me to cut tables from browsers and paste it into a spreadsheet, and have it import perfectly. This has been of huge value to me. This does not work at all in Excel. Furthermore, I have found Excel to be a nightmare in its insistence on being "clever" and knowing better than me what is or should be in my document: insistently turning text that it thinks looks like email and web addresses into live links (something I have never wanted in my life), destroying text it thinks looks like dates into a non-recoverable form, its apparent inability to mix numbers (as text) and numbers (as numbers) in a single spreadsheet without nightmarish manual work-arounds, etc.

I have used Excel since before it was Excel (i.e. when it was still MultiPlan) and have found long ago that it passed the point of adding value and (as with most MS products) began adding misery instead. I happily use Calc and loathe having to fire up Excel now.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[rjch]

And GIMP is every bit as good as Photoshop, if not better, right? Right?

For me? Yes, it is. For a professional graphics editor? No, absolutely not.

The difference between the comparisons is that very few people need all the features of the M$ Office suite. Very, very few people need the really advanced features in Word or Excel. Macros are one exception - and 90% of applications I've seen developed as macros should never have been developed as macros in the first place.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[BrokenHalo]

The difference between Calc and Excel isn't so much in the number of features, but stability, plain and simple.

Oh dear. Heads up, guys - We've woken up Microsoft's PR department, and the shills are having to earn their keep again.

I've been using OpenOffice since, well, since it was StarOffice, and stability has NEVER been its problem. Startup time used to be slow, but now it's pretty much equal to (or maybe a bit quicker than) MSOffice.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot: where everybody who disagrees with you is a shill. Because companies pour thousands of dollars on arguing with a half dozen slashdotters.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[asliarun]

For the one percent of people who actually _need_ them.

For the other 99%, Open Office is fine.

The problem is that 1% of the users need feature X, while a different 1% badly need feature Y, while yet another 1% find feature Z indispensable.
Many people who use your logic don't realize that this seemingly insignificant 1% adds up very quickly. Plus, these 1percenters are usually the ones who are vociferous and evangelical.

I actually tried to encourage my wife to use Open Office about a year ago. She needed to do a fair bit of document editing and rewriting work, and I gave her a (fairly powerful business-grade) laptop with only Open Office installed and told her about all the virtues of open software, and how Open Office is as good as MS Office, and after a short learning curve, she will not even miss MS Office.

Mind you, she was using Open Office mainly for straight-forward document work - document editing, proof-reading, rewriting, reformatting, etc. No macros, no formulaes, no fancy stuff.

Never worked. For a brief initial period, she was fine, and even pleasantly surprised by Open Office. Then, she started finding small issues with layouts, small features that were not present, etc. Then, she started facing deadlines and small issues with her clients.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I ended up installing Office 2007 for her, and so far, so good.

As a neutral observer, I find -this- kind of anecdotal evidence compelling, and the reason why so many Open Office proponents are simply missing the point. In a business context where everyone else is using MS Office, Open Office had better support MS Office documents to a perfect degree, and offer the same toolset that MS Office provides.

Otherwise, the only potential market will be markets (mainly government organizations) where everyone uses or is forced to use Open Office.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[LingNoi]

So then it doesn't actually do macros better. It just supports it's own document format and macros better.

I know you might consider this to be what you meant however what you typed makes it look like you believe macros to be better for some particular reason such as being faster, easier or better documented.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Knightman]

If your IT department is supporting user-created macros then your company has a lot bigger problems than what brand of office software you use.

If you look at any larger company that uses MS Office their IT department usually has to support these types of solutions one way or another (ie. officially/unofficially).

Re:Open office != MS Office

[LingNoi]

In the context of the article where it is about new businesses without any existing excel spreadsheets?

Switching from an existing solution has nothing to do with it. Any new business could use anything and have the same problems. If they start out with open source solutions then they can scale that up much better then starting with Microsoft then making the switch.

The advertising video the Microsoft released isn't about new business though (which the article refers to). Almost every quote given in that video is from companies switching to open source solutions or specifically open office. So I don't believe the article when they say that Microsoft is targeting New Businesses.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[jimicus]

Macros are one exception - and 90% of applications I've seen developed as macros should never have been developed as macros in the first place.

Be that as it may, you won't get people to migrate off Office by saying "Your processes built around huge numbers of macros (which, for all its sins, broadly works) was developed in the wrong way in the first place, you must rip the whole lot out and start again".

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anne Thwacks]

I've never seen a file arrive in native OpenOffice format.

That is because, even where we use OO to produce documents, unless we have prior consent from the recipients, we export to MS format before sending. The majority still believe that Computer==MS.

If anyone can accept ODT, they will generally say so when requesting documents. I hope you do!

Re:Open office != MS Office

[jimicus]

Two things to bear in mind:

1. Who's going to go through every spreadsheet and make sure there's nothing too taxing in there?
2. For most businesses, the cost of an Office license is really not that great. They'll spend more in man-hours learning something else and for what gain? Businesses tend to be run fairly pragmatically - they want something that works, not a religion. All your "you are being held hostage by the file format!11oneone" stuff is something most business owners will take one look at and say to themselves "Let's look at this in context. A: it's never been a huge problem before - sure we've had to upgrade occasionally, but BFD and B: why on Earth would Microsoft make the next version completely incompatible with the old one, not even able to open the old file format? It makes no sense at all."

Re:Open office != MS Office

[SuricouRaven]

I wouldn't be surprised if they did, actually. The argument may be with half a dozen, but it's witnessed by thousands more - many of whome are IT professionals, who will eventually make high-value purchasing decisions for a company.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[muckracer]

> Open Office had better support MS Office documents to a perfect degree, and offer the same toolset that MS Office provides.

Quite frankly, this is exactly, why OSS is always trailing and having a hard time to catch up: It needs to always do twice as much as the entrenched programs...once their own way of doing things and then, in addition, the Microsoft way of doing things. Most complaints I hear are not so much about how an Open-Source program in itself has limitations, but how it has limitations (perceived or real) in dealing with MS-issued software or larger MS-environment.
"If it doesn't do exactly what MS-Office does I won't use it!"
"If it doesn't perfectly/100% read MS' proprietary file formats, it's not ready for business!".
"If it doesn't look exactly like MS-Office my people won't be able to/won't want to use it!"
"If it doesn't integrate with AD...."
etc.pp..

While Open-Source software is certainly not the right thing for every place (incl. some Office settings), I hear the distinct whining of people and businesses, who have more or less willingly painted themselves into the corner of a specific vendor. That getting out of that corner or even entertaining the thought of it is almost an insurmountable obstacle is only a logical conclusion.
As far as I am concerned I feel, that it's got to be one of the most ridiculous things on earth in 2010, that people are forced to use a specific Office program to edit documents. It shouldn't matter, damnit, what you use, as long as the resulting file makes sense and can be shared. OpenDocument is a great thing, but came a decade too late. Today DOC(x) is 'the standard' and everybody else's gotta cater to it. MS wins by default: DOC(x) = MS-Office, MS-Office = Windows, Windows = site license, site license = AD, Exchange, Sharepoint etc. until we are in schools, where 'todays business standards' are being 'taught' to students. It sucks and the Mafia couldn't have done better in setting up their business (remember WordPerfect, which most people were highly unwilling to leave but got forced to by MS). I still regard the DOC format as one of the top three things that held back innovation in the entire IT infrastructure and business landscape. It's be so great, if the choices were manifold with a certainty, that resulting documents and spreadsheets could be seamlessly used by any other choice (of a user). Technically we have that (OOo, MSO, WP, KO etc.)...in reality we don't!

Re:Open office != MS Office

[the_leander]

if people where accustomed to using gimp at home (due to not being able to buy photoshop) most would find it adequate. Sure there will be some who are actually requiring the features in photoshop, but not very many.

That's precisely what has Microsoft shitting itself.

They try OpenOffice, see that its more than enough for what they need. Sooner or later people who have to budget for companies IT support needs realise that large chunks of their workforce could use a free alternative that they've got experience with and there goes Microsoft's bread and butter.

OpenOffice, Gimp etc have been good enough for non professional use for a long time now. The only real change is that people are now becoming aware of these free and legal applications.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[tuxgeek]

Actually, OOo already can easily replace M$O for most users. Performance and stability are already there. Features .. OOo has everything most users need. Only a very small percent need scripting capability that only M$O can provide.

I use both. OOo interface has been consistent for years. M$O changes theirs with each update. The most recent M$O is not intuitive at all and quite inconvenient to use, for me when I need to get something done. "Now where the fuck did "print" go?" or "Now where the fuck did 'save page as' go?"

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Maxo-Texas]

You run into the paradox of choice.

Microsoft ran into it and added the Ribbon which basically hid most of your choice. The feature is there but in some cases it took me months to find it again.

It may have a feature you need, but if you don't know the feature exists or where it is or what their name for it is, you may have a hard time finding it.

But otherwise- of course, you are absolutely correct. If your job runs around putting drop shadows and soft oval masking of images, then Word >>> OO (for now).

Less piracy from

[future assassin]

younger people means less MS Office users when those people grow up which means smaller market share whether by install base or brand name recognition. If I was in my teens/20's right now and I had an option for running pirated PS or GIMP I'd go with GIMP. Same with office I'd rather go and download OO right off the site then spend days trying of warez versions which could possible have infected my computer.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

Gimp and Inkscape are two different things. Gimp works on pixels, Inkscape works on vectors. Just like Photoshop is completely different from Illustrator.

You might as well complain that a Ferrari sucks, and a speed boat works much better.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that Gimp is a bitmap editor, while Inkscape is a vector editor, and therefore you are comparing apples to oranges, right ? The day you get better bitmap functionality from Inkscape than Gimp, there will be something really wrong.
Not that Gimp doesn't suck thus...

Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft using the old "total cost of ownership" line is what they usually use on customers.

It is easy enough to test which one results in more support calls. Have some departments use Microsoft Office and have other departments use OpenOffice and track who asks for more help.

Oracle is in the enterprise space with their database products and Microsoft knows they will push OpenOffice to try to keep Microsoft out.

Having customers that don't need to talk to Microsoft is what Oracle wants.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

The thing is universities need to push more training of using open source alternatives.

The fact still remains: You will find more people who have used MS office than people who use OpenOffice. More people in the pool = less wage required to hire if you are an employer. That is where "total cost of ownership" comes from.

For example, in our university, most LAMP sysadmins are full time staff which you have to pay at least $45 - 55K per annum, while most WISA (Windows, IIS, SQL Server, ASP.NET) sysadmins are students which cost much less (somewhere between $13 - $18 an hour + tuition waiver if you are grad student).

Re:But I was told OO is bad and Libre is way to go

[yeshuawatso]

No, you were told Oracle was bad and and their commitment to OOo is a coin flip. Libre is just a way to settle the "who will support the open source nature of the program now?" No talking points needed for bad recall abilities.

They should be...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an average user. My office-related activities consist of writing letters, short papers, and making the occasional presentation. OO.O does all of this just fine, and I hence have no need to shell out $100 for an Office suite.

Re:They should be...

[im_thatoneguy]

The reverse argument is that if 95% of Word customers just want quick common tasks done then it comes down which is easier.

If you don't use Word or Open Office enough to really dig into it and discover the features then the program with the more accessible UI will seem more useful.

I find Office 2007+'s hand holding and templates extremely helpful in this regard. I don't have to think about fonts or formatting I can just use the defaults which actually produce really well designed products. And since I don't spend any time in office I don't know where anything is but with the Ribbon I'm using significantly more of the application. That's been worth the $60 I spent.

In contrast when I load OO I'm always hunting and reading help files trying to find the tool or menu I'm looking for. And the templates aren't nearly as well designed or sexy.

I also like the minimized ribbon. Since I don't use much of Office most of the time I can just have it minimized and it literally takes up less screen real-estate than notepad. If I could get it to launch as fast as Notepad I would use it in its stead.

forget these office suits

[brainscauseminds]

Ahh, invest some time and learn for example following tools: Tex/Lyx for documents, presentations, papers etc R/ggplot2 for data manipulation, tables and plotting Python for other things you want to compute you get quality stuff and you never want to use any office suit again

Re:forget these office suits

[wvmarle]

Not all people have the mindset to do programming. Actually I'd argue most people don't. I have tried TeX and it feels like programming to me. Way too big a learning curve when >95% of what I do is typing out invoices, one-page letters, and the like... even though it may give you great reports and so. If ever I have to write a report again I may consider learning TeX.

For everything else, OO is doing just fine.

MS may not have much to worry about here

[Dracos]

Since Oracle seems determined to destroy OpenOffice themselves.

What support?

[hobbes64]

A few of the quotes in the article are about poor support of open source products. But Microsoft don't have very good support either. Depending on license you get limited support or have to pay per incident. You usually just end up searching the internet to solve your problem whichever product you use. So what am I paying for again?

Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[mark-t]

When I started working at my last job, we were initially using Openoffice for almost everything except for any documents that needed to go to clients, because documents that we created with Openoffice would not reliably open with the same formatting by clients who were using Microsoft office, particularly if indentation or outlining was used. Programmers such as myself did not generally need to have Office installed, since virtually all of the documents created by programmers were intended for internal only. Ultimately, however, it was realized that even documents that might initially be thought to be internal-only were often needed to be looked over by clients for review, and so eventually everybody had to install Office and use it for everything, simply so that we could compatibly communicate with the company's clients.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[KingAlanI]

For some documents, the differences in layout are more important than for other documents

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[TheTurtlesMoves]

You actually care what *tool* someone uses to create a portable document? Oh wait.

That really is the bit that bugs me the most. Why do i need to care *what* word processor or presentation software you are using? I don't care when i read a book, or look at a report. And i create PDF presentations, and then it does not matter what i use, i can run my presentation on any machine.

The problem is lack of open document *formats*. Then anyone can use any tool they like... I don't get stuck with some word 2003 document that won't even open properly on a windows machine because MS is not really all that compatible with MS.

Not really

[Cyberax]

OpenOffice Writer is about as good as Word.

However, Excel is seriously better than OO.org Spreadsheet. Especially Excel 2010. We've replaced an expensive CrystalReports report builder with Excel and everyone is super-happy. It consumes data from OLAP database, it can easily run various analyses and it's even possible to export spreadsheets using Web.

Re:Also

[rtb61]

After having used Office suites for over twenty years, this nonsense about the latest upgrades is just that marketing nonsense. People have produced millions of documents on office suits of all varieties including the completing unstable windows 95 and M$ office variants. The version of M$ office I liked best was 98, after that it got frustratingly unhelpfully helpful, menus kept changing and the original macro language was wiped out to sell visual basic, I was long gone before the ribbon nonsense.

The office suites are all much of a muchness now. So what is all this sudden attack bullshit all about, hmm, "ANDROID EVERYWHERE" and what office suite will it run, 'er', let me guess, certainly not M$ Office. Of course Android won't be absolutely everywhere, that's only cause, Linux will be on servers, net appliances and super computers, leaving M$ with the luddites, the drones and, the dinosaurs (no where did that idea come from).

Re:Obvious

[N1AK]

The whole idea of Open Source is that it's open for anybody to fix it.

And that's a strength. However, selling something to people on the grounds that they can pick who fixes it when it breaks may be shooting yourself in the foot.

I like the idea that an MS campaign against FOSS can be used to show FOSS has become a serious competitor. I don't think it will play out that way. If your client watches an ad by MS pointing out flaws (real or otherwise) with FOSS the most likely impact is they will now be worried about the flaws the ad highlights. They aren't going to simply ignore the content and think "wow FOSS is mainstream, let me in on this".

TCO

[Errol backfiring]

"Total Cost of Ownership". Yes, I always laugh about that. There is no ownership, just cost. With open source software, you have at least one aspect of ownership: the fact that you can repair your own stuff.

Re:Obvious

[jimicus]

I don't think fixing bugs is quite the kind of thing he's talking about.

I think what he means is "I can have a Microsoft-based solution set up by any two-bit MCSE I can hire for peanuts very easily. Seriously, I can put out an advert and have more replies than I know what to do with from people who will work for relatively little. If the person I hire messes up - maybe they misconfigure something, maybe there's something odd that requires specific steps in order to work properly - I can have people queueing up outside my door to fix it within 24 hours. I just need to open the Yellow Pages and dial the first number I find in the relevant section.

I can't do that with Linux because there are nowhere near as many qualified, experienced admins. Let alone anyone who I can hire for peanuts. And don't tell me that one Linux admin can do the work of four MCSEs, I don't need the work of four MCSEs, I need the work of one."

Why computer training never actually IS

[RomulusNR]

A recurring theme in the criticisms -- perhaps the most painfully misanthropic -- is that, since staff are trained to use MS Office, they simply can't figure out Open Office, and everyone who's switched back to MSO from OOO has seen support time and staff frustration drop like a rock. (Of course, going from MS Office 2k3's traditional interface to MS Office 2k8's "Ribbon" caused absolutely no confusion at all!)

But why is this? Why are people trained eat the bread and sip the MS Kool Aid so utterly helpless when faced with an alternative that doesn't look the same?

Well, it's because people with minimal computer skills teach other people with no computer skills that, in order to make this word look blue, you click this button in this place. Not "look for a color changer and select blue". No, it has to be under THIS menu, with THAT name, and looks like THIS button.

We don't teach people how to use computers or even software. We teach them very specific, contextless mundane steps.

What saddens me most is that I was able to document this twelve years ago and it's still the same today.

Re:Why computer training never actually IS

[whoop]

No UI will get through to these sort of people. Trust me. Anyone's that worked in phone tech support knows you can get someone to do something like, "left-click the second button from the left on the toolbar near the top of the application," and not, "click the open-file icon on the toolbar." First, they won't call it a toolbar, but something stupid like picture gallery. Then you can go on and on defining click, icon, an open-file picture, etc.

Many people do very much work strictly like click here, type my initials (it's not a username, it's my initials!), type my cat's name, type 1, hit enter, A, enter, 14, enter 7 enter (at a text-based terminal app, for instance). After going insane in a corporate tech support environment like this, I left IT and set for the medical field. It's the same damn thing.

Medical machines make beeping noises to alert you to some warning or error. People go up and do the same routine of mute, reset, reset, mute, reset, stop, start, reset, mute. Only then, if it's still beeping, will they perhaps read the error message, if they don't just come to me saying, "This machine won't work." I read it, and see a blood pressure related error, and tell them they need to put the damn BP cuff on the patient. These people will never understand anything. Trust me.

Re:Why computer training never actually IS

[neumayr]

I see it the other way. When a huge amount of people don't get how to operate those systems, it's the systems fault, not theirs.

Re:They should be... OpenOffice has 10%-20%

[digitig]

I'm an average user. My office-related activities consist of writing letters, short papers, and making the occasional presentation. OO.O does all of this just fine, and I hence have no need to shell out $100 for an Office suite.

You are not alone. You are in fact a long, long way from being alone.

Depending on the geographic location, OpenOffice has been measured as being installed on between 10% and 20% of machines.

Unless you call this "tiny", the OP has it wrong.

This measured 10% to 20% share correlates quite well with the number of copies of openOffice that have been downloaded.

But how many of those OOo installs are alongside MS Office installs, rather than instead of?