Slashdot Mirror
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."
Whether or not this is obvious, there's an interesting point here. This ad will be circulated far wider than its original target market. This suggests that this will help Open Source here in the US.
Indeed, one of the key uses I have for this sort of thing is SELLING FOSS. My approach is to look at this carefully and determine how one can use it. While this is less useful than the old Get the Facts campaign, it does provide some fodder for FOSS consultants. First, the fact that Microsoft is attacking it is significant. Secondly, the problems discussed are real ones for some customers. Understanding the problems and how to avoid them is key to make a migration work. Saying "don't let this happen to you. Use MY services!" is a very powerful thing.
Moreover it addresses a number of issues, including "who will fix it?" ("I will if you pay me to!")
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
And, Ballmer has the right to be concerned about the 300 million pc market is eaten by both Apple and Linux:
and
And, OpenOffice runs on Android mobile phones: http://www.alwaysonpc.com/aboutOpenOffice.php. That is something for Microsoft to be sleepless about.
OpenOffice on Android mobile phones. Mmmmmm. Sweet.
The MS video features this gem: "New employees lacked OpenOffice.org applications' use skills that significantly increased employees' adaptation period and adversely affected their operational efficiency." -- Igor Gentosh, Head of Systems Integration Department, Kredobank JSC
Uhhmm ... so is that the reason you went and changed the entire interface in Office 2007 to the ribbon? If anything OO preserves skill investments.
OO is basically Office97+, which was a great version. OO is just fine for the non-templated letters that pass for "Office suite" use in most offices. Not that it doesn't have better templates (and page formats, too).
The only major deficiency is the non user-friendly macro system.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
The ONLY thing I've seen Office do better than Open Office is macros. I'm a huge D&D nerd, and HeroForge won't work with Open Office.
But that's a very specific thing, and other than that I haven't come across anything, so I just don't sue HeroForge. That isn't accurate of the general population I'm sure, and others may find faults with Open Office that I haven't, but that's just my personal experience.
The bottom line is whatever Microsoft says or attempts as a fear tactic, it won't make any difference whatsoever to a very large number of those consumers. They simply cannot afford Office at any price Microsoft would offer it--other than free. When you have no money, free (or theft*) is the only alternative. Given that reality, Microsoft is jousting at windmills and trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.
* Might we next be seeing not-so-subtle threats in those emerging markets about using illegal copies of Office? Betcha we will.
/.'s Psychic-in-Residence: Psychic to the Geeks
"I need something I can rely on. If an open source based system breaks, who's going to fix it?" -- Jeff Cimmerer, Director of Technology, Pittsford School Districts
The whole idea of Open Source is that it's open for anybody to fix it. If you've got the skills you can fix it yourself. If you're a business with a genuine interest in the FOSS you think is broken, but don't have the skills to fix it yourself, you can at least log a bug report if not hire someone to fix it for you if you consider it urgent.
Yes, you can also log bug reports with Microsoft for their software. But you're still at the mercy of Microsoft to actually get it fixed - trawl support forums about Microsoft's ClickOnce deployment system for .NET Framework 2.0 or later and you'll understand that Microsoft is quite willing to acknowledge the presence of bugs (and anti-features) and, strangely, also willing to publicly acknowledge that they have no intention of fixing them. Ever.
I've logged the same bug on Windows Find/Search since Windows NT 4.0 and yet it still isn't fixed in Windows Vista/7. (You can get search matches from unicode text files using the command line find tool, but Windows Find/Search cannot find those same matches - it only understands ASCII/ANSI test files.)
And you would still be in the minority.
I know a lot of people in their teens or twenties who are extremely interested in, shall we say, the visual arts. They love making music videos and video editing, logo design, website design, etc. One of them is finishing up a degree in marketing degree, the other is finishing up high school now and is already accepted into a design school, another is younger than them (friends of brothers etc) yet highly interested in web development. Never has the word "GIMP" entered any of their vocabularies. Never.
OpenOffice they are familiar with its existence, which it still didn't stop them from, for example, going out and buying the Mac version of Office when they bought their cool new Macs a year or so ago despite recommendations from me that they could at least wait and get by with OO for a bit while their wallets recovered from the purchase. And I don't mean clicked the "Sure, sell me Office too!" box, I mean literally drove to the store and bought it. (I was visiting one of them at the time.)
Yes, it's anecdotal but it's also real. They don't care about ideologies; they want to use the tools they will use as professionals, and that is determined by business and not their own inclinations. So long as kids (and schools) continue to look to business to see what they should be acquainted with, businesses will have a ready-trained new workforce and little incentive to move away from what they all know.
The company I work at has Office installed on everyone's computer. I generally use Excel, since that's the default for spreadsheets on my PC (too lazy/apathetic to change it). However, whenever I have to deal with some complex data, I will always use Calc. Why?
I will log a bunch of program output from my software (such as memory allocations), and I want a simple way of sorting them by file and line number, then I can see the ones that I really want. I could write a tool for this of course, but I would rather take an extra minute to do it by hand, as this doesn't come up that much. But importing arbitrary data (not comma separated but separated by words/spaces/newlines/various) is a pain in the ass in Excel. It involves saving it out as a txt file then importing. Calc will simply pop up a box asking what your delimiters are.
I've never had Calc crash on me, and I honestly don't know what the problem is. In fact, I've never seen any reason to use Office over OpenOffice. Granted, I spend more of my day in Notepad++ than Office, but still. People keep citing macros, but that just seems like an abomination to me anyway. Good riddance.
Probably has more to do with the fact the OO adheres to the document creation standards, and MS Office doesn't. Much like MS refuses to adhere to the HTML/XML standards while every other browser does, or has +95% adherence. All that means at the end of the day is MS is creating a market by not following standards that they said they'd adhere to.
Big shock.
Om, nomnomnom...
I went to an animation/film/design school. I know of one person who used an open source program instead of pirating or buying a student copy of the commercial packages. But he had been using it since Jr. High and is a ideologue--and even then he would admit it sucked for actual work but liked to poke at it and try to improve it in his spare time. And even he wouldn't touch Gimp with a 10 foot pole.