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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."
1. Who's going to go through every spreadsheet and make sure there's nothing too taxing in there?
Having worked for a large organisation, the answer is "the maintainer of the spreadsheet". The IT department will announce a change of policy without bothering to check how you are using the software, and if the change doesn't suit you then you have to make a business case for having non-standard software.
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?
Which I suspect is why this is taking off now. Most of our customers are still using Office 2003, and I reckon it would cost less to train Office 2003 users in OOo than in Office 2007/2010.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Another Microsoft marketing person found.
Now they don't even bother googling for bugs and complaints posted on the forums, and invent "problems" entirely on their own.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Let's keep it simple:
Because open office plain sucks for real office work.
It's fine when you need to do your home works, a quite doc or demo, etc. Basically while it's not great, it's for for everyone who wasn't going to pay for MS Office anyway. It works and it's free.
Now if you're doing real office work, and I happen to do that sometimes, OpenOffice just sucks.
It's not (always) the missing functionality, although it sometimes is.
It's not always the horrible GUI, although it often is.
It's not the speed, although it may annoy (MS Office is extremely fast in comparison)
It's the bugs. The million bugs. If you start filling reports (that won't get fixed most likely) you've no time to actually work. Oh god the bugs.
You don't see them until you start using the features of the program above the "super notepad clone with tables" stage.
Just to list a few recurrent ones that make my life hell:
- autocomplete failures, even when disabled. some autocompletions cannot be disabled and sometimes just complete it wrongly, like a wrong date format, even if you change it or force it not to complete.. it does it anyway.
- properties updates - you need to quit OOo and start it again
- autosave - its useless, you'd rather check auto backup complete file, sometimes OOo is going to break while saving the XML inner file and 100% of the data is lost
- UI options: wtf ?
- split view: "open a new window"
I could go on forever.
I do not like OpenOffice one bit, yet it's the only office suite you can use on Linux, aka the less "bad".
Feel free to to down rank and talk about how OpenOffice is great and you're an office worker while you're actually never using OpenOffice and probably have no job. That's how things get fixed!
If you claim that you have t send clients documents in an editable format (that is, not PDF), you are either a moron or a liar.
If you claim that "thought to be internal-only" documents can ever be sent to anyone outside in an editable format, you are a liar.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The full truth is openoffice sucks and is hardly usable for real world use.
This is pretty much the truth.
Its been a while since I have said this... but the user comments make me want to smoke crack. Openoffice is unusable crap, and with the recent issues with the forking, and Oracle's recent lets screw open source movements, the FUD of using or adopting it is founded in in obvious. So many of the comments around this were basic ignorant of the facts hippy douchebag bullshit. None of you seem to actually understand how office suites are used in the workplace.
I've been using openoffice at home for a little over a year for word processing and spreadsheets, and I have to say that MS-WORKS was more enjoyable to use.
You are still either a liar, a moron or both.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.