German City Says OpenOffice Shortcomings Are Forcing It Back To Microsoft

The city of Freiburg, Germany adopted OpenOffice back in 2007, mostly replacing the Microsoft Office software it had been using previously. Now, an anonymous reader tips news that the city council is preparing to abandon OpenOffice and switch back. "'In the specific case of the use of OpenOffice, the hopes and expectations of the year 2007 are not fulfilled,' the council wrote, adding that continuing use OpenOffice will lead to performance impairments and aggravation and frustration on the part of employees and external parties. 'Therefore, a new Microsoft Office license is essential for effective operations,' they wrote. ... 'The divergence of the development community (LibreOffice on one hand Apache Office on the other) is crippling for the development for OpenOffice,' the council wrote, adding that the development of Microsoft Office is far more stable. Looking at the options, a one-product strategy with Microsoft Office 2010 is the only viable one, according to the council." The council was also disappointed that more municipalities haven't adopted OpenOffice in the meantime. Open source groups and developers criticized the move and encouraged the council to consider at least moving to a more up-to-date version of the office software suite.

Comments

Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Too late for criticizing now, someone has or someones have already been bribed...

To all Office Naysayers

[Billly Gates]

Proof again that LibreOffice is no MS Office replacement.

It has been stated over and over again that without exact formatting and file compatibility it will not be useful. If you want people to switch you need to give them a reason. Make it lighter, faster, and features regular MS office doesn't have.

Under the same token Mozilla failed in the face of IE 6 too. It was not until they fixed the horrible Netscape rendering bugs (which were worse than IE 6 even) and made a "Firefox" fork that had tabs, security, and a much quicker and better renderer that people switched.

I have not used OpenOffice nor LibreOffice in a few years but what I do remember is it is behind the times with a menu and does not even have a ribbon yet. I know some people who are Office 2k3 and LibreOffice loyalists will jump on me on this! But, think of it from a users point of view who hate change? The ribbon is better once you learn how to use it and especially true if you are visual such as myself. Anything that looks different is threatening from a product everyone has used for 15 years. So why change?