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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.
Proof again that LibreOffice is no MS Office replacement.
No, this is only proof of the strength of Microsoft's vendor lock-in.
It has been stated over and over again that without exact formatting and file compatibility it will not be useful.
Which it would have, if only Microsoft adhered to standards. Somehow open source software is able to accurately render HTML, PDFs, SVGs, but not DOCs? The only reason this would happen is if someone is playing fast and loose with the specs.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Because they're stupid. They're using OpenOffice from 2007! Five years ago! Ditch your fancy Ubuntu 12.04 and run Debian Etch for a few weeks to understand the kind of frustration those dumb, dumb IT managers put their employees through.
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.
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Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Yeah, let's go straight to, "someone was bribed". Whatever you do, don't think about what they said in the article.
What they DID say in the article is that Freiburg is using OOo 3.2.1, which is two-and-a-half years old. It also mentions that the city didn't consult any open source software experts. That may or may not add up to "someone was bribed", but it sounds at least a little bit fishy to me.
The only way for the Freiburgs of the world to throw off the yoke of MS oppression is to support FOSS. And no level of government has any business conducting OUR affairs using propietary data formats that can be easily held hostage.
I get seriously pissed off with LibreOffice, (and with Linux for that matter). But I stay the course because ultimately, freedom requires watchfulness and maintenance, and we'll never be truly free if we give up control and autonomy for the sake of ease and convenience. It's easy to be seduced by the latest bit of shiny, and that's a good part of the reason why our world is so fucked up.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I'm using a 5 year old version of Office and not having problems.
Like Office 2010?
More likely, the Microsoft-indoctrinated employees don't want to learn a new interface, and have spent the last few years whining about it. This happened to even the M$ lock-ins when Office transitioned to the "ribbon" -- I was having to cover for desktop support during that time, and fielded at least twenty calls a day from people who wanted to roll back to the previous version.
Never underestimate the power of concentrated whine.
Word has an understandable formatting model. That is, all the formatting for a paragraph is stored in the paragraph mark. You can select a paragraph mark, copy it, paste it somewhere else in the document, and you have a paragraph formatted identically to the original. In OO, your text may take on different formatting depending on whether you backspace away a paragraph mark vs deleting it. No kidding. Also, there's no way to reliably copy a paragraph from one place in a document to another and retain the formatting without adding sacrificial paragraphs before and sometimes after the text you are trying to copy. Seriously. OO's formatting model is just broken.
Until this basic problem is addressed, people will -- rightly -- prefer using word. I've been fighting oo's formatting for years, and frankly, I'm sick of it.
They don't want control and autonomy. They want their computers to be easy and convenient to use, and they will follow the path of least resistance to that end. They are computer users with a specific job to do, and that seems to be the thing that FOSS developers in general are forgetting. It's a little like expecting airline passengers to make sure all the airworthiness directives on the airplane they are flying in are complied with.
Maybe silent updates would have mitigated this problem.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Other cities like Munich (LibreOffice) and Leipzig (OpenOffice) are doing just fine with the same family of office software. Without further information it is moot to guess if a) the Freiburg admins were not willing or capable of installing and configuring OpenOffice in a way that was satisfying to users or b) the users were unwilling to use the software (something different? something new? no way!) or c) some city managers decided to rather put some money in Microsoft's purse for any number of reasons (similar things happened to other public offices in Germany before).
I like my spaghetti with source.
p>But then, I'm biased and pro-F/OSS...
And here I thought that your 's' key had broken and you were forced to use the dollar sign instead...