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Valencia Region Government Completes Switch To LibreOffice
jrepin writes "The administration of the Spanish autonomous region of Valencia has completed its switch to LibreOffice, a free and open source suite of office productivity applications. Last week Friday the region's ICT department announced that the office suite is installed on all of the 120,000 desktop PCs of the administration, including schools and courts. The migration will save the government some 1.5 million euro per year on proprietary software licenses."
... Microsoft would now say that they may be spending even more in support after the change.
Has anyone given actual numbers on that, yet? Anyone who has fully switched away from Microsoft Office and, after a few years, has numbers showing they spent less overall?
It won't just save it 1.5 now, it'll save that every upgrade cycle.
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it depends on the From Version if they are starting from a nonribbon version of MSO then the training could be nearly trival.
as far as that goes has anybody done a Ribbon Interface pack for LO??
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Guess it's pretty much the same, as with MS. In addition, it's easier to train locals to provide support and develop special features, required by users, thus boosting the economy.
as far as that goes has anybody done a Ribbon Interface pack for LO??
All I can think is: why?
which is totally what she said
I use LO at the house and use Office 2010 at the office.
I use word and excel and have zero issues when I use LO.
What am I missing here? I realize that there are issues with formatting but beyond that its been smooth going between the two.
I don't think I am a power user though. I don't use any of the advanced features so maybe that's where the retraining comes in.
Otherwise it seems overblown to be claiming that it will take millions for re-training.
$1.5 million per year over 120,000 PCs works out to $12.50 per PC per year. Is anyone else getting those prices for Microsoft Office?
What training?
Unless you are doing some insane thing with office (like complex business calculations - which probably should never pass near it), you will not need any kind of "special training".
Just use it as a normal productivity package.
I've hated "smart menus" for a long time. Usually you can put your commonly used items in a toolbar, and for everything else, you go to the menu. Every time you go to the menu, you need to click the expand arrows to see all the options (and these days that's always while looking for the option to turn off the expand arrows..).
which is totally what she said
This idea that moving away from MS will cost millions in training is FUD spread by MS to discourage such migrations...
There are many cases where upgrading to the latest MS offering is actually a more significant change than switching to an alternative, for instance moving from msoffice 2003 to 2007 is a bigger leap than going from 2003 to libreoffice as the user interface is entirely different.
In reality many such migrations have been performed, often with no training being provided whatsoever. Users are just expected to get on with it, and generally do.
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I agree with you, to an extent. I like the ribbon as a toolbar - I hate it as a menu. Every function should reside in a fixed place, in a addition to having a context-sensitive toolbar. Why? Sometimes the computer guesses wrong. The ribbon also re-arranges itself depending on screen size and shape, which means an adjustment period when switching between laptop and desktop - or even when working in full screen vs. windowed mode. The Mac version of Office has both ribbon and menus, and it works just fine.
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Well, most of the users don't care what Office Suite they don't know how to use.
Training is actually minimal. The main boost is that documents can be saved and viewed without lockin to OS and office suit. It also removes dependency on Microsoft and might give a little boost to small businesses, that won't have to buy office and windows in order to communicate with the government, so that migration decision might make a lot of sense.
This is different to the upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2007 because of what? Migrating from Office 2003 to Libreoffice constitutes a smaller cost in training and compatibilty than the move to Office 2007.
So we should never, ever change anything, because the adaptation period is too expensive. If everybody had the same mindset as you, we'd still be living in caves.
Nobody has to buy Microsoft Office to communicate with governments in the European Union. We have open standards laws forbidding governments from doing that kind of shit. Much to the dismay of Microsoft lobbyists and the officials in their pockets.
This is different to the upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2007 because of what?
Exaaaaactly. It's like some people in /. have no clue as of the ridiculously unnecessary training costs that Office 2007 introduced. MS Office till v2003 set a paradigm of usage, an operational lingua franca of sorts that most people using MS products knew rather well.
It worked. It was fine, and people were efficient with it. There was no reason to change the UI paradigms considering that:
1 - MS Office 2007 did not introduce significant functionality changes, and
2 - the UI changes are not truly needed to use new functionality missing from previous versions.
In other words, fuck you Microsoft for violating the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it."
Migrating from Office 2003 to Libreoffice constitutes a smaller cost in training and compatibilty than the move to Office 2007.
Indeed as well. I'm not a LibreOffice fan, but I know that a person well-versed in MS Office 2003 can make the leap quite easily to LibreOffice.
The reality is that MS Office users have continuously been struggling to use MS Office 2007 and newer. Let us do a google for usage questions regarding MS Office 2007. That it was released eons ago (in internet years) and that people still struggle with it, that is an indictment in the whole UI change malarkey.
Companies are forced to waste money in retraining or in loss of productivity by users that have to constantly google for ways to do shit the were able to do with their eyes closed for over a decade. The whole counter-argument of LibreOffice retraining costs is completely bogus considering that you will have to retrain or lose productivity the moment you go to Office 2007 or newer.
True enough, except that through FUD and phony 'open formats', Microsoft managed to keep most of its users on Office through the 2007 paradigm change - so the Office retraining costs ended up being incurred for the switch between MSO versions, and will be required again to switch to Libre. Maybe Valencia was smart enough to stick with MSO 2003 through their switch. If so, good for them.
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I'm saying it tongue-in-cheek, but man, those are bureaucrats, there's no productivity left to be lost. If they'll be learning a new software package, that's like gained productivity, in all likelihood.
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I for one like software which is smart enough to put the menus I need in an easy place to reach when I want them. Beats digging through a "mega evil rats nest of doom" tree structure every time I do something routine (like adjusting error bars). Context sensitive is just smart.
But not that smart.
The thing that blew my blood pressure was when Office 2003 got clever with menus.
I'm used to printing via Ctrl-P command key. Office 2003 kept assuming I didn't use the File/Print menu so it removed it. Along with its binding to Ctrl-P. Half the time I went to print something, it didn't print. Because "clever" Office 2002 removed it from the context.
They will now be teaching LibreOffice in all of those schools, not MS Office. Thus, in Valencia, no future Valencian employees in the government will require any new training.
Bearded Dragon
Not to mention it's much better to spend that money in the local economy (such as training and support companies) than to see the money fly away to microsoft.