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SUSE's LibreOffice Core Team Moves To Collabora
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Meeks has announced that the core of SUSE's LibreOffice team is moving over to Collabora, which will now be providing commercial LibreOffice support. 'It seems to me that the ability to say "no" to profitable but peripheral business in order to strategically focus the company is a really important management task. In the final analysis I'm convinced that this is the right business decision for SUSE. It will allow Collabora's Productivity division to focus exclusively on driving LibreOffice into Windows, Mac and Consulting markets that are peripheral to SUSE. It will also retain the core of the existing skill base for the benefit of SUSE's customers, and the wider LibreOffice community, of which openSUSE is an important part.'"
I'm not a LO hater, and actually want to see them do better. But when using it, I can't seem to shake the feeling that I'm using something that is inferior in many ways to MS Office, partially due to an immature and slow interface in some aspects, not to mention there's a tangible benefit in using the same tools as everyone else and hence not having to even worry about file formats so long as you have an up-to-date version. That of course and the templates, and the fact that I know MS Office will have every possible feature I'm looking for, whereas LibreOffice MIGHT.
In the end I can't justify the concern when I know I can immediately just use what everyone else uses, and not add to the daily stresses of life purely for ideological reasons. Sure MS Office costs money, but I pirate it anyway so its cost level is still on-par with LibreOffice. About the only think LO has going for it then is it runs on Linux (quite well I might add), but since Linux has failed completely to make even a measurable mark on the desktop/laptop scene, it's not exactly a crowning achievement or benefit.
You know this, I know this, but despite all the evidence there aren't many people who can accept this on Slashdot. It would damage their eternal belief that Microsoft is on the brink of destruction.
To be honest I have enough trouble leaving Microsoft products at times, although often it's because they are the best at what they do. There's nothing that beats MS Office, Visual Studio, heck even the Explorer file manager has no equivalent in terms of speed, functionality and usability compared to anything in Linux (which might simply be because Linux file management is mostly done through the CMD, hence a lack of a desire to improve the GUI experience).
It sounds like SUSE, the largest contributor to LibreOffice, is ending their investment in LibreOffice, and their engineers are looking for new employment. This echos the way they got out of the Mono business a few years ago. But taking the same people and putting them in a much smaller company, with far less enterprise sales experience, is not something that will cause Microsoft to lose any sleep.