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UK Government May Switch from MS Office to Open Source
New submitter Karashur sends this report from The Guardian:
"Ministers are looking at saving tens of millions of pounds a year by abandoning expensive software produced by firms such as Microsoft. Some £200m has been spent by the public sector on the computer giant's Office suite alone since 2010. The Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude believes a significant proportion of that outlay could be cut by switching to free 'open-source' software, such as OpenOffice, or Google Docs. 'I want to see a greater range of software used, so civil servants have access to the information they need and can get their work done without having to buy a particular brand of software. In the first instance, this will help departments to do something as simple as share documents with each other more easily. But it will also make it easier for the public to use and share government information.'"
For actually doing office work, Microsoft stuff is hard to beat. Maybe it'll turn out great though, who knows.
Any savings, of course, would be offset by the unproductivity of "tens of millions" of government workers who can't seem to get their open-source office software to "just work the way it always has" over the next 5 years.
I can't get Microsoft Office to "just work the way it has".
...and normally appears to be the Government trying to force Microsoft to discount its licensed to the UK Government or invest in the latest boondoggle.
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The original article doesn't even make this mistake: it just says that Docs can handle ODF. Nice summarizing, Karashur.
I don't want to discredit the hard work and dedication of the LibreOffice developers, but I don't think it's a suitable solution to save money. It's great for one who uses open-source software as a matter of philosophy or principle but it has too many usability issues and bugs to be a reliable solution for getting actual work done.
In that case, you want to first switch your mandated file format from MS's doc(x)/xls(x) to ODF's odt/ods. Then you can use MS Office, or switch to a new (possibly open-source, possibly even Free Software) office suite as you prefer.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Well, you're in luck because this is most like a negotiation ploy to bring down licensing costs.
Every time a government anywhere in the world decides to threaten a drop of Microsoft software you can bet that their seat license agreements are coming up for renewal. And the threats to migrate are only a ploy to cut a better deal. You can bet the Microsoft rep has already been authorized to sweeten the coffers of some politicians pet riding fund raising or do what ever is necessary to very quickly ensure that the by the time a real decision is taken that MS office and MS server products are the ones the government chooses. Same thing here in Canada, but with our government the decision to go all MS is a forgone conclusion there is no such thing as "looking for alternatives to save money", we just contract out every service possible and kill off labour unions like the CUPE instead and spec that contractors use nothing but MS office and server software compatible with existing government servers. We, unlike Great Britain have public money to burn now that Harper has gutted government services and pushed just about everything out to contract.
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I've been using the Ribbon format for about 3 years now and I STILL hate it. The newer versions of Outlook are the worst - the combination of the ribbon and the way MS couldn't be bothered to reimplement the compact header format really eat up vertical screen space for those of us who prefer the bottom preview pane layout (yes I know I can hide the ribbon but then I lose all the buttons which do what I use all the time, which is mainly the quick search box). On a laptop with only 768 vertical pixels (when I'm not docked) that is a serious headache which leaves me using OWA instead of the full blown outlook usually.
As you point out, the 2003->2007+ switch was therefore a huge opportunity for OpenOffice/LibreOffice/whichever fork is your favourite. The UI is great, easy to understand and the small differences from Office 2003 (like where the cursor ends up mid-editing a formula in Excel) are actually mostly positive incremental steps. You theoretically get the usability benefits of 2007+ (particularly for Excel, where memory/size constraints in 2003 were getting to be a problem for many).
Unfortunately though, interoperability is extremely poor - LibreOffice simply can't handle a big Excel spreadsheet (which is in my experience at least 60% of what most businesses buy Office for), and I've sent docx files from LibreOffice where, when people open them in MS Word, all the line breaks are suddenly gone or other formatting oddities appear. As another example, trying to use LibreOffice's "track changes" equivalent functionality left me with a docx file that Word (and often LibreOffice itself) is unable to open.
I would love to think that if the UK Government does move to LibreOffice they would fund someone to provide decent support who can fix a lot of these issues - that is supposed to be how the model works and fixing these issues would be of huge benefit to everyone. Unfortunately I can't really see that happening. I suspect instead it will end up being a typical government cock-up and massively overspend/under-deliver. I just hope that people don't end up viewing "Open Source" as the problem reason as it will be nothing to do with that and entirely to do with yet another display of civil service incompetence.
This is why when an official entity, like the UK gov, goes for OpenOffice, ie something open, that will push companies to do the same. Little by little, world will tend towards something more standard and open, and the remaining hard MS officers, will have no other choice than migrate to the new standards if they want their docs readable. This is what happened with Internet Explorer, as more and more people went away IE 6-7, pushing MS to do something more compatible. The difference lies into the fact that MS Office is not free, and, more importantly, MS office is for many companies the only blocking reason they can't migrate to something else, Mac or Linux. I'm not saying they would migrate but at least - after MS Office is gone - most of them can.
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Really? I find it at least as stable and easy to use as MS Office. The only issues it ever seems to throw in my face are the occasional formatting hullabaloo on trying to open one of MS Office's engineered-incompatible files. And that's not really relevant to a government that can simply say "you want to do business with us, you use the industry-standard odf format".
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You are assuming that MS Office's handling of ODF is the same as LibreOffice's. It isn't.
It's too bad my mod points just ran out, or you'd have had one for being insightful.
The important thing is the data. Open formats matter, and if there aren't suitable open formats available yet for the data you need to work with, creating additional open formats matters. The specific tools you use to access data that is stored in open formats are much less important.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Actually, now I've read the article, that's what the Minister is saying. Move to open formats first.
That will make it possible to switch software later, if they choose to. But even if the government doesn't, it will allow the people they work with to use their own choice of software, and prevents lock-in. Using MS Office becomes a choice, and can be selected (or dropped) on its merits, rather than being suffered out of necessity.
It's the BBC article and the /. summary which try to make it look like this is purely about switching software.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
The switch to Linux is not about open office. The simple reality is that most people create very basic documents and don't need much more than a basic text editor with fonts and spell check. Most enterprise software is now web based and thus all the average government machine needs is a web browser. So paying for a Windows license an a word license for a zillion machines that don't need either is just throwing money into the toilet. Plus once you dip your machine into the OSS world people often find that all kinds of commercial software needs can be replaced. Email systems, scheduling systems, VPNs, etc.
While there will be a handful of machines that need to remain windows I suspect that it would be significantly less than 1% and even then they will be in clusters such as an accounting office.
But some of the greatest advantages of OSS is that you no longer have an onerous license audit problem. Basically you point to your dozen accountants hold up a dozen 5 year old MS licenses and tell the auditors to go to hell as you don't even plan on upgrading office for another 5-10 years.
As one government official said directly to Bill Gates, OSS gave them freedom from Gates himself.
What I can't wait to laugh at are all the MS white papers that claim that this will somehow cost the UK more money than they presently spend on MS software. Quite simply these white papers are driven by the hysterical realization that the MS business model of taxing governments and businesses worldwide is nearing an end. People now have realistic options.
But the tears will be even more real as many governments and enterprises the world round will be dumping MS not out of a desire to save money but a desire to keep their computers from being spied upon by US entities.
Switching to OpenOffice would probably cost them more in training then they would save in 20 years of licensing fees.
As opposed to the relearning time wasted when I was forced to upgrade from MSO 2007 to 2010?
Thus, I say that "oh, the retraining costs" is a red herring.
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But we are talking government document here. Papers and memos etc.
The vast majority of Office document processing never encounters anything more complex than a table embeded in a text document, and most of it is less complex than that.
OO/LO can easily handle that load. And Once written with either of these free package, conversion to the other works perfectly.
Getting from Word to OO/LO is occasionally problematic for complex documents. But in my experience, about 95% of the DOCX/DOC files I get convert perfectly. And I have a much better rate going the other way (oo/ol to Word).
Databases are a minuscule portion of the typical government work load, and even with Microsoft products, they are so unreliable and fragile that as soon as the developer walks out the door your Access + Word + Excel project becomes maintainable.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Switching to OpenOffice would probably cost them more in training then they would save in 20 years of licensing fees.
As opposed to the relearning time wasted when I was forced to upgrade from MSO 2007 to 2010?
Thus, I say that "oh, the retraining costs" is a red herring.
Agreed. The retraining nonsense is pure MS hype.
Switching to either is pretty simple, something that most people do with very little retraining. (Often none). You open the document from Word, or Excel and it just works the VAST majority of the time. The typical government office has little that is that complex. True you can find some horribly complex stuff occasionally, but most is simple letters and reports.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If you want a feature in Open Office, fund it. Better yet, considering the cost of Microsoft Office, put the funding of Open Office in the annual budget. Rather than giving $100 million a year to Microsoft, give $10 million a year to Open Office. With a programming / total-expenditures ratio of 1, open source funding is efficient.
The fact that you spelled it "Laytex" (hint: there is no "y") shows that you likely have near zero experience with actually using Free alternatives. How about giving stuff a try, instead of speaking out of obvious ignorance? Also, if you last used "that shit" a decade ago, the code has improved.
For cost savings and flexibility, getting rid of office for a more open alternative is the first step towards being able to use non-Microsoft platforms for desktops as well. Once you're not tied to them you can start looking at Linux, OSX, Android, etc. The lock-in is gone. If Microsoft is paying attention, this should scare the crap out of them.
This is just a way for the UK gov't to get some additional "concessions" from Microsoft...
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While I agree with you that OO/LO can handle much of what word is used for, I completely disagree that these are a suitable replacement for excel.
I have tried LO/OO on both mine and my wife's laptops as we both tend to do a lot of work while at home and do not wish to always bring our computers home.
For someone who is a "power user" of excel, these two programs are simply not sufficient.
The general performance issues aside, the functionality you get with excel 2013 just cannot be matched right now by OS software. I wish it could because it would have saved my 300 bucks.
After a week of use, my wife said she would continue to just bring her work laptop home until I bought "real" office.
"Real People" are not the ones who decide if MS is used in gov't offices or not.
There are less than 50 people involved in deciding this [as, presenting suggestions for how to move forward with the UK's IT infrastructure, and it will come down to 1 person who goes yes or no.
The Real People who are sick of MS products are little people, and how they think or feel about it will have NO bearing on how "the decider" decides.
Hell, it's more important that they can exchange files with US "law enforcement" than it is for the little people to be happy.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
My wife is a corporate accountant for a large city in New Zealand. I've asked her about this as she uses Excel every day and has used OO/LO at home on occasion (a while back). She says they use so many third-party reporting plugins that work with Excel that a switch to a FS option would be nearly impossible. Word may be crap but Excel will rule the bean-counter world for the time being.
The main bit of software councils need to wean themselves off of is SAP. My jaw nearly hit the floor when I found out the seat license cost for that (I've forgotten the exact amount and am not waking her to find out), and any individual of a company that runs it who enters their own timesheets must hold a seat license, even if that's the only thing they use a computer for in the firm. We're talking thousands of dollars per seat here, not dozens.
It's not baseless FUD, the open alternative to Excel are absolutely terrible. You can tell this is nothing more than a PR stunt to help contract negotiations when they list "this will help departments to do something as simple as share documents" as one of the reasons. Switching to a different platform than what the majority of offices use will hinder their ability to share documents, not help.
If you want to make your case, at least stop posting as an Anonymous Coward. Hiding behind AC just shows that you don't believe what you are saying is true, and most people will see right through your BS, and you don't want your name associated with a bunch of lies.