Is OpenOffice.org a Threat? Microsoft Thinks So 467
Glyn Moody writes "Most people regard OpenOffice.org as a distant runner-up to Microsoft Office, and certainly not a serious rival. Microsoft seems to feel otherwise, judging by a new job posting on its site for a 'Linux and Open Office Compete Lead.' According to this, competing with both GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org is 'one of the biggest issues that is top of mind' for no less a person than Steve Ballmer. Interestingly, a key part of this position is 'engaging with Open Source communities and organizations' — which suggests that Microsoft's new-found eagerness to 'engage' with open source has nothing to do with a real desire to reach a pacific accommodation with free software, but is simply a way for Microsoft to fight against it from close up, and armed with inside knowledge."
I use it because... (Score:4, Insightful)
...its GUI is more like Microsoft Office pre-2007 than Microsoft Office 2007 is, and I have never gotten used to the 2007 interface.
This must be a big joke (Score:2, Insightful)
OpenOffice.org is a threat? I do not think so and here's why:
1: It looks aged compared to its counterpart from Microsoft
2: Still takes a while to load and looks ugly!
3: It's not as featured as Microsoft Office. Those who profess that the 80%/20% rule is what
matters do not have a clue on how human beings behave.
4: Most educational institutions and workplaces still accept Microsoft Office as the "default"
office suite...even for editing simple documents.
5: Its development is just too slow! Compare that with Google's Android. If OpenOffice
development was at just half the speed of Android, things would be different.
Protect the Cash Cows (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I installed the latest OO, definitely not a thr (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, I was all set to read a real world review of OO.o to understand the shortcomings. Well, right up till sentence 3. You lost me there. Can't be a very competent review with that kind of language.
Re:I installed the latest OO, definitely not a thr (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox doesn't already know that CSV should be tied to OO? Shouldn't that have occurred at install time by OO? No, ok, I'll set it up--done.
In OO's defense, It seems that most of the time, CSV is not associated with any app, which is probably a good thing because CSV doesn't always imply "spreadsheet". True, some people want their computer to make all their decisions about which app to use for what. But those people usually also end up with a boatload of adbars in their browser and spyware and viruses on their harddrives. And they wonder why their computer doesn't work.
"Won't that be grand, the computers will start thinking and the people will stop." - Walter, from Tron (1982)
Re:I use it because... (Score:4, Insightful)
My 5 year old niece uses W2007, how hard can it be? Personally I hate all them GUIs, never got the point, only editor I need is nano or a good old typewriter.
Re:I use it because... (Score:3, Insightful)
It can be surprisingly difficult. I'm wondering a few things though: does you 5 year old niece use sections, macros, table of contents, or any advanced aspect to Word? I doubt it somehow, which suggests to me that they don't use advanced features.
Re:I use it because... (Score:5, Insightful)
99% of people couldn't care less for the advanced features in anything.
Re:I installed the latest OO, definitely not a thr (Score:5, Insightful)
You installed OO on a machine that wouldn't even run Office, then complained about start up times. You then played with the software for 5 minutes. It didn't do what you wanted. You didn't find a menu item and you moved on probably without even consulting documentation or Googling. It's possible that OO is lacking the functionality you wanted to use. Who knows. You didn't bother to find out, so why should I. Regardless, I'd say the problem is behind the keyboard in this case.
Re:I installed the latest OO, definitely not a thr (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't read your entire post, but, MS Office can't properly handle CSV either. If you have an internationalized Windows and in the language settings of WINDOWS (not of office or anything!!), you have somewhere ";" instead of "," as "separator", then MS Excel can't read a CSV that uses "," anymore! It's called COMMA separated list, and yet excel can't read it and uses your localized settings, so that people with a computer of a different language can't even exchange such files with each other!
Come on, it's called CSV, why doesn't MS Office always use comma's then.
Re:This must be a big joke (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a threat to the advanced Office user market, but it is a threat to Microsoft's dominance in the "I want to send a recipe to my friends" type casual users. There's room for both, just like Paint is not a threat to Photoshop but Photoshop is not a threat to Paint.
Re:I use it because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I had to support so many different programs I can't develop a memory for all the different shiny icons there are. A few of them are alike, but most are just too different for me to know what's what in any program. So, with simple text menus I can just read and find what I need faster. Icons hold no meaning to me.
Re:duohce boag (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed.
I understand the desire of many slashdotters to have Free software.
I don't understand the desire of many slashdotters to see For Profit software companies fail. (or to point out with fear or mockery that they are trying to make money).
Can't we all just get along?
Re:This must be a big joke (Score:4, Insightful)
1, many MS customers are still using old versions which by definition *are* aged...
2, looks are not terrible important, and load time less so... in the win9x days when you had to reboot constantly and reload all your apps it mattered a lot, these days people will leave it running all day.
3, it has a slightly different feature set and in some ways is more featured than the ms offering, that said many customers use old versions of ms and most only use a small subset...
Remember that when MS took over from wordperfect, it was MS who had the inferior product considered a joke by any serious users of wordperfect...
Traditionally, using OOo has been considered detrimental because of the prevalence of proprietary ms formats, but this is gradually changing.. And despite the best efforts of MS the world is moving towards more open data formats which makes alternatives to ms seem less risky.
At the same time, the economy isn't doing so well and companies are looking for ways to cut costs... For many of those companies, IT is a cost and not part of their core business so faced with the choice between several "adequate" products may well go with the cheapest.
The best product rarely wins, as MS have proved time and time again... It is usually the cheapest or best marketed product which wins. The people making decisions are rarely even qualified to judge which product is best, they will merely choose and expect everyone else to put up with it.
Staff at such companies will complain whatever you do, but ultimately their complaints will get ignored anyway.
Re:I installed the latest OO, definitely not a thr (Score:2, Insightful)
Takes a long fucking time to open OO. I mean a LONG time. It opens, sweet. I select all the fields and go to resize them all with a single click but--nothing happens. WTF? I try again. Nothing. I look on the menu bar quickly--nothing. WTF?
Lameness of your writing aside, that's complete fud. On my 5 year old laptop on a cold start after reboot, OO calc loads in 6 seconds and about 3 after that... that's a LONG time? That is ridiculous.
In addition, selecting multiple columns and resizing by dragging or by double clicking works like a charm, so I'm guessing you are just trying to spread FUD, because you were dumb enough to pay for office.
I've been using open office for years and it does everything I need it to do and then some... You people that think otherwise haven't not really used it, and I feel sorry for you.
Re:I use it because... (Score:5, Insightful)
99% of people want 1 advanced feature in their word processor. Thing is, they all want a different advanced feature which the other 98% will consider unnecessary.
Re:I use it because... (Score:4, Insightful)
And that's why we have extensions. Putting everything in at the start just creates bloat.
Re:duohce boag (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be nice, but most of the For Profit software companies don't seem interested in getting along. They're competing.
As for myself, I don't think Linux needs world domination on the desktop, it does need interoperability though. Because interoperability (through truly open standards) is what gives people choice. That said, I would be happy with 20-30% Linux and/or Ooo on the desktop.
By "truly open standards, I don't mean the OOXML farce that was pulled through the ISO. Rather I mean something like the internet RFC's. Royalty-free, unencumbered, fully laid-out specs that anyone can follow.
Re:I installed the latest OO, definitely not a thr (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, it's a threat, whether you think so or not. I manage about 50 workstations, all Macs, and until recently we've been buying Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac with every new workstation. Since OpenOffice 3.1 came out, people are using it more and more, mainly because that's what they are using at home on Linux and Windows workstations. We no longer purchase Microsoft Office for Mac since OpenOffice is becoming the preferred office suite.
There's definitely a shift beginning to happen away from all things Microsoft when it comes to home computers. More and more people are being exposed to alternatives to Microsoft, simply through the products available from Apple, applications in the "cloud", set top appliances for home entertainment, alternative firmwares for things like wifi routers, and yes, even Linux distributions like Ubuntu that have steadily been improving the end-user experience over the past several years. Microsoft is not the end all be all company it once was, people are looking at alternatives, especially if the cost is significantly lower up front.
As much as I'd love to see everyone running Ubuntu and OpenOffice, I realize it's not going to happen overnight. But it is starting to happen in places I would have never expected just a couple years ago. This is the threat Microsoft perceives. If this shift gains momentum, it will begin to significantly impact their bottom line in a matter of years.
As for your experiences with OpenOffice, a couple of changes to Firefox would have it automatically opening .CSV files in a matter of seconds. Long load times? You are on a sub $300 notebook. Go purchase Microsoft Office 2007, or download a beta, and compare the two instead of blindly faulting OpenOffice for poor performance. It's probably the cheap machine at fault here.
In the end, you used TWO competing products to Microsoft Office, for free (minus your time). And you think Microsoft doesn't have anything to worry about? Have you purchased Microsoft Office for the netbook yet?
Re:Excel doesn't even do CSV correctly... (Score:1, Insightful)
So, during the import, just tell it that your last column (or all columns for that matter) are 'text' and not 'standard'.
How is the system supposed to know that you want to treat the zeros as significant unless you tell it? If it just made the assumption that leading zeros are always significant, somebody else would complain that the numbers in their CSV file were NOT treated as numbers.
Re:I use it because... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real evil here is not the features of MS Office but how it becomes integrated with third party applications. There are a number of "gold" or "platinum" Microsoft partners providing integration with business systems who will not support anything but MS products as they fear reprimend from MS should they support a product from "the enemy." I think MS should have been split a long time ago.
Re:I use it because... (Score:3, Insightful)
OO has no trouble with the sort of documents that a 5 year old would use, but it gets wonky with really complicated stuff that was originally made in Excel (and sometimes powerpoint documents just turn into a clusterfuck).
I like office 2007 though...I'm still not convinced that the ribbon was a great idea (though some of the new keyboard shortcuts aren't so bad) but the new and improved features FAR outweigh the minor annoyance of learning a new interface. This applies more to excel though...I can't think of any astounding changes made to word--openoffice writer has always been fine for me though...unlike calc
Re:I use it because... (Score:3, Insightful)
I call BS on this one. I've been using Office 2007 for a month, and I still can't "master" the changes from 2003. Let's see--which Word ribbon has the "Print Preview" function? Is it View, Review, or possibly Page Layout? Nope, none of the above. You have to go to the Circle Icon (whatever that's called), select "Print," and then get Print Preview from a submenu. Excel won't let me create a Pivot Table in this workbook. The icon is grayed out, and all of the other commands result in no response. would it have been SOOO difficult to implement a mouseover balloon to say "this feature is disabled because the workbook is Shared?"
"Vastly superior" UI is in the eye of the beholder, and this beholder sees that the Emperor is nekkid.
Re:Excel doesn't even do CSV correctly... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree, the import is WAD (working as designed). I don't do much with CSV, but I would think that a good database designer anticipating export/import of data would spec'ing an ID field with positional encoding of department or whatever might want to define the field with a non-numeric like a dash so that it will sort, align and print as an x position field and not a left justified number. It is not the programs fault the user is using a hammer to drive a screw.
But on the gripping hand, this is not a unreasonable "Joe Sixpack" expectation, I would imagine it would not be hard to add a check box "Strip leading zeroes on numeric fields" (unchecked by default) which would result in the auto-classification mapping the field to "Text" rather than "Standard" as you suggest.
Re:I installed the latest OO, definitely not a thr (Score:3, Insightful)
I develope a plugin that runs in Outlook.
On a daily basis I run Office 2000, XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010.
I don't really care which one you pick, or what kind of machine or what installation options you picked, OO.org takes longer to do pretty much everything.
If you don't realize this, you shouldn't be making comments comparing or contrasting OO.org and MS Office as you've obviously not got the experience to do so.
OO.org doesn't do basic things that the OS controls due out of the box without any changes. Why is it everyone thinks they need to write their own fucking toolkit? USE THE OS CONTROLS! I realize Linux doesn't have any OS provided GUI controls and multiple toolkits. Thats great, good for Linux. But for the rest of the world that wants software that does what they expect rather than to circle jerk each other about how 'free' it is, then it sucks ass.
If your product doesn't memic the basic controls of the OS because you felt you had to go redesign everything yourself, you've not only made a POS software package, you've broken rule number 1 in GUI design, which is to do what the user EXPECTS without requiring 'education' about how to use the product.
For something like an Office product, if your everyday user needs to read a help file or gets confused about the way something works, you fucked up your GUI.
Re:Excel doesn't even do CSV correctly... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is your data is ambiguous.
To get the behavior you want you should have quotes around text fields, or you need to use a decent program like OO that provides you a dialog when you open this file where you can choose the column data type.
The fact that the programs heuristically "guess" what the field contains based upon its contents will not save you from ambiguous data.
Re:duohce boag (Score:5, Insightful)
As for myself, I don't think Linux needs world domination on the desktop, it does need interoperability though.
You do understand that as long as MSFT has a desktop dominance, it would do anything to make sure that there would be no interoperability with any other competing OS?
Because interoperability (through truly open standards) is what gives people choice.
[...] I don't mean the OOXML farce that was pulled through the ISO.
And MSFT many times exemplified that in their opinion a "de facto" standard (they have complete control over like OOXML) is just as good as a "de jure" standard.
That's why as long as MSFT has >50% of market, there would be neither interoperability nor open standards.
Re:It's HER incapability, not OOo (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, its her fault that OO.org isn't intuitive and doesn't use existing well established conventions for common things.
Re:I use it because... (Score:3, Insightful)
Flamebait? Really? You make an excellent point. I've tried Open Office and it isn't good enough to be worth the hassle. It's actually easier to find an Office torrent than it is to install a legit version of Open Office (or at least it was 2 years ago).
I'm a "Mac guy" and a usability expert (or at least that's how I make my paycheck), and as much as Microsoft misses the mark on good UI, Office2007 is no worse than previous attempts. There are actually usability improvements (albeit ones that stem from previous Microsoft-ian user interface elements..as long as you are familiar with the "microsoft way", the 2007 improvements are good).
I've tried several times to find an OSX version of GIMP that only requires a single installer (that actually works). I'd like to give it a try, but unless I can download an installer and double click it and be good-to-go, it's not worth my time, no matter how free or good it is.
Re:I use it because... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because you are trying to learn 2007 using your knowledge from 2003. If you try to learn 2007 as if you'd never known a Microsoft interface before, you'd be surprised at how easy it is. You are bringing a decade of bad UI experience into your expectations, which is skewing your opinion of 2007.
Re:It's HER incapability, not OOo (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, its her fault that OO.org isn't intuitive
(meaning it doesn't work exactly like Microsoft Office)
and doesn't use existing well established conventions
(again meaning it doesn't work exactly like MS Office)
for common things.
When Word came out lots of people said it would never get there because it wasn't intuitive (meaning it didn't work like Wordperfect) and didn't use existing well established conventions (again meaning it didn't work like Wordperfect). And for a long time, these things were a barrier to Word taking over from Wordperfect. But times change and now Word is the dominant word processor and Wordperfect is a very minor player in the word processing market (I assume someone still makes a version of Wordperfect).
Re:I use it because... (Score:3, Insightful)
And how many people really need a word processor any more?
People in school and those that write reports at work do and authors as well but that is getting to be a smaller and smaller group all the time. Most business communication has moved to emails as has most personal communication. When is the last time you wrote a letter?
I would be willing to bet that Office 2000 and OpenOffice both meet the needs of 99% of the users out there. Yes I know that everybody till uses a word processor but I have to wonder for how long? I also how long it will be before people decided that free does enough and move to OO.org or even GoogleDocs.
That is what Microsoft fears. We are really reaching a point where everything is good enough and good enough and free beats good enough and expensive.
Re:Why are you hitting yourself misses gnu? (Score:2, Insightful)
You are doing the equivalent of asking the wife who is getting beaten by her husband why they can't both just get along. It is a phenomonally ignorant question to ask the wife, and it is equally ignorant to blame the FOSS supporter and/or developer.
Terrible metaphor but we'll run with it.
It is not phenomenally ignorant question to ask the wife. If her man beats her, why not leave? For the sake of this discussion, there are no kids and no house to split. The only reason to stay is because the beaten wife has convinced herself "this is how it should be" or "this is how it always will be" or "this sucks, but it won't be better if I leave".
Too many of the FOSS developers/supporters would rather sit around and explain why their version is copacetic instead of actually creating products people want. Writer is cool, but it can't pass DOC files back and forth with Word without screwing things up. GIMP is cool, but instead of providing a Photoshop-esque interface that would be easier for people to migrate to, they'd rather explain why their interface is better. You can argue all day that "they should use open formats instead of DOC" or "GIMP's interface is actually more intuitive" but you're missing the point: This is the hand you are dealt, you have to play hard to win. Nobody cares about the guy who finishes in the middle of the pack and complains about the cards.
Re:Needs programming support (Score:3, Insightful)
As a general rule, I fill out bug reports for projects that don't require new userids. If they need a new userid, I look to a forum to discuss the issue. If the forum requires a new userid to post, that's where I stop.
I've made hundreds of anonymous changes to Wikipedia, and they're generally my benchmark for how much trouble I am willing to go through to do something I have no ownership in.
Re:I use it because... (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, I knew when I was in third grade and being hounded about my penmanship to the point that I never wanted to write another word that content is the most important thing about communication. Form is constantly mutable while the thoughts themselves are constant. It's the same song whether it's sung by Soundgarden or Johnny Cash, Stevie Wonder or The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Not to mention the fact that I can type at a much closer rate to my train of thought than I can and still maintain legible handwriting. Now the only time I need to write by hand is when I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, because if I'm the only one who needs to read it then it scrawls itself across the paper encrypted by the hand of glarbl_blarbl.