[tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Hi All, Sorry for this off topic but this is serious http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9215419/EC_enters_talks_with_Microsoft_for_new_licenses?taxonomyName=IT+in+GovernmenttaxonomyId=13 If this come true than we (LibreOffice an other FLOSS products) will be down and out, buried by dust for ever, governments do not need better excuse than this. Please make your action today: blog about, send a mail to your member of EP, tell the local media Thx Laszlo -- Kürti László Open SKM Agency Kft. 1024 Budapest Kút u. 5 www.openskm.com kurti.las...@openskm.com (+36-1)-788-6556 -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Le 05/04/2011 09:42, Kürti László a écrit : Hi All, Sorry for this off topic but this is serious http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9215419/EC_enters_talks_with_Microsoft_for_new_licenses?taxonomyName=IT+in+GovernmenttaxonomyId=13 If this come true than we (LibreOffice an other FLOSS products) will be down and out, buried by dust for ever, governments do not need better excuse than this. Please make your action today: blog about, send a mail to your member of EP, tell the local media Thx Laszlo -- Kürti László Open SKM Agency Kft. 1024 Budapest Kút u. 5 www.openskm.com kurti.las...@openskm.com (+36-1)-788-6556 *April 1, 2011 * -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[steering-discuss] SC call in CW 14 is tomorrow
Hello, the next Steering Committee phone conference will be Wednesday, April 6th, 1100 UTC (=1300 European time) For your date and time, see the converter at http://doodle.com/ur7kxrz82uk45p62 Please add your desired action items to http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Steering_Committee_Meetings#Agenda For the dial-in details, refer to http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Steering_Committee_Meetings#Dial-in_Details - no PIN is required anymore. Florian -- Florian Effenberger flo...@documentfoundation.org Steering Committee and Founding Member of The Document Foundation Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108 Skype: floeff | Twitter/Identi.ca: @floeff -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Hello Laszlo, Le Tue, 5 Apr 2011 09:42:10 +0200 (CEST), Kürti László kurti.las...@openskm.com a écrit : Hi All, Sorry for this off topic but this is serious http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9215419/EC_enters_talks_with_Microsoft_for_new_licenses?taxonomyName=IT+in+GovernmenttaxonomyId=13 If this come true than we (LibreOffice an other FLOSS products) will be down and out, buried by dust for ever, governments do not need better excuse than this. Please make your action today: blog about, send a mail to your member of EP, tell the local media I would not be as pessimistic as you are, the EC is unfortunately a MS shop, but there is certainly ground to protest; I'd suggest you use other, more focused initiatives than this list to take action: http://interopwikiproject.com/public-procurement:ec-pushes-ahead-with-windows-7-migration Best, Charles. Thx Laszlo -- Kürti László Open SKM Agency Kft. 1024 Budapest Kút u. 5 www.openskm.com kurti.las...@openskm.com (+36-1)-788-6556 -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Le Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:53:47 +0200, pierre choffardet pierre.choffar...@free.fr a écrit : Le 05/04/2011 09:42, Kürti László a écrit : Hi All, Sorry for this off topic but this is serious http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9215419/EC_enters_talks_with_Microsoft_for_new_licenses?taxonomyName=IT+in+GovernmenttaxonomyId=13 If this come true than we (LibreOffice an other FLOSS products) will be down and out, buried by dust for ever, governments do not need better excuse than this. Please make your action today: blog about, send a mail to your member of EP, tell the local media Thx Laszlo -- Kürti László Open SKM Agency Kft. 1024 Budapest Kút u. 5 www.openskm.com kurti.las...@openskm.com (+36-1)-788-6556 *April 1, 2011 No it's not an April fools' day, unfortunately. The article has been published that day but there were others before and after. best, Charles. * -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[tdf-discuss] Fwd: EC enter talk with Microsoft about licenses
Dear All, I was asking for verification about the news in subject. Please find below. I'm sorry to say but this is true :( Laszlo - Forwarded Message - From: Jennifer Baker j...@figure8media.com To: Kürti László kurti.las...@openskm.com Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 11:14:19 AM Subject: Re: EC enter talk with Microsoft about licenses Hi, I'm not sure why Computerworld is showing the date as April 1. The article was first published on March 23 and is certainly not an April fool's joke. I hope if I was to write one, it would be a lot funnier! Best regards Jennifer Jennifer Baker Brussels Correspondent +32 (0)487 55 13 13 Writing for IDG News Service, the internal newswire for IDG, serving magazines such as PC Advisor, PC World, ComputerWorld, CIO and MacWorld UK. Reporting and interviewing for www.VIEUWS.eu a Belgian-owned digital forum for EU debate. On 05/04/2011 11:08, Kürti László wrote: Dear Jennifer, I'm writing to you in order for asking verification of one of your article published in Computerworld.com at 1 of April. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9215419/EC_enters_talks_with_Microsoft_for_new_licenses?taxonomyName=IT+in+GovernmenttaxonomyId=13 Please verify that this is a real news and not an April joke. Thanks and best regards Laszlo -- Kürti László Open SKM Agency Kft. 1024 Budapest Kút u. 5 www.openskm.com kurti.las...@openskm.com (+36-1)-788-6556 -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
The commission is committed to getting value for money and negotiates on behalf of all the E.U. institutions, agencies and other bodies - 42 in all. Representing such a large number allows us to drive costs down and we will drive a hard bargain. How hard a bargain can they drive when the vendor knows they are not serious about using anything else and that they are already massively locked-in? To be fair, they are locked-in and they have to continue business and they are on stuff that will soon not be supported. I doubt there is much practical alternative but given the situation they should have a strategy so that in 3 years time when they agreements come up for renewal they are in a much stronger position. I think we should be a little more intelligent about lobbying MEPs. Say we understand the problem but they really need a strategy to get out of it and we are willing to help. eg Set up an EU funded project to identify where easy transition is possible and where it is difficult. Set the budget for this project at 10% of the fees they will pay MS on the rationale that the possibility of transition will at least lower the costs at the next negotiation by 10%. If some administrations are easy to migrate do these even if they have had the licenses paid to demonstrate that you are serious. We can provide low cost training and certification to support the strategy. 2011/4/5 pierre choffardet pierre.choffar...@free.fr Le 05/04/2011 09:42, Kürti László a écrit : Hi All, Sorry for this off topic but this is serious http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9215419/EC_enters_talks_with_Microsoft_for_new_licenses?taxonomyName=IT+in+GovernmenttaxonomyId=13 If this come true than we (LibreOffice an other FLOSS products) will be down and out, buried by dust for ever, governments do not need better excuse than this. Please make your action today: blog about, send a mail to your member of EP, tell the local media Thx Laszlo -- Kürti László Open SKM Agency Kft. 1024 Budapest Kút u. 5 www.openskm.com kurti.las...@openskm.com (+36-1)-788-6556 *April 1, 2011 * -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Charles, I was asking the European members personally! to take something against it. We here in Hungary spent the last 5 years with lobbying for only to let the FLOSS into the public sector. Earlier it was not possible. We had some positive results 'cause we could refer the EU policies. But if the EC don't give ...t what can I say? I tell you, nothing! And really all the national governments will be more than happy to find an excuse not to do anything for interoperability, for standardization and for freedom. If we?, you? (TDF) have the will and members stand behind this case than we have a chance. Yes we must act an intelligent way but first of all we must act. Laszlo - Original Message - From: Charles-H. Schulz charles.sch...@documentfoundation.org To: discuss@documentfoundation.org Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 11:16:58 AM Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it. Hello Laszlo, Le Tue, 5 Apr 2011 09:42:10 +0200 (CEST), Kürti László kurti.las...@openskm.com a écrit : Hi All, Sorry for this off topic but this is serious http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9215419/EC_enters_talks_with_Microsoft_for_new_licenses?taxonomyName=IT+in+GovernmenttaxonomyId=13 If this come true than we (LibreOffice an other FLOSS products) will be down and out, buried by dust for ever, governments do not need better excuse than this. Please make your action today: blog about, send a mail to your member of EP, tell the local media I would not be as pessimistic as you are, the EC is unfortunately a MS shop, but there is certainly ground to protest; I'd suggest you use other, more focused initiatives than this list to take action: http://interopwikiproject.com/public-procurement:ec-pushes-ahead-with-windows-7-migration Best, Charles. Thx Laszlo -- Kürti László Open SKM Agency Kft. 1024 Budapest Kút u. 5 www.openskm.com kurti.las...@openskm.com (+36-1)-788-6556 -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
I think we also need to examine some of the reasons behind the reluctance. I've made this particular point before, but I don't think its significance has been accepted by the OOo/LibO community. It's hardly possible to use LibO seriously without soon running into a serious bug. I'm sure we all have our own pet problems and have found a way around them or have simply accepted them. The difficult is that for the 'normal' end user, the support cost of just one of those incidents is likely to exceed the MSO licence cost. Similar kinds of problems do of course occur with MSO, but my experience in a very large international where I was in a place to see the problems is that they are very very much rarer. Until we put our house in order and deliver a product free of the majority of bugs, for most pragmatists the obvious simplest and cheapest solution is bound to remain MSO. Thus, whatever the protests and lobbying, the bureaucracy will find a way of justifying that choice. From my observations, the quality of OOo has in practice been getting worse rather than better with each succeeding release. It's too early to say for LibO, but I do not see that concentrated determination to address the totality of bugs which would be necessary to make things right. Mike On 05/04/2011 11:22, Kürti László wrote: Charles, I was asking the European members personally! to take something against it. We here in Hungary spent the last 5 years with lobbying for only to let the FLOSS into the public sector. Earlier it was not possible. We had some positive results 'cause we could refer the EU policies. But if the EC don't give ...t what can I say? I tell you, nothing! And really all the national governments will be more than happy to find an excuse not to do anything for interoperability, for standardization and for freedom. If we?, you? (TDF) have the will and members stand behind this case than we have a chance. Yes we must act an intelligent way but first of all we must act. Laszlo - Original Message - From: Charles-H. Schulzcharles.sch...@documentfoundation.org To: discuss@documentfoundation.org Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 11:16:58 AM Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it. Hello Laszlo, Le Tue, 5 Apr 2011 09:42:10 +0200 (CEST), Kürti Lászlókurti.las...@openskm.com a écrit : Hi All, Sorry for this off topic but this is serious http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9215419/EC_enters_talks_with_Microsoft_for_new_licenses?taxonomyName=IT+in+GovernmenttaxonomyId=13 If this come true than we (LibreOffice an other FLOSS products) will be down and out, buried by dust for ever, governments do not need better excuse than this. Please make your action today: blog about, send a mail to your member of EP, tell the local media I would not be as pessimistic as you are, the EC is unfortunately a MS shop, but there is certainly ground to protest; I'd suggest you use other, more focused initiatives than this list to take action: http://interopwikiproject.com/public-procurement:ec-pushes-ahead-with-windows-7-migration Best, Charles. Thx Laszlo -- Kürti László Open SKM Agency Kft. 1024 Budapest Kút u. 5 www.openskm.com kurti.las...@openskm.com (+36-1)-788-6556 -- Mike Hall www.onepoyle.net -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Mike, I just couldn't be more different than you. You are seriously misunderstand the whole problem. This is not about bugs. This is about standardization, this is about the question of freedom vs slavery. Anyway we as a company (although not a big one) using OpenOffice.org exclusively for 5 years. We are communicating the whole world (IT and not IT companies, European and Hungarian Public Institution, we have US and UK business partners) and during this 5 year we never (let me say NEVER!) experienced any blocking bug. Even with docx, xlsx format could be read and written by OO.o or LibO (or at least a workaround can be find). And let me remind you that EC is not spending it's own money but mine and yours! And the minimum level is make the whole process open and transparent. So this is not about bugs, but policy, future and a livable life. Best, Laszlo -- Kürti László Open SKM Agency Kft. 1024 Budapest Kút u. 5 www.openskm.com kurti.las...@openskm.com (+36-1)-788-6556 - Original Message - From: Mike Hall mike.h...@onepoyle.net To: discuss@documentfoundation.org Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 12:45:28 PM Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it. I think we also need to examine some of the reasons behind the reluctance. I've made this particular point before, but I don't think its significance has been accepted by the OOo/LibO community. It's hardly possible to use LibO seriously without soon running into a serious bug. I'm sure we all have our own pet problems and have found a way around them or have simply accepted them. The difficult is that for the 'normal' end user, the support cost of just one of those incidents is likely to exceed the MSO licence cost. Similar kinds of problems do of course occur with MSO, but my experience in a very large international where I was in a place to see the problems is that they are very very much rarer. Until we put our house in order and deliver a product free of the majority of bugs, for most pragmatists the obvious simplest and cheapest solution is bound to remain MSO. Thus, whatever the protests and lobbying, the bureaucracy will find a way of justifying that choice. From my observations, the quality of OOo has in practice been getting worse rather than better with each succeeding release. It's too early to say for LibO, but I do not see that concentrated determination to address the totality of bugs which would be necessary to make things right. Mike On 05/04/2011 11:22, Kürti László wrote: Charles, I was asking the European members personally! to take something against it. We here in Hungary spent the last 5 years with lobbying for only to let the FLOSS into the public sector. Earlier it was not possible. We had some positive results 'cause we could refer the EU policies. But if the EC don't give ...t what can I say? I tell you, nothing! And really all the national governments will be more than happy to find an excuse not to do anything for interoperability, for standardization and for freedom. If we?, you? (TDF) have the will and members stand behind this case than we have a chance. Yes we must act an intelligent way but first of all we must act. Laszlo - Original Message - From: Charles-H. Schulzcharles.sch...@documentfoundation.org To: discuss@documentfoundation.org Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 11:16:58 AM Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it. Hello Laszlo, Le Tue, 5 Apr 2011 09:42:10 +0200 (CEST), Kürti Lászlókurti.las...@openskm.com a écrit : Hi All, Sorry for this off topic but this is serious http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9215419/EC_enters_talks_with_Microsoft_for_new_licenses?taxonomyName=IT+in+GovernmenttaxonomyId=13 If this come true than we (LibreOffice an other FLOSS products) will be down and out, buried by dust for ever, governments do not need better excuse than this. Please make your action today: blog about, send a mail to your member of EP, tell the local media I would not be as pessimistic as you are, the EC is unfortunately a MS shop, but there is certainly ground to protest; I'd suggest you use other, more focused initiatives than this list to take action: http://interopwikiproject.com/public-procurement:ec-pushes-ahead-with-windows-7-migration Best, Charles. Thx Laszlo -- Kürti László Open SKM Agency Kft. 1024 Budapest Kút u. 5 www.openskm.com kurti.las...@openskm.com (+36-1)-788-6556 -- Mike Hall www.onepoyle.net -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions:
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
On 05/04/2011 12:11, Kürti László wrote: Even with docx, xlsx format could be read and written by OO.o or LibO (or at least a workaround can be find). Laslo, Don't get me wrong, I entirely agree with all your sentiments. Unfortunately, in practice the description of the situation I gave will dominate. The quote from your email above seems to confirm that even your company has experienced significant end user support issues. I just wish it were different. -- Mike Hall www.onepoyle.net -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Mike, Have you ever tried to work with MS office? Have you ever made a doc longer than 10 pages? How many times you had to reedit those MS docs? Just about every time you opened it in a different PC. Pls don't get me wrong, but MS office works just as OO.o or LibO. And this is not the case, but please let yourself off the hook of MS FUDs. :) Laszlo - Original Message - From: Mike Hall mike.h...@onepoyle.net To: discuss@documentfoundation.org Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 1:21:03 PM Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it. On 05/04/2011 12:11, Kürti László wrote: Even with docx, xlsx format could be read and written by OO.o or LibO (or at least a workaround can be find). Laslo, Don't get me wrong, I entirely agree with all your sentiments. Unfortunately, in practice the description of the situation I gave will dominate. The quote from your email above seems to confirm that even your company has experienced significant end user support issues. I just wish it were different. -- Mike Hall www.onepoyle.net -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Laszlo, It is not up to TDF to do something, but we have to act, each of us, individually and collectively to make sure we get results . Best, Charles. Le Tue, 5 Apr 2011 12:22:24 +0200 (CEST), Kürti László kurti.las...@openskm.com a écrit : Charles, I was asking the European members personally! to take something against it. We here in Hungary spent the last 5 years with lobbying for only to let the FLOSS into the public sector. Earlier it was not possible. We had some positive results 'cause we could refer the EU policies. But if the EC don't give ...t what can I say? I tell you, nothing! And really all the national governments will be more than happy to find an excuse not to do anything for interoperability, for standardization and for freedom. If we?, you? (TDF) have the will and members stand behind this case than we have a chance. Yes we must act an intelligent way but first of all we must act. Laszlo - Original Message - From: Charles-H. Schulz charles.sch...@documentfoundation.org To: discuss@documentfoundation.org Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 11:16:58 AM Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it. Hello Laszlo, Le Tue, 5 Apr 2011 09:42:10 +0200 (CEST), Kürti László kurti.las...@openskm.com a écrit : Hi All, Sorry for this off topic but this is serious http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9215419/EC_enters_talks_with_Microsoft_for_new_licenses?taxonomyName=IT+in+GovernmenttaxonomyId=13 If this come true than we (LibreOffice an other FLOSS products) will be down and out, buried by dust for ever, governments do not need better excuse than this. Please make your action today: blog about, send a mail to your member of EP, tell the local media I would not be as pessimistic as you are, the EC is unfortunately a MS shop, but there is certainly ground to protest; I'd suggest you use other, more focused initiatives than this list to take action: http://interopwikiproject.com/public-procurement:ec-pushes-ahead-with-windows-7-migration Best, Charles. Thx Laszlo -- Kürti László Open SKM Agency Kft. 1024 Budapest Kút u. 5 www.openskm.com kurti.las...@openskm.com (+36-1)-788-6556 -- Charles-H. Schulz Membre du Comité exécutif The Document Foundation. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Laszlo, I worked for perhaps 15 years with various versions of MSO as both a power user and as a senior manager with responsibility, inter alia, for MSO support. I met all the senior international people at the time, from MS and many other suppliers. During that time, whether with short or long documents, I personally came across only 2 instances of genuine MSO bugs. Since retirement 16 years or so ago, I have been almost exclusively using and promoting OOo/LibO. I know what some of the technical advantages are, and I appreciate them. However, each time I start a major new activity or project, I run into a major deficiency or bug which has typically taken me a day or more's work to understand, write bug reports and work out how to get round. Most of those bugs are still unfixed. This kind of 'wasted' effort simply does not occur with MSO, or at least it didn't to me, nor did I hear complaints of that kind from the thousands of end users I was to some degree responsible for internationally. In my professional opinion and with the maximum regret, I do not believe that OOo/LibO has a product offering of adequate quality to be cost-effective in a high-cost labour economy. The support costs are just far too high. Thus, it is my considered though painful conclusion that the majority of IT managers in those economies would correctly judge MSO to be the better option. As I said, I wish it were different, but it is not. We can lobby and protest as much as we like, but in my opinion there is absolutely no chance of extensive corporate or governmental adoption in Western economies until the product is of comparable quality to MSO, by which I primarily mean an absence of bugs. Mike On 05/04/2011 12:37, Kürti László wrote: Mike, Have you ever tried to work with MS office? Have you ever made a doc longer than 10 pages? How many times you had to reedit those MS docs? Just about every time you opened it in a different PC. Pls don't get me wrong, but MS office works just as OO.o or LibO. And this is not the case, but please let yourself off the hook of MS FUDs. :) Laszlo - Original Message - From: Mike Hallmike.h...@onepoyle.net To: discuss@documentfoundation.org Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 1:21:03 PM Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it. On 05/04/2011 12:11, Kürti László wrote: Even with docx, xlsx format could be read and written by OO.o or LibO (or at least a workaround can be find). Laslo, Don't get me wrong, I entirely agree with all your sentiments. Unfortunately, in practice the description of the situation I gave will dominate. The quote from your email above seems to confirm that even your company has experienced significant end user support issues. I just wish it were different. -- Mike Hall www.onepoyle.net -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Hello Mike (since we're all top posting in this thread)... To claim that MS Office is devoid of bugs is somewhat extravagant. There have been several versions of MS Office that were plagued with bugs; people complained but the products continued their roll-out. I don't think MSOffice dominance can be attributed to a better quality than OOo/LibO or any other contender, but to a specific framing of the market environment better known as a monopoly. As someone who has spent over 10 years analyzing competition in IT I can tell you most governments are prone to external pressure and lobbying. Choice of one office suite over another is decided almost never on quality, but on price, peer-pressure, business advantage, personal ties and favours, and more often than not, laziness and fear of the unknown. This being said, LibreOffice does have bugs -just like any other software- and we need to tackle them, so let me invite everyone here to report bugs on our bug tracker, and if possible to propose a fix; we'll deal with more bugs better and faster :-) Best, Charles. Le Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:56:11 +0100, Mike Hall mike.h...@onepoyle.net a écrit : Laszlo, I worked for perhaps 15 years with various versions of MSO as both a power user and as a senior manager with responsibility, inter alia, for MSO support. I met all the senior international people at the time, from MS and many other suppliers. During that time, whether with short or long documents, I personally came across only 2 instances of genuine MSO bugs. Since retirement 16 years or so ago, I have been almost exclusively using and promoting OOo/LibO. I know what some of the technical advantages are, and I appreciate them. However, each time I start a major new activity or project, I run into a major deficiency or bug which has typically taken me a day or more's work to understand, write bug reports and work out how to get round. Most of those bugs are still unfixed. This kind of 'wasted' effort simply does not occur with MSO, or at least it didn't to me, nor did I hear complaints of that kind from the thousands of end users I was to some degree responsible for internationally. In my professional opinion and with the maximum regret, I do not believe that OOo/LibO has a product offering of adequate quality to be cost-effective in a high-cost labour economy. The support costs are just far too high. Thus, it is my considered though painful conclusion that the majority of IT managers in those economies would correctly judge MSO to be the better option. As I said, I wish it were different, but it is not. We can lobby and protest as much as we like, but in my opinion there is absolutely no chance of extensive corporate or governmental adoption in Western economies until the product is of comparable quality to MSO, by which I primarily mean an absence of bugs. Mike On 05/04/2011 12:37, Kürti László wrote: Mike, Have you ever tried to work with MS office? Have you ever made a doc longer than 10 pages? How many times you had to reedit those MS docs? Just about every time you opened it in a different PC. Pls don't get me wrong, but MS office works just as OO.o or LibO. And this is not the case, but please let yourself off the hook of MS FUDs. :) Laszlo - Original Message - From: Mike Hallmike.h...@onepoyle.net To: discuss@documentfoundation.org Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 1:21:03 PM Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it. On 05/04/2011 12:11, Kürti László wrote: Even with docx, xlsx format could be read and written by OO.o or LibO (or at least a workaround can be find). Laslo, Don't get me wrong, I entirely agree with all your sentiments. Unfortunately, in practice the description of the situation I gave will dominate. The quote from your email above seems to confirm that even your company has experienced significant end user support issues. I just wish it were different. -- Charles-H. Schulz Membre du Comité exécutif The Document Foundation. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Charles, I think an appreciation of this point is absolutely crucial to a successful product, which is why I bang on about it. And I'm only faithfully recording my own experience. Unfortunately there is a difference in quality, which implicitly you seem to recognise. Yes, it's true that there have been several poor MSO releases, but in a large organisation those are not normally deployed on the corporate desktop until the problems are fixed. MS does eventually retreat on its silly ideas and there are, to all intents and purposes, almost bug free MSO versions so far as the vast majority of end users are concerned. This isn't the case with OOo/LibO - there has never been a release of such a quality that support costs could be contained at a realistic level. I wish there were and I can fully understand why this community would be very inclined to argue black is white here. Further, it's pretty frustrating to report bugs and find that they aren't fixed within a reasonable period. I don't think you would deny that that is a fairly common experience and complaint from OOo/LibO users. I see that on many bug reports. My perception and experience of the choice of application software in large organisation is that it is much more rational and hard-headed than you imply. The main cost is not the licence, for which in any case large organisations generally pay very little per desktop. It's user support that is costly, ie overall cost of ownership. Mike On 05/04/2011 16:52, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Hello Mike (since we're all top posting in this thread)... To claim that MS Office is devoid of bugs is somewhat extravagant. There have been several versions of MS Office that were plagued with bugs; people complained but the products continued their roll-out. I don't think MSOffice dominance can be attributed to a better quality than OOo/LibO or any other contender, but to a specific framing of the market environment better known as a monopoly. As someone who has spent over 10 years analyzing competition in IT I can tell you most governments are prone to external pressure and lobbying. Choice of one office suite over another is decided almost never on quality, but on price, peer-pressure, business advantage, personal ties and favours, and more often than not, laziness and fear of the unknown. This being said, LibreOffice does have bugs -just like any other software- and we need to tackle them, so let me invite everyone here to report bugs on our bug tracker, and if possible to propose a fix; we'll deal with more bugs better and faster :-) Best, Charles. Le Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:56:11 +0100, Mike Hallmike.h...@onepoyle.net a écrit : Laszlo, I worked for perhaps 15 years with various versions of MSO as both a power user and as a senior manager with responsibility, inter alia, for MSO support. I met all the senior international people at the time, from MS and many other suppliers. During that time, whether with short or long documents, I personally came across only 2 instances of genuine MSO bugs. Since retirement 16 years or so ago, I have been almost exclusively using and promoting OOo/LibO. I know what some of the technical advantages are, and I appreciate them. However, each time I start a major new activity or project, I run into a major deficiency or bug which has typically taken me a day or more's work to understand, write bug reports and work out how to get round. Most of those bugs are still unfixed. This kind of 'wasted' effort simply does not occur with MSO, or at least it didn't to me, nor did I hear complaints of that kind from the thousands of end users I was to some degree responsible for internationally. In my professional opinion and with the maximum regret, I do not believe that OOo/LibO has a product offering of adequate quality to be cost-effective in a high-cost labour economy. The support costs are just far too high. Thus, it is my considered though painful conclusion that the majority of IT managers in those economies would correctly judge MSO to be the better option. As I said, I wish it were different, but it is not. We can lobby and protest as much as we like, but in my opinion there is absolutely no chance of extensive corporate or governmental adoption in Western economies until the product is of comparable quality to MSO, by which I primarily mean an absence of bugs. Mike On 05/04/2011 12:37, Kürti László wrote: Mike, Have you ever tried to work with MS office? Have you ever made a doc longer than 10 pages? How many times you had to reedit those MS docs? Just about every time you opened it in a different PC. Pls don't get me wrong, but MS office works just as OO.o or LibO. And this is not the case, but please let yourself off the hook of MS FUDs. :) Laszlo - Original Message - From: Mike Hallmike.h...@onepoyle.net To: discuss@documentfoundation.org Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 1:21:03 PM Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
On Tue, Apr 05, 2011 18:12:34 PM +0100, Mike Hall (mike.h...@onepoyle.net) wrote: The main cost is not the licence, for which in any case large organisations generally pay very little per desktop. It's user support that is costly, ie overall cost of ownership. Mike, I have a question about this that is very likely off topic, so feel free to answer off list: in your experience, how much of these user support costs for office suites depends on the fact that many people use those office suites (MSO, LibO, OOo doesn't make any difference) in a simply stupid way because they don't know better? Example #1: I had a boss years ago that center-justified and numbered MANUALLY (redoing the numbers by hand when he added or removed text...) paragraph titles in FrameMaker Example #2: one thing said at OOoCon 2010 about the Munich switch to OOo was that they found LOTS of macros in official documents that weren't ported or rewritten, NOT because it was too difficult, but simply because they were USELESS period: people had just blindly pasted them from other files or (I guess) inserted new ones just to show off that they were advanced users. Marco -- Online Course for Digital Citizens, because your rights depend on how software is used *around* you: http://mfioretti.com/node/129 -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
On 5 April 2011 15:56, Mike Hall mike.h...@onepoyle.net wrote: Laszlo, I worked for perhaps 15 years with various versions of MSO as both a power user and as a senior manager with responsibility, inter alia, for MSO support. I met all the senior international people at the time, from MS and many other suppliers. During that time, whether with short or long documents, I personally came across only 2 instances of genuine MSO bugs. Since retirement 16 years or so ago, I have been almost exclusively using and promoting OOo/LibO. I know what some of the technical advantages are, and I appreciate them. However, each time I start a major new activity or project, I run into a major deficiency or bug which has typically taken me a day or more's work to understand, write bug reports and work out how to get round. Most of those bugs are still unfixed. This kind of 'wasted' effort simply does not occur with MSO, or at least it didn't to me, nor did I hear complaints of that kind from the thousands of end users I was to some degree responsible for internationally. In my professional opinion and with the maximum regret, I do not believe that OOo/LibO has a product offering of adequate quality to be cost-effective in a high-cost labour economy. The support costs are just far too high. Thus, it is my considered though painful conclusion that the majority of IT managers in those economies would correctly judge MSO to be the better option. As I said, I wish it were different, but it is not. We can lobby and protest as much as we like, but in my opinion there is absolutely no chance of extensive corporate or governmental adoption in Western economies until the product is of comparable quality to MSO, by which I primarily mean an absence of bugs. I rather think that depends on what the nature of the use is. Here, we use FOSS exclusively. We are a small business but heavily ICT dependent. I can't recall any circumstances where a bug in OOo has wasted a lot of time. In fact mostly we use Google's spreadsheet for sharing and put WP type stuff directly into web pages but I just published a book and previously a professional manual using OOo and Inkscape without any significant problems. I can see that some specialist power users will have more problems particularly if they are locked into VB and other MSO dependencies and I would have though that was a much more serious consideration than bugs. Mike On 05/04/2011 12:37, Kürti László wrote: Mike, Have you ever tried to work with MS office? Have you ever made a doc longer than 10 pages? How many times you had to reedit those MS docs? Just about every time you opened it in a different PC. Pls don't get me wrong, but MS office works just as OO.o or LibO. And this is not the case, but please let yourself off the hook of MS FUDs. :) Laszlo - Original Message - From: Mike Hallmike.h...@onepoyle.net To: discuss@documentfoundation.org Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 1:21:03 PM Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it. On 05/04/2011 12:11, Kürti László wrote: Even with docx, xlsx format could be read and written by OO.o or LibO (or at least a workaround can be find). Laslo, Don't get me wrong, I entirely agree with all your sentiments. Unfortunately, in practice the description of the situation I gave will dominate. The quote from your email above seems to confirm that even your company has experienced significant end user support issues. I just wish it were different. -- Mike Hall www.onepoyle.net -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
All. I tend to agree with Mike on many aspects. We use 12 instances of LO in our business and I support more privately. I inter-react with an educational institution and others predominantly MO, our business is mainly LO. For a corporation or large entity to adopt LO it must be able to transfer MO docs well. I find that probably 90% of MO docs I receive don't open in LO without need of reformatting, a corporation could not tolerate this. I found that LO does not time save (auto backup) .docs, a corporation would not tolerate that. LO development is going great, but to be considered for corporate/large organisation environments some consideration of what is stopping LO adoption is required. These are not show stoppers but a different emphasis on development and bug fixing. May be this is not the interest of developers and may be corporate environment is not the future of LO. I have seen some discussion regarding the mapping out of the future of LO, LO design and developer focus. May be it is a good discussion to have soon. steve On 6/04/11 5:12 AM, Mike Hall wrote: Charles, I think an appreciation of this point is absolutely crucial to a successful product, which is why I bang on about it. And I'm only faithfully recording my own experience. Unfortunately there is a difference in quality, which implicitly you seem to recognise. Yes, it's true that there have been several poor MSO releases, but in a large organisation those are not normally deployed on the corporate desktop until the problems are fixed. MS does eventually retreat on its silly ideas and there are, to all intents and purposes, almost bug free MSO versions so far as the vast majority of end users are concerned. This isn't the case with OOo/LibO - there has never been a release of such a quality that support costs could be contained at a realistic level. I wish there were and I can fully understand why this community would be very inclined to argue black is white here. Further, it's pretty frustrating to report bugs and find that they aren't fixed within a reasonable period. I don't think you would deny that that is a fairly common experience and complaint from OOo/LibO users. I see that on many bug reports. My perception and experience of the choice of application software in large organisation is that it is much more rational and hard-headed than you imply. The main cost is not the licence, for which in any case large organisations generally pay very little per desktop. It's user support that is costly, ie overall cost of ownership. Mike On 05/04/2011 16:52, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Hello Mike (since we're all top posting in this thread)... To claim that MS Office is devoid of bugs is somewhat extravagant. There have been several versions of MS Office that were plagued with bugs; people complained but the products continued their roll-out. I don't think MSOffice dominance can be attributed to a better quality than OOo/LibO or any other contender, but to a specific framing of the market environment better known as a monopoly. As someone who has spent over 10 years analyzing competition in IT I can tell you most governments are prone to external pressure and lobbying. Choice of one office suite over another is decided almost never on quality, but on price, peer-pressure, business advantage, personal ties and favours, and more often than not, laziness and fear of the unknown. This being said, LibreOffice does have bugs -just like any other software- and we need to tackle them, so let me invite everyone here to report bugs on our bug tracker, and if possible to propose a fix; we'll deal with more bugs better and faster :-) Best, Charles. Le Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:56:11 +0100, Mike Hallmike.h...@onepoyle.net a écrit : Laszlo, I worked for perhaps 15 years with various versions of MSO as both a power user and as a senior manager with responsibility, inter alia, for MSO support. I met all the senior international people at the time, from MS and many other suppliers. During that time, whether with short or long documents, I personally came across only 2 instances of genuine MSO bugs. Since retirement 16 years or so ago, I have been almost exclusively using and promoting OOo/LibO. I know what some of the technical advantages are, and I appreciate them. However, each time I start a major new activity or project, I run into a major deficiency or bug which has typically taken me a day or more's work to understand, write bug reports and work out how to get round. Most of those bugs are still unfixed. This kind of 'wasted' effort simply does not occur with MSO, or at least it didn't to me, nor did I hear complaints of that kind from the thousands of end users I was to some degree responsible for internationally. In my professional opinion and with the maximum regret, I do not believe that OOo/LibO has a product offering of adequate quality to be cost-effective in a high-cost labour economy. The
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
On 5 April 2011 20:17, M. Fioretti mfiore...@nexaima.net wrote: On Tue, Apr 05, 2011 18:12:34 PM +0100, Mike Hall (mike.h...@onepoyle.net) wrote: The main cost is not the licence, for which in any case large organisations generally pay very little per desktop. It's user support that is costly, ie overall cost of ownership. Mike, I have a question about this that is very likely off topic, so feel free to answer off list: in your experience, how much of these user support costs for office suites depends on the fact that many people use those office suites (MSO, LibO, OOo doesn't make any difference) in a simply stupid way because they don't know better? Example #1: I had a boss years ago that center-justified and numbered MANUALLY (redoing the numbers by hand when he added or removed text...) paragraph titles in FrameMaker Example #2: one thing said at OOoCon 2010 about the Munich switch to OOo was that they found LOTS of macros in official documents that weren't ported or rewritten, NOT because it was too difficult, but simply because they were USELESS period: people had just blindly pasted them from other files or (I guess) inserted new ones just to show off that they were advanced users. Marco My 2 cents I'm just working out a switchoff from MSO to LibreOffice (not a big switch: only15 seats). We are founding some lesser problems, mainly due to wrong formatting (but this bring problems even changing MSO version) on really complex documents with thousands of rows and pivot tables (I've just filed a bug related to datapilot), but nothing not solvable with some little workaround. The big troubles came with the slowness with big files (20-40MB of spreadsheets opens in 6-8 seconds with MSO and near 30 secs with libreoffice), but again this is not a problem (if you need to work on a file of 80-100.000 lines probably wait 25 seconds is not a problem) On the user side we don't find big troubles: they find the GUI really similar to MSO 2003. I can evaluate the time spent to test the various functions, do some fix and a little training to the users for fix the problems in less than 30 work hours: actually we make a save immediatly (1500€ vs 4000€ of licenses), but also build a road for a future of freedom (in 3-4 years we probably will have to switch to a new version of MSO and so spend again in licenses and probably have to reformat again the documents) E. -- Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better. A.Camus -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
On 5 April 2011 21:08, Steve Edmonds steve.edmo...@ptglobal.com wrote: All. I tend to agree with Mike on many aspects. We use 12 instances of LO in our business and I support more privately. I inter-react with an educational institution and others predominantly MO, our business is mainly LO. For a corporation or large entity to adopt LO it must be able to transfer MO docs well. I find that probably 90% of MO docs I receive don't open in LO without need of reformatting, Before our switch we have the same problems with MO (we had a mixed enviroment with MO 2003 and a couple of MO XP) receiving files with a range from office 97 to 2007. I've found a better formatting aderence now with libreoffice (but maybe is due to the type of documents we use). a corporation could not tolerate this. I found that LO does not time save (auto backup) .docs, a corporation would not tolerate that. LO do autosave, only it do it in a slight different way: I use OOO (and LO now) since version the first version, and even if it crashes I've never loose a single document. E. -- Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better. A.Camus -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Steve, While I understand your points, and Mike's, I can't say I agree with them particularly. On one issue we do agree and it is perhaps something to be looked at by the development team. That is the automatic timed save of documents while worked on. It is the case that should you lose a working document LibO or OoO will try to recover it next time it is started, but it does not always work nor assure a copy is made of all documents. As you say, that is not usually acceptable to businesses. However, for the rest I disagree. I have heard the claim about files from Microsoft Office needing to be changed in Open Office before but only rarely seen it to be true with a word-processed document. It is true that not all Powerpoint comes over to LibO accurately since LibO does not have available all the features that PPT can guarantee by being a closed and proprietary system. To me, this seems absolutely inevitable and not a fault at all. Similarly, I have heard about problems with Excel and especially the way pivots and data handling operations are carried out but also with rounding features to make the spreadsheets balance out. And yes, there are differences - although for the rounding features I have seen used are because there are technical errors with storage of some numbers in Excel that have been widely discussed on the web. I have to say that while I have seen that doing the same sort of thing to the Calc GUI results in a different operation, it is not yet clear to me whether the difference is the way that Calc is used or the way the same operation is carried out. Perhaps you could give us details? Most common of all though, is the complaint that my company macros don't work. Frankly, I am sick to death of hearing this one! MS macros are written in an MS language for MS features in an MS environment on MS software. There is no way in *hell* and Open Source software can pinch it, copy it, reverse engineer it, duplicate it in new code or anything else. If the macros are any use, then rewrite the damn things! On 05/04/2011 20:08, Steve Edmonds wrote: All. I tend to agree with Mike on many aspects. We use 12 instances of LO in our business and I support more privately. I inter-react with an educational institution and others predominantly MO, our business is mainly LO. For a corporation or large entity to adopt LO it must be able to transfer MO docs well. I find that probably 90% of MO docs I receive don't open in LO without need of reformatting, a corporation could not tolerate this. I found that LO does not time save (auto backup) .docs, a corporation would not tolerate that. LO development is going great, but to be considered for corporate/large organisation environments some consideration of what is stopping LO adoption is required. These are not show stoppers but a different emphasis on development and bug fixing. May be this is not the interest of developers and may be corporate environment is not the future of LO. I have seen some discussion regarding the mapping out of the future of LO, LO design and developer focus. May be it is a good discussion to have soon. steve On 6/04/11 5:12 AM, Mike Hall wrote: Charles, I think an appreciation of this point is absolutely crucial to a successful product, which is why I bang on about it. And I'm only faithfully recording my own experience. Unfortunately there is a difference in quality, which implicitly you seem to recognise. Yes, it's true that there have been several poor MSO releases, but in a large organisation those are not normally deployed on the corporate desktop until the problems are fixed. MS does eventually retreat on its silly ideas and there are, to all intents and purposes, almost bug free MSO versions so far as the vast majority of end users are concerned. This isn't the case with OOo/LibO - there has never been a release of such a quality that support costs could be contained at a realistic level. I wish there were and I can fully understand why this community would be very inclined to argue black is white here. Further, it's pretty frustrating to report bugs and find that they aren't fixed within a reasonable period. I don't think you would deny that that is a fairly common experience and complaint from OOo/LibO users. I see that on many bug reports. My perception and experience of the choice of application software in large organisation is that it is much more rational and hard-headed than you imply. The main cost is not the licence, for which in any case large organisations generally pay very little per desktop. It's user support that is costly, ie overall cost of ownership. Mike On 05/04/2011 16:52, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Hello Mike (since we're all top posting in this thread)... To claim that MS Office is devoid of bugs is somewhat extravagant. There have been several versions of MS Office that were plagued with bugs; people complained but the products continued
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Mike Hall wrote: Charles, I think an appreciation of this point is absolutely crucial to a successful product, which is why I bang on about it. And I'm only faithfully recording my own experience. Unfortunately there is a difference in quality, which implicitly you seem to recognise. Yes, it's true that there have been several poor MSO releases, but in a large organisation those are not normally deployed on the corporate desktop until the problems are fixed. MS does eventually retreat on its silly ideas and there are, to all intents and purposes, almost bug free MSO versions so far as the vast majority of end users are concerned. This isn't the case with OOo/LibO - there has never been a release of such a quality that support costs could be contained at a realistic level. I wish there were and I can fully understand why this community would be very inclined to argue black is white here. Further, it's pretty frustrating to report bugs and find that they aren't fixed within a reasonable period. I don't think you would deny that that is a fairly common experience and complaint from OOo/LibO users. I see that on many bug reports. My perception and experience of the choice of application software in large organisation is that it is much more rational and hard-headed than you imply. The main cost is not the licence, for which in any case large organisations generally pay very little per desktop. It's user support that is costly, ie overall cost of ownership. Mike I am one of the multitude of end users of Writer who hope that it can become something that we can all take pride in because we all helped in whatever way to make it what it is. Over the years I have used MS Word, and OOo, I simply don't ever use spreadsheets, presentation programs or any other part of MS Office or OOo except for the word processors. That said, I find MS Word to be unstable for long documents. Writer does a better job, but it has some severe shortcomings that would be very easy to fix if anyone would bother. My prime example, the word list in the spell checker is PATHETIC!!! There is almost a total lack of compound words in it, and I have had to add well over a thousand of them in order to get the spell checker to operate at an acceptable speed. The only alternative is to consider the spell checker USELESS, and to just permanently turn it off. No business would ever consider that to be an acceptable alternative, and would instead consider the price for a copy of Microsoft Word a bargain compared to the hassle of trying to use a word processor with a nearly useless spelling checker. Naturally we cannot purchase a word list to use, because anything sold would be copyrighted and therefore useless to us. Likewise, as I understand there is no Open Source or other non copyright word list that is sufficiently better than what we are now using to be worth bothering with. Therefore we must create our own. I don't think that most of the work of doing this would require the skills of a programmer or software developer. I think if someone could tell some of us end users where to find our own word lists that we have had to add hundreds or thousands of words to, turn them into email attachments, and send them to LO, they could be combined, stripped of unwanted proper nouns and such, and used to create a very good and complete word list to incorporate into LO Writer. And of course once we have such a word list, every release from that time on will have a very good spell checker. I am a computer hardware expert, but not a software expert, at least no more than most end users, but perhaps this is something where someone like me might just be able to help. Robert Derman -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
On 2011-04-06 07:19, Ercole Carpanetto wrote: On 5 April 2011 21:08, Steve Edmonds steve.edmo...@ptglobal.com wrote: All. I tend to agree with Mike on many aspects. We use 12 instances of LO in our business and I support more privately. I inter-react with an educational institution and others predominantly MO, our business is mainly LO. For a corporation or large entity to adopt LO it must be able to transfer MO docs well. I find that probably 90% of MO docs I receive don't open in LO without need of reformatting, Before our switch we have the same problems with MO (we had a mixed enviroment with MO 2003 and a couple of MO XP) receiving files with a range from office 97 to 2007. I've found a better formatting aderence now with libreoffice (but maybe is due to the type of documents we use). a corporation could not tolerate this. I found that LO does not time save (auto backup) .docs, a corporation would not tolerate that. LO do autosave, only it do it in a slight different way: I use OOO (and LO now) since version the first version, and even if it crashes I've never loose a single document. While editing .doc files I have not found any of them to have been auto saved and recoverable. Same with OOO. .odt files have been autosaved, but the autosaving deletes images from my odt files. So for me LO does not have an autosave feature. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Hi Mark. Possibly the environment that one works in has a significant result on the problems encountered, and hence why it is hard to debug all problems because they don't always arise until the environment changes. I encounter little problem with spread sheets or power point, but mostly with docs. May be that is the nature of the people I need to interreact with and the way they use MO. Their pattern of use with MO creates formats that the filter developers have not encountered and hence my problems. It is good to have the discussion and bring out the issues so that they can be assessed and addressed (one way or another). steve On 2011-04-06 07:38, Mark Preston wrote: Steve, While I understand your points, and Mike's, I can't say I agree with them particularly. On one issue we do agree and it is perhaps something to be looked at by the development team. That is the automatic timed save of documents while worked on. It is the case that should you lose a working document LibO or OoO will try to recover it next time it is started, but it does not always work nor assure a copy is made of all documents. As you say, that is not usually acceptable to businesses. However, for the rest I disagree. I have heard the claim about files from Microsoft Office needing to be changed in Open Office before but only rarely seen it to be true with a word-processed document. It is true that not all Powerpoint comes over to LibO accurately since LibO does not have available all the features that PPT can guarantee by being a closed and proprietary system. To me, this seems absolutely inevitable and not a fault at all. Similarly, I have heard about problems with Excel and especially the way pivots and data handling operations are carried out but also with rounding features to make the spreadsheets balance out. And yes, there are differences - although for the rounding features I have seen used are because there are technical errors with storage of some numbers in Excel that have been widely discussed on the web. I have to say that while I have seen that doing the same sort of thing to the Calc GUI results in a different operation, it is not yet clear to me whether the difference is the way that Calc is used or the way the same operation is carried out. Perhaps you could give us details? Most common of all though, is the complaint that my company macros don't work. Frankly, I am sick to death of hearing this one! MS macros are written in an MS language for MS features in an MS environment on MS software. There is no way in *hell* and Open Source software can pinch it, copy it, reverse engineer it, duplicate it in new code or anything else. If the macros are any use, then rewrite the damn things! On 05/04/2011 20:08, Steve Edmonds wrote: All. I tend to agree with Mike on many aspects. We use 12 instances of LO in our business and I support more privately. I inter-react with an educational institution and others predominantly MO, our business is mainly LO. For a corporation or large entity to adopt LO it must be able to transfer MO docs well. I find that probably 90% of MO docs I receive don't open in LO without need of reformatting, a corporation could not tolerate this. I found that LO does not time save (auto backup) .docs, a corporation would not tolerate that. LO development is going great, but to be considered for corporate/large organisation environments some consideration of what is stopping LO adoption is required. These are not show stoppers but a different emphasis on development and bug fixing. May be this is not the interest of developers and may be corporate environment is not the future of LO. I have seen some discussion regarding the mapping out of the future of LO, LO design and developer focus. May be it is a good discussion to have soon. steve On 6/04/11 5:12 AM, Mike Hall wrote: Charles, I think an appreciation of this point is absolutely crucial to a successful product, which is why I bang on about it. And I'm only faithfully recording my own experience. Unfortunately there is a difference in quality, which implicitly you seem to recognise. Yes, it's true that there have been several poor MSO releases, but in a large organisation those are not normally deployed on the corporate desktop until the problems are fixed. MS does eventually retreat on its silly ideas and there are, to all intents and purposes, almost bug free MSO versions so far as the vast majority of end users are concerned. This isn't the case with OOo/LibO - there has never been a release of such a quality that support costs could be contained at a realistic level. I wish there were and I can fully understand why this community would be very inclined to argue black is white here. Further, it's pretty frustrating to report bugs and find that they aren't fixed within a reasonable period. I don't think you would deny that that is a fairly common
[tdf-discuss] Re: European Commitee enter talks with MS licences, Please make your action today against it.
Well, how many full-time developers, working 40-hour workweeks, does Microsoft Office have... and how many OOo and LibO? If the answer for MO is, say, 300... and the full-time equivalent for OOo / LibO is 50... then it's pretty much a given that MO will always have a bigger feature set and be more bug-free than OOo / LibO. This is a no-brainer! -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/LO-OO-are-not-the-only-competitors-of-MSOffice-LO-could-also-make-a-simple-office-suite-that-runs-inS-tp2758623p2783512.html Sent from the Discuss mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
