Sure, LO does not have as many "modules" as the professional version of
MSO. That said, since there are already FOSS packages to do many of
those missing "modules", why should LO have their developers work on
those as well as the "basic" office suite modules?
Word -- > LO Writer
plugin -- > LO Formula
Excel -- > LO Calc
PowerPoint -- > LO Presentation
OneNote -- > . . . there should be free packages or extensions
to replace this [never used this]
Outlook -- > . . . Mozilla Thunderbird or other FOSS email
clients and their extensions should do the job [does for me]
Publisher -- > . . . Inkscape [maybe] or maybe Scribus for some jobs
Access -- > LO Base
SkyDrive -- > . . . there should be free services to replace
this [never used this, but have used a "cloud drive" once]
none included -- > LO Drawing
So, Lo does not include all of the modules of MSO. So what. You are
able to add and remove modules of MSO depending on your need. So, if
you do not have a module in the LO office suite, you add a FOSS package
to give you that functionality. That is what I have done over the years.
Sure it is hard to find any FOSS package that reads .pub files, but
there are FOSS packages that will create the same projects as Publisher
will do. They may not work the same as Publisher, but they get the
job[s] done.
SkyDrive, what is so important to have that "name brand", when you can
do the job with other packages and services?
The real mindset, for me, is if there is already a FOSS package, or just
a free one, that does the job of these extra modules of MSO, then why
should the developers really spend their valuable time recreating them.
Why do we need a LO Email when there are several good packages out there
that has a many year development cycle behind it. Our developers would
need years of work to get that far along. Someone once suggested having
other LO modules that would make a "all in one" office suite of software
marketing statement, but the goal of LO, seems to me, for creating the
best office suite that includes a word processor, spread sheet,
presentation, data base front end, vector drawing package, and a
mathematical formula creation editor. It never was, in my opinion, a
goal to create a replacement for Outlook or a cloud service. How will a
free software company pay for the hardware and bandwidth to offer a
cloud-based service? There are plenty of email clients and web mail
clients to do the work of Outlook and services to replace SkyDrive.
I know I have seen references on these lists for options that replace
OneNote for LO users. I do not remember what they were though. Since I
never used OneNote, I can not tell what would be the best option to do
what it does.
As for a "serious" competition for MSO, well look at the FOSS record in
Europe. I would say LO is a serious contender due to the fact that more
and more large organizations, plus regional and national governments are
"scrapping" MSO for LO and other FOSS options. Do anyone remember the
news out of France? It seems that they are dropping MSO country-wide
and opting for LO and FOSS instead. This is a trend that is happening
at the local, regional, and national levels of countries world-wide.
USA, not so much, but there is a government mandate for the use of FOSS
as an option.
I keep hearing form a few people about Kingsoft, but others are warning
me away from using it, due to some privacy issues. So, I cannot judge
the good or bad about that software.
So, for my home-based office, I use LO and FOSS and not MSO. The newest
MSO I have is 2003. I do not plan on buying any newer one.
On 11/03/2013 11:32 AM, Ken Springer wrote:
> On 11/3/13 5:56 AM, Paul wrote:
>> Hi Ken,
>>
>>> Let's start with some general points to start with. First, the user.
>>> For most home users, who probably are not as experienced or
>>> knowledgeable of Word and LO as you and I, the advanced features are
>>> not needed. So something simpler to use, like Kingsoft Office Free,
>>> are more suited to those users.
>> Granted, but then Kingsoft Office Free *is* serious competition to MS
>> Office.
>
> Before you can say any program *is* serious competition, you have to
> determine which products, or product levels, you are going to compare.
> Office is available in many forms, similar to the different levels of
> comfort/convenience packages in automobiles. LO comes in just one
> flavor. Kingsoft Office in 2 flavors. Chocolate and Vanilla. OK,
> that's not quite right. LOL
>
> A quick comparison of what the the three packages offer, top of the
> line, for Windows:
>
> MS Office Pro Libre Office Kingsoft Pro
> Word Writer Writer
> Excel Calc Spreadsheets
> PowerPoint Presentation Presentation
> OneNote Base
> Outlook Drawing
> Publisher
> Access
> SkyDrive
>
> Notes for the above list:
>
> 1. The items listed are from the respective websites. Office
> 2007, the last
> Office I purchased, has additional tools available. I would
> assume the
> same for 2013.
> 2. I did not include Formula for LO as the formula editor in
> Office is an
> optional plugin for Word.
> 3. To the best of my knowledge, Office has never included a
> vector drawing
> module.
>
> Using a feature by feature comparison, there is no way LO or Kingsoft
> is serious competition for Office Pro.
>
> But, if you compare the less comprehensive versions of Office:
>
> Office Home and Student Office Home and Business
> Word Word
> Excel Excel
> PowerPoint PowerPoint
> OneNote OneNote
> Outlook
>
>
>
> The only feature lists that are similar is LO vs. Office Home and
> Business. I will agree that LO is competition *only* for Home and
> Business. Even then, I suspect most businesses will find an email
> program more valuable than a vector drawing program.
>
> MS Office 365 is cloud based, so LO isn't competition there at all.
>
> I doubt there is anything on the level of MS Office Pro out there.
> Corel was making a serious push in this direction at one time, damned
> near destroyed them. I don't know the full complement of WP Office at
> the time, but they have dropped the database component the last time I
> looked. And no Mac version.
>
>> There's also Google Docs, which has a fair amount of business interest,
>> so I think that also qualifies.
>
> I haven't trusted Google for anything except search abilities since
> Google and Facebook were caught violating their own privacy agreements.
>
>>> If you want to entice people to switch from Product X to LO, you not
>>> only have to be as good as Product X, you have to be a Helluva lot
>>> better.
>> Sure, if you want to convince a large portion of the user base to
>> switch, but just to offer a viable alternative that's not true. To be
>> serious competition, you just have to be roughly as good.
>
> Those are standards I do not accept. You should aspire to be the best
> you can be, not just "good enough". Yugos were "good enough".
>
>>> Pricing is not that important anymore.
>> I think it is still one consideration. As are moral issues, and trust
>> issues, and vendor lock-in issues. In my opinion, MS has repeatedly
>> shown that they are willing to take steps that are actively detrimental
>> to their users, so I no longer trust their products. This won't be
>> everyone's concern, but there are some good reasons to seek
>> alternatives.
>>
>>> And you aren't competing with just MS Office, you're also competing
>>> with every other document program out there.
>> No, I don't think you are at all.
>> Firstly, your statement was about competition to MS Office, but
>> I think we've determined that there *is* serious competition to MS
>> Office.
>
> Au contraire, my friend, as I just pointed out with the charts above,
> LO is competition to the mid-level version of Office only.
>
> And you aren't competing against *just* MSO, you are competing with
> every other office package out there. Ford doesn't just compete with
> Chevy, they compete with Honda, Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Mini-Cooper,
> ET. AL.
>
>> Now we're discussing how relevant LO is. And, like MS Office,
>> LO has its place, and that place isn't in head-to-head competition with
>> the likes of Lyx, Tex, Inkscape and Scribus. MS Office isn't trying to
>> compete with those products either.
>
> I never said it was competing with those programs. For one, LyX and
> Tex are typesetting programs, with LyX just being a GUI interface on
> top of a LaTeX program, not word processors, although Word has a few
> typesetting options. Scribus is DTP, as is Publisher which is part of
> Office Pro. I've not used Scribus (hope to someday) but neither are
> either of those programs competition for Pagemaker, Quark Express, or
> Calamus. LO has the drawing module, but I'm fairly certain it doesn't
> have the abilities of Inkscape.
>
>>> For something more specific:
>>>
>>> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44871
>>> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46986
>>>
>>> Working around these issues creates more work for the user than doing
>>> the same things in Word. Would you switch to a program that causes
>>> more work for you?
>> I'm sure there are people on this list that can site bugs in MS Office
>> that make certain things easier to do in LO. That's just bugs, all
>> software has those; the question is how many affect any given individual
>> person, and that will determine which product he/she finds
>> easiest/nicest to use. Personally I don't find that many bugs with LO,
>> definitely not enough to make me want to switch to MS Office.
>
> Bugs are things that don't work correctly, regardless of the software.
> But, if it takes 5 steps to accomplish something in Program A, and 2
> steps in Program B, B is more user friendly, IMO.
>
>>> Then, there is this thread I started 10/29/13:
>>>
>>> news://news.gmane.org:119/l4pbem$2ud$1...@ger.gmane.org
>>>
>>> In case the link doesn't work in your reader/email/whatever,
>>> the subject is "Picture size
>>> controls".
>>>
>>> People who've used Word will expect that feature to work similarly,
>>> since the text in the dialogue box has a very similar meaning.
>> Well, yes, but again, this is a difference of expectation. You can't
>> judge LO's ability to be a viable alternative purely based on how
>> exactly it mirrors MS Office. Then you're not talking about serious
>> competition, but about a serious *clone*.
>>
>>
>>> But it *is* important to me. If features I use do not work or work
>>> correctly, why would I stay? That's why I'm looking for new
>>> alternatives to to LO.
>> This is basically saying "LO doesn't work for me, so it doesn't work
>> for anybody". This may be why you don't personally like it, but I don't
>> think it would be correct to say it isn't competition to MS Office just
>> because you don't like it. Plenty of people don't have the issues you
>> seem to have with it.
>
> No, they are bugs! They don't work! In the case of the one bug,
> simply clicking the LO window to make that window the active window
> should not move highlighted text to a new location in the document.
>
> If that power drill I just bought doesn't work, should I twist the
> chuck by hand, or get a different drill? <-------- A little over the
> top, just to make the point. No matter the product, if it doesn't
> work for you in any area, you go find something that does. One more
> customer for the competition, one less customer for you.
>
>> Remember, I didn't ask why you had issues with LO. I am perfectly fine
>> with you having a different experience to mine, and mine isn't perfect
>> by any means (just better than MS Office's, or at least good enough
>> that I prefer to use LO). I asked why you said that there wasn't any
>> "serious competition" to MS Office. I don't see that as a fair
>> statement of LO and the other good products out there.
>
> As noted above, I've listed why LO is not serious competition except
> for a single version of Office.
>
>> I think we've established that LO *is* serious competition to MS
>> Office, as well as at least Kingsoft Office Free, and possibly Google
>> Docs. That said, you have enough issues with LO that you don't like
>> using it. Fair enough. YMMV, but plenty of people prefer it. Out of
>> interest, how many issues do you have with MS Office? If you started
>> looking at MS Office with as critical an eye as you have been looking
>> at LO, wouldn't you also find enough issues that you would be
>> frustrated and looking elsewhere?
>
> Haven't used MS Office seriously since 2003. And it didn't work well
> with long documents, say 30+ pages. I've not had a reason to create
> anything that long since then.
>
> As I mentioned to Charles-H.Schulz, you're better off doing a few
> things very well as opposed to a lot of things adequately. The first
> gives you an excellent reputation, the second gives you an OK reputation.
>
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