3 ms·

Meanwhile, the judge's decision was written in Microsoft Word (do lawyers still use Word Perfect?) May be Microsoft should stop selling Windows and Office in a

Meanwhile, the judge's decision was written in Microsoft Word (do lawyers still use Word Perfect?) May be Microsoft should stop selling Windows and Office in a couple of these jurisdictions. For serious document processing there still is no good alternative to Microsoft Office. I have a feeling that if this were to happen, the public would be losing a lot more than Microsoft itself.

jrockway 17y ago
OO.org Writer is adequate for 90% of Word's users. I wrote a book a few years ago, and the editors used Word. Corresponding with them by using OO.org was not too difficult; all the features were there, although not completely polished. I looked at the features I thought were unpolished a few years ago again recently (I am not a big word processor fan), and they are fine now. OO.org Writer is now basically Word without Exchange integration.
- Eliezer 17y ago
  OO.org Writer will be adequate as soon as they come out with a decent Outline view. Until then, I and a whole whack of other people are staying on XP rather than Ubuntu primarily because OO.org lacks this one feature! http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3959 http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3959
  - jrockway 17y ago
    If it's such a big issue, why not implement it yourself? Then you and a whole whack of other people can switch from XP to Ubuntu!
    - assemble 17y ago
      Have you considered that maybe they aren't a programmer and don't have the technical knowledge to add a feature like that? This kind of attitude is one of the things that drives people away from Linux and the open-source movement in general. Personally: every time I use OO, I'm reminded of how much better Word is--in interface (the ribbon is GREAT), features (everything you could ever need), compatibility (you can save in PDF), etc.
      - jrockway 17y ago
        This kind of attitude is one of the things that drives people away from Linux and the open-source movement in general. Sorry, but it's just the reality. Very few people write Free Software out of pure altruism. They write it because they have a problem they need to solve. Often there is personal gain in sharing this solution with the world (reputation, free bugfixes, etc.), so people do. This is the open source / free software movement in a nutshell. If this attitude drives you away from getting something for free, then I guess that's too bad. The community only benefits marginally from consumers; it benefits from producers. If you are never willing to produce, the community can probably live without you.
        assemble 17y ago
        Somebody has to consume your product or there is no reason to build it. If OO wants to compete with a high-quality commercial product, they should act like it. I use Windows and Office because they are superior products, with enough of a quality increase that I'm willing to pay for it. I really doubt people would mind shelling out their hard earned cash for Desktop Linux or OO if they were viable alternatives, but as it stands: they aren't. I'm fine with being a producer in a few of the fields I care about (I work on one of the few remaining Perl BBSes), when I'm not busy getting paid to write software. I don't want to have to help write my OS, my Office software, my text editor(s), my web browser, my music player, etc. I just want these things to work in (at least) a predictable fashion. Anyway, I really do think that the open source community needs to lose the attitude if they ever want to gain traction in the wider non-programmer community.

jrockway 17y ago

OO.org Writer is adequate for 90% of Word's users. I wrote a book a few years ago, and the editors used Word. Corresponding with them by using OO.org was not too difficult; all the features were there, although not completely polished. I looked at the features I thought were unpolished a few years ago again recently (I am not a big word processor fan), and they are fine now. OO.org Writer is now basically Word without Exchange integration.

Eliezer 17y ago
OO.org Writer will be adequate as soon as they come out with a decent Outline view. Until then, I and a whole whack of other people are staying on XP rather than Ubuntu primarily because OO.org lacks this one feature! http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3959 http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3959
- jrockway 17y ago
  If it's such a big issue, why not implement it yourself? Then you and a whole whack of other people can switch from XP to Ubuntu!
  - assemble 17y ago
    Have you considered that maybe they aren't a programmer and don't have the technical knowledge to add a feature like that? This kind of attitude is one of the things that drives people away from Linux and the open-source movement in general. Personally: every time I use OO, I'm reminded of how much better Word is--in interface (the ribbon is GREAT), features (everything you could ever need), compatibility (you can save in PDF), etc.
    - jrockway 17y ago
      This kind of attitude is one of the things that drives people away from Linux and the open-source movement in general. Sorry, but it's just the reality. Very few people write Free Software out of pure altruism. They write it because they have a problem they need to solve. Often there is personal gain in sharing this solution with the world (reputation, free bugfixes, etc.), so people do. This is the open source / free software movement in a nutshell. If this attitude drives you away from getting something for free, then I guess that's too bad. The community only benefits marginally from consumers; it benefits from producers. If you are never willing to produce, the community can probably live without you.
      - assemble 17y ago
        Somebody has to consume your product or there is no reason to build it. If OO wants to compete with a high-quality commercial product, they should act like it. I use Windows and Office because they are superior products, with enough of a quality increase that I'm willing to pay for it. I really doubt people would mind shelling out their hard earned cash for Desktop Linux or OO if they were viable alternatives, but as it stands: they aren't. I'm fine with being a producer in a few of the fields I care about (I work on one of the few remaining Perl BBSes), when I'm not busy getting paid to write software. I don't want to have to help write my OS, my Office software, my text editor(s), my web browser, my music player, etc. I just want these things to work in (at least) a predictable fashion. Anyway, I really do think that the open source community needs to lose the attitude if they ever want to gain traction in the wider non-programmer community.