4 ms·

I don't want to sound like an ass or ungrateful or anything, but the FSF needs to wise up. People won't switch until the alternative is a lot better than what t

I don't want to sound like an ass or ungrateful or anything, but the FSF needs to wise up. People won't switch until the alternative is a lot better than what they currently have. Why would a normal person care about the file format of an attachment? Hell, how many people even know the format of the files they are working with? (I mean the extensions, not the file layout or anything) They just care about being able to open it. They have a raft of better shit to be doing and that's how it should be. tl;dr: Make OpenOffice 10x better than Office and you won't have to cajole people to switch. Don't do that and we'll ignore you like we've been doing.

_sh 17y ago
Who's this 'we'? I already use Open Office and, for my needs, it is already 10x better than the alternative used at work. Better because (in Writer) bulleted lists are consistent, and it's easier to manage styles. Having said that, I'll probably not reject your email attachment, instead I'll just make my edits and send it back to you as an Open Document. As a side note, why do so many people assume everyone else is a stereotype? When people are complaining about their specific needs, all I hear is "All people want to do is...", and "I don't care about XYZ, it should 'just work' the specific way I want it to because that's all people want", and my all-time favourite, "Joe Six-pack just wants XYZ". I've never met anybody with the surname "Six-pack".
- dschobel 17y ago
  I think OP's generalization that most average technology users don't care one iota about the openness of their tech so long as it 'works' is dead on. Have you honestly had a different experience with non-expert users?
  - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
    Yes I have a different experience, the non-expert users I deal with struggle on with systems that clearly don't 'work' either by ignorance of alternatives or worse because they are locked-in. This is probably in part because they keep choosing systems that aren't "open" and then having their short-term stupidity exploited. Which is understandable, as they're not claiming to be technology experts. Look at all the complaints in this thread: "I'm worried my documents won't look right in the convicted monopolist's de-facto standard office app with it's closed, undocumented, virus propogating, privacy leaking, and generally frankly atrocious memory dump-based .doc file format. And it's all OpenOffice's fault so don't bother promoting open and documented file formats, hippy!"
    - mootothemax 17y ago
      Why isn't "I'm worried my documents won't look right" a legitimate concern? You're talking about something that has a very real effect on people's lives and you're trying to dismiss it because Microsoft Office exists. Word definitely has problems of its own, but dismissing concerns about how a document will look to the other 90% of people out there is missing the point.
      - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
        It's an entirely legitimate concern. But the fault that causes this worry is fundamentally a lack of openess. The solution is to promote openness. To be exact, if the document format was open then there wouldn't be a problem, or at least many orders of magnitude less of a problem. End users shouldn't have to worry about this because the techies should have figured it out for them. Not only have we failed, there's a bunch of comments here that show that we (techies, as a class) don't even understand the problem.
- bruceboughton 17y ago
  By the same token, one could ask why the FSF always assume anyone cares about their militant brand of open source.
  - loup-vaillant 17y ago
    Maybe because they made what we call "Linux" possible in the first place? (In case you don't remember, GNU pre-dates Linux. The kernel was just the last missing part.)
    - bruceboughton 17y ago
      Sorry s/anyone/everyone/
    - qw 17y ago
      What about BSD? There are alternatives out there that doesn't require GNU.
      - loup-vaillant 17y ago
        Besides the kernel, BSD systems aren't entirely GNU free. (They use at least gcc.) You could change the kernel, but replacing GNU is harder. When LLVM and the related projects are ready, that will be another story.
- flogic 17y ago
  I give "Joe Six-Pack" arguments some credence since sometimes I am Joe Six-Pack. In term of Open Office that's usually, I don't care why the formatting is bungled I just want to be able to read copy and paste my specs.
whalesalad 17y ago
This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. For those of us who live in caves, this works, but for those of us who participate in the real world, it doesn't. It's like a hippie telling me to only buy locally grown organic produce and boycot the rest, when it's cheaper and I really don't give a shit. You're completely right. The alternatives are garbage. OpenOffice is an absolute joke. My dad sent me this attachment, asking for some help doing an animation. Let's compare the OpenOffice version, to the Keynote version. Keynote: http://grab.by/3r23 http://grab.by/3r23 OpenOffice: http://grab.by/3r25 http://grab.by/3r25 Until the app that I use to deal with these open formats is equivalent or better than MS Office or Keynote, I'm going to use it. I could care less what format the document comes in... I've never had an issue opening something. I worked out the issue my dad had in Keynote (the slide he needed help with was not the screenshot, heh) The FSF guys have never provided alternative solutions that actually work, and yes, until then, I'm going to ignore their stupid bullshit.
- mootothemax 17y ago
  You know what's even more annoying? The pool of talented developers working on two office suites for Linux! So, rather than everybody working on an MS Office killer, we have crappy OpenOffice and an even craffier KOffice both competing against each other for the title of who's crappiest. Grr!
  - jrockway 17y ago
    Yeah, the world would be a much better place if everyone did exactly what I told them to. For me, anyway...
    - mootothemax 17y ago
      Heh, sometimes I think that the only thing OSS really needs for mainstream success is a dictator ;)
  - qw 17y ago
    The most annoying part is that their functionality is tightly woven in with the rest of their application. Why would we need separate Word/Excel parsers? Couldn't you just separate common functionality to a shared library... It's the GIMP problem all over again. If they would just separate each functionality into components, it would make it easier for others to create "shells". I see potential for a lot of improvement in the GIMP and Photoshop interfaces, and someone with better design skills than me could potentially make a Photoshop-killer.
mootothemax 17y ago
Exactly. Right now OpenOffice is good, but it needs to be so much better; based on past experience, I don't trust that a document created in OO won't look like crap when opened in Word. The reverse happens often enough to be a concern. Oh, and please don't bring out the "fix it yourself" argument; enough time has passed, OO should be better already.

_sh 17y ago

Who's this 'we'? I already use Open Office and, for my needs, it is already 10x better than the alternative used at work. Better because (in Writer) bulleted lists are consistent, and it's easier to manage styles. Having said that, I'll probably not reject your email attachment, instead I'll just make my edits and send it back to you as an Open Document. As a side note, why do so many people assume everyone else is a stereotype? When people are complaining about their specific needs, all I hear is "All people want to do is...", and "I don't care about XYZ, it should 'just work' the specific way I want it to because that's all people want", and my all-time favourite, "Joe Six-pack just wants XYZ". I've never met anybody with the surname "Six-pack".

dschobel 17y ago
I think OP's generalization that most average technology users don't care one iota about the openness of their tech so long as it 'works' is dead on. Have you honestly had a different experience with non-expert users?
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  Yes I have a different experience, the non-expert users I deal with struggle on with systems that clearly don't 'work' either by ignorance of alternatives or worse because they are locked-in. This is probably in part because they keep choosing systems that aren't "open" and then having their short-term stupidity exploited. Which is understandable, as they're not claiming to be technology experts. Look at all the complaints in this thread: "I'm worried my documents won't look right in the convicted monopolist's de-facto standard office app with it's closed, undocumented, virus propogating, privacy leaking, and generally frankly atrocious memory dump-based .doc file format. And it's all OpenOffice's fault so don't bother promoting open and documented file formats, hippy!"
  - mootothemax 17y ago
    Why isn't "I'm worried my documents won't look right" a legitimate concern? You're talking about something that has a very real effect on people's lives and you're trying to dismiss it because Microsoft Office exists. Word definitely has problems of its own, but dismissing concerns about how a document will look to the other 90% of people out there is missing the point.
    - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      It's an entirely legitimate concern. But the fault that causes this worry is fundamentally a lack of openess. The solution is to promote openness. To be exact, if the document format was open then there wouldn't be a problem, or at least many orders of magnitude less of a problem. End users shouldn't have to worry about this because the techies should have figured it out for them. Not only have we failed, there's a bunch of comments here that show that we (techies, as a class) don't even understand the problem.
bruceboughton 17y ago
By the same token, one could ask why the FSF always assume anyone cares about their militant brand of open source.
- loup-vaillant 17y ago
  Maybe because they made what we call "Linux" possible in the first place? (In case you don't remember, GNU pre-dates Linux. The kernel was just the last missing part.)
  - bruceboughton 17y ago
    Sorry s/anyone/everyone/
  - qw 17y ago
    What about BSD? There are alternatives out there that doesn't require GNU.
    - loup-vaillant 17y ago
      Besides the kernel, BSD systems aren't entirely GNU free. (They use at least gcc.) You could change the kernel, but replacing GNU is harder. When LLVM and the related projects are ready, that will be another story.
flogic 17y ago
I give "Joe Six-Pack" arguments some credence since sometimes I am Joe Six-Pack. In term of Open Office that's usually, I don't care why the formatting is bungled I just want to be able to read copy and paste my specs.

whalesalad 17y ago

This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. For those of us who live in caves, this works, but for those of us who participate in the real world, it doesn't. It's like a hippie telling me to only buy locally grown organic produce and boycot the rest, when it's cheaper and I really don't give a shit. You're completely right. The alternatives are garbage. OpenOffice is an absolute joke. My dad sent me this attachment, asking for some help doing an animation. Let's compare the OpenOffice version, to the Keynote version. Keynote: http://grab.by/3r23 http://grab.by/3r23 OpenOffice: http://grab.by/3r25 http://grab.by/3r25 Until the app that I use to deal with these open formats is equivalent or better than MS Office or Keynote, I'm going to use it. I could care less what format the document comes in... I've never had an issue opening something. I worked out the issue my dad had in Keynote (the slide he needed help with was not the screenshot, heh) The FSF guys have never provided alternative solutions that actually work, and yes, until then, I'm going to ignore their stupid bullshit.

mootothemax 17y ago
You know what's even more annoying? The pool of talented developers working on two office suites for Linux! So, rather than everybody working on an MS Office killer, we have crappy OpenOffice and an even craffier KOffice both competing against each other for the title of who's crappiest. Grr!
- jrockway 17y ago
  Yeah, the world would be a much better place if everyone did exactly what I told them to. For me, anyway...
  - mootothemax 17y ago
    Heh, sometimes I think that the only thing OSS really needs for mainstream success is a dictator ;)
- qw 17y ago
  The most annoying part is that their functionality is tightly woven in with the rest of their application. Why would we need separate Word/Excel parsers? Couldn't you just separate common functionality to a shared library... It's the GIMP problem all over again. If they would just separate each functionality into components, it would make it easier for others to create "shells". I see potential for a lot of improvement in the GIMP and Photoshop interfaces, and someone with better design skills than me could potentially make a Photoshop-killer.

mootothemax 17y ago

Exactly. Right now OpenOffice is good, but it needs to be so much better; based on past experience, I don't trust that a document created in OO won't look like crap when opened in Word. The reverse happens often enough to be a concern. Oh, and please don't bring out the "fix it yourself" argument; enough time has passed, OO should be better already.