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This to me is THE quintessential issue surrounding potential adoption of libre office. If formatting & commands remained 100% consistent between the two, I thi

This to me is THE quintessential issue surrounding potential adoption of libre office. If formatting & commands remained 100% consistent between the two, I think you'd see a lot more people switch, out of the shear convenience of not having to whip out their wallet. Students would probably be first to adopt because they usually operate on a tight budget to begin with. That would filter out into the business world eventually. But if you can't absolutely rely on it to be totally compatible, then it's a total non-starter. Not worth the risk.

davidgerard 7y ago
I think you're wrong there. Counterpoint: Google Docs. Its OOXML compatibility is for shit. Its adoption is HUGE. Not one person mentions how amazingly shit its OOXML compatibility is, even for quite simple DOCX. Almost nobody in an office uses the fancy bits of Excel. Spreadsheets are mostly used as flat-file data stores. And Office is notoriously incompatible between different versions of itself. In practice, I don't think the file compatibility objection to LibreOffice is real. It's just an excuse. The actual competition is Google Docs, which is a shitty word processor and a shitty spreadsheet and a shitty presentation app, but absolutely brilliant at quick and convenient collaboration. That's why LibreOffice is working super-hard on the web-based online version.
- Shorel 7y ago
  > Almost nobody in an office uses the fancy bits of Excel. Spreadsheets are mostly used as flat-file data stores. This has never been my experience. Even if there's a more robust DB based system, someone will do everything in Excel.