4 ms·

Easy, just create a software ecosystem that is superior to or at least on-par with the commercial offerings (being open source is not by itself valuable for the

Easy, just create a software ecosystem that is superior to or at least on-par with the commercial offerings (being open source is not by itself valuable for the users), then grow a generation of non-technical users into that ecosystem

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
loudmax 6y ago
> on-par with the commercial offerings That should be "offering" singular, not "offerings" plural. And it's totally feasible to produce a superior ecosystem. The hard part is absorbing years of financial loss while building the new ecosystem from the ground up while it isn't compatible with the existing proprietary system.
- seemslegit 6y ago
  > That should be "offering" singular, not "offerings" plural. Why ? An ecosystem consists of multiple offerings and there are also multiple commercial ecosystems. > And it's totally feasible to produce a superior ecosystem. The hard part is absorbing years of financial loss while building the new ecosystem from the ground up while it isn't compatible with the existing proprietary system. Being able to finance something is an inherent part of its feasibility.
dijit 6y ago
I think that this is not a charitable interpretation of the situation. While I generally agree that FOSS software (Libreoffice calc) is inferior for business needs, a _lot_ of the issues actually stem from compatibility. Not just compatibility of the document system and interpretation, though that is a large part. But compatibility of functionality too, along with UI design. People are more likely to re-train for a new UI on a new edition of their previous software because it is seen to them as a progression, but they are not so open to changing UI paradigms with different software that does the same thing. In order for something "better" to be accepted it has to not just be better- it has to be _so_ much better that it trumps everything else. in the very best of cases it has to be 100% compatible in all areas and _still_ at least substantially better. That's without getting in to opensource financing, which is a difficult topic. Though I can imagine if Munich put their resources into a FOSS foundation which was providing productivity software it would help tremendously. I don't think they're going to do that because Linux (and ecosystem) is seen as cheaper, so why negate the cost saving?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

loudmax 6y ago

> on-par with the commercial offerings That should be "offering" singular, not "offerings" plural. And it's totally feasible to produce a superior ecosystem. The hard part is absorbing years of financial loss while building the new ecosystem from the ground up while it isn't compatible with the existing proprietary system.

seemslegit 6y ago
> That should be "offering" singular, not "offerings" plural. Why ? An ecosystem consists of multiple offerings and there are also multiple commercial ecosystems. > And it's totally feasible to produce a superior ecosystem. The hard part is absorbing years of financial loss while building the new ecosystem from the ground up while it isn't compatible with the existing proprietary system. Being able to finance something is an inherent part of its feasibility.

dijit 6y ago

I think that this is not a charitable interpretation of the situation. While I generally agree that FOSS software (Libreoffice calc) is inferior for business needs, a _lot_ of the issues actually stem from compatibility. Not just compatibility of the document system and interpretation, though that is a large part. But compatibility of functionality too, along with UI design. People are more likely to re-train for a new UI on a new edition of their previous software because it is seen to them as a progression, but they are not so open to changing UI paradigms with different software that does the same thing. In order for something "better" to be accepted it has to not just be better- it has to be _so_ much better that it trumps everything else. in the very best of cases it has to be 100% compatible in all areas and _still_ at least substantially better. That's without getting in to opensource financing, which is a difficult topic. Though I can imagine if Munich put their resources into a FOSS foundation which was providing productivity software it would help tremendously. I don't think they're going to do that because Linux (and ecosystem) is seen as cheaper, so why negate the cost saving?