6 ms·

Do people use LibreOffice because it's open-source or because it you don't have to pay for it? In either case, the "enterprise edition" they envision will fail

by kleiba 6y ago

Do people use LibreOffice because it's open-source or because it you don't have to pay for it? In either case, the "enterprise edition" they envision will fail to service either camp. If you have to spend any money at all, you might as well spend the money that MS Office costs. Or else, the main competitor is not MS Office but Google Docs.

grandinj 6y ago
The idea is to entice Enterprise and similar customers to pay for support, spending a small fraction of the money they save from not buying MS, to help keep the LibreOffice eco-system going. So still much cheaper than MS :-)
ubermonkey 6y ago
The people I know use LO for essentially political reasons. I've never really tried to use anything other than MS Office, because for my whole career I've been interacting with people on Windows using standard Windows/MSFT tools, and so any inconsistency / glitch in document exchange would automatically be my fault if I insisted on using LO or Apple's tools or whatever. Plus, honest go God, Word and Excel are really, really good at what they do. Word got their more slowly, but once Excel ate Lotus 1-2-3, there really never was another competitor there, and Excel just kept getting more and more powerful. It's a wonderful tool. (Now, there ARE people who learn Excel but refuse to go further -- into a true database, or into a proper business intelligent /reporting tool, or whatever -- and end up creating their own really janky versions of these things within Excel with macros and insane formulas hidden out in AA:5234 or whtaever; that's a problem for sure. But it's not so much an Excel problem as it is a problem with the lack of an obvious next-step ramp for those users.)
- ghaff 6y ago
  >But it's not so much an Excel problem as it is a problem with the lack of an obvious next-step ramp for those users This is something of a general issue that was essentially created by the success of MS Office. With "everyone" using MS Office or something quite similar, there really wasn't a huge market or interest in a different program that was just an incremental step up. There are exceptions but, for the most part, people tried to push MS Office to do things it wasn't really designed to do because the next step was jumping to some complex and expensive program from Adobe or whoever.
- nabilhat 6y ago
  > Now, there ARE people who learn Excel but refuse to go further... Since Power Query was first included by default in 2016, I've introduced tens of regular Excel users. Because there's no way to work cell by agonizing cell, there's a mental tension for a few minutes then usually the concept of working with fields and sets clicks into place so well you can practically hear it. Even if they never use PQ again, they often change how they use spreadsheets for the better. If you're really lucky they don't just start using PQ, they find the advanced editor and start doing some basic fiddling around. While it's fair to criticize M [0] as a niche language that only exists in a tiny corner of one company's data modeling features, it's also what finally motivated me to learn functional programming. That accessible step by step ramp from introduction to functional language data modeling in a common office tool is an underrated juggernaut of a feature. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerquery-m/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerquery-m/
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  >for my whole career I've been interacting with people on Windows using standard Windows/MSFT tools, and so any inconsistency / glitch in document exchange would automatically be my fault if I insisted on using LO or Apple's tools or whatever. // How long is that career? Over my working life StarOffice/OpenOffice/OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice have been far more compatible (for relatively basic documents) with other versions of MSWord than MSWord has, I don't really have experience of cross-compatibility from the last 5 years or so though.
  - ubermonkey 6y ago
    30 years. And no, what you say absolutely has not been my experience. Any rich formatting tends to get lost or munged, and support for stylesheets / templates between Office and non-Office platforms was woefully lacking. If you're alone, sure, the free or Free option might be a good choice. But your time has value, so if you're collaborating with other people using true Office, just use Office. You'll be happier.
nickcw 6y ago
I use LibreOffice because it runs on my machine - MS Office doesn't. If MS made a Linux version I'd probably get that. LibreOffice is at its best if you make the docs and edit them just in LibreOffice. It's great at making structured docs. Calc is pretty good too. The PowerPoint equivalent is the weakest of the bunch, crashing frequently. However in the biz world you end up sharing docs and sheets with MS office users and that is where things start to go sideways. Complicated MS docs are not rendered well. Excel sheets are generally Ok. PowerPoint docs don't round trip at all well so I've given up even trying!
- kristopolous 6y ago
  I really wouldn't be surprised if this happens soon. Some kind of encrypted flatpak with some licensing scheme built in. Or making a Linux store of essentially an apt server where everything has a pricetag. It shows up in your repository after you purchase it and then can update it like anything else... This isn't new ground these days There's lots of ways to do commercial software with the existing infrastructure and I don't think the modern Microsoft cares as much as long as they are selling.
- danans 6y ago
  > If MS made a Linux version I'd probably get that. What about the web based Office 365? It should run fine on Linux, and clearly paid closed-source software isn't an issue for you if you would be willing to pay for traditional Microsoft Office. > However in the biz world you end up sharing docs and sheets with MS office users and that is where things start to go sideways. Office 365 should work swimmingly for this use case.
  - ralls_ebfe 6y ago
    Had to use Office356 recently, because libreoffice kept putting strange, large, unremovable rectangles in the spreadsheet I got handed. I wished, i would not have to touch this Microsoft filth, but I had work to do and libreoffice kept bugging.
  - 1_player 6y ago
    Personally £7.99 a month for a piece of software I use 1 hour every 6 months is definitely not worth it. Though I'd pay £100 for it no questions asked. Subscription plans are stupid.

by kleiba 6y ago

grandinj 6y ago

The idea is to entice Enterprise and similar customers to pay for support, spending a small fraction of the money they save from not buying MS, to help keep the LibreOffice eco-system going. So still much cheaper than MS :-)

ubermonkey 6y ago

The people I know use LO for essentially political reasons. I've never really tried to use anything other than MS Office, because for my whole career I've been interacting with people on Windows using standard Windows/MSFT tools, and so any inconsistency / glitch in document exchange would automatically be my fault if I insisted on using LO or Apple's tools or whatever. Plus, honest go God, Word and Excel are really, really good at what they do. Word got their more slowly, but once Excel ate Lotus 1-2-3, there really never was another competitor there, and Excel just kept getting more and more powerful. It's a wonderful tool. (Now, there ARE people who learn Excel but refuse to go further -- into a true database, or into a proper business intelligent /reporting tool, or whatever -- and end up creating their own really janky versions of these things within Excel with macros and insane formulas hidden out in AA:5234 or whtaever; that's a problem for sure. But it's not so much an Excel problem as it is a problem with the lack of an obvious next-step ramp for those users.)

ghaff 6y ago
>But it's not so much an Excel problem as it is a problem with the lack of an obvious next-step ramp for those users This is something of a general issue that was essentially created by the success of MS Office. With "everyone" using MS Office or something quite similar, there really wasn't a huge market or interest in a different program that was just an incremental step up. There are exceptions but, for the most part, people tried to push MS Office to do things it wasn't really designed to do because the next step was jumping to some complex and expensive program from Adobe or whoever.
nabilhat 6y ago
> Now, there ARE people who learn Excel but refuse to go further... Since Power Query was first included by default in 2016, I've introduced tens of regular Excel users. Because there's no way to work cell by agonizing cell, there's a mental tension for a few minutes then usually the concept of working with fields and sets clicks into place so well you can practically hear it. Even if they never use PQ again, they often change how they use spreadsheets for the better. If you're really lucky they don't just start using PQ, they find the advanced editor and start doing some basic fiddling around. While it's fair to criticize M [0] as a niche language that only exists in a tiny corner of one company's data modeling features, it's also what finally motivated me to learn functional programming. That accessible step by step ramp from introduction to functional language data modeling in a common office tool is an underrated juggernaut of a feature. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerquery-m/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerquery-m/
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
>for my whole career I've been interacting with people on Windows using standard Windows/MSFT tools, and so any inconsistency / glitch in document exchange would automatically be my fault if I insisted on using LO or Apple's tools or whatever. // How long is that career? Over my working life StarOffice/OpenOffice/OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice have been far more compatible (for relatively basic documents) with other versions of MSWord than MSWord has, I don't really have experience of cross-compatibility from the last 5 years or so though.
- ubermonkey 6y ago
  30 years. And no, what you say absolutely has not been my experience. Any rich formatting tends to get lost or munged, and support for stylesheets / templates between Office and non-Office platforms was woefully lacking. If you're alone, sure, the free or Free option might be a good choice. But your time has value, so if you're collaborating with other people using true Office, just use Office. You'll be happier.

nickcw 6y ago

I use LibreOffice because it runs on my machine - MS Office doesn't. If MS made a Linux version I'd probably get that. LibreOffice is at its best if you make the docs and edit them just in LibreOffice. It's great at making structured docs. Calc is pretty good too. The PowerPoint equivalent is the weakest of the bunch, crashing frequently. However in the biz world you end up sharing docs and sheets with MS office users and that is where things start to go sideways. Complicated MS docs are not rendered well. Excel sheets are generally Ok. PowerPoint docs don't round trip at all well so I've given up even trying!

kristopolous 6y ago
I really wouldn't be surprised if this happens soon. Some kind of encrypted flatpak with some licensing scheme built in. Or making a Linux store of essentially an apt server where everything has a pricetag. It shows up in your repository after you purchase it and then can update it like anything else... This isn't new ground these days There's lots of ways to do commercial software with the existing infrastructure and I don't think the modern Microsoft cares as much as long as they are selling.
danans 6y ago
> If MS made a Linux version I'd probably get that. What about the web based Office 365? It should run fine on Linux, and clearly paid closed-source software isn't an issue for you if you would be willing to pay for traditional Microsoft Office. > However in the biz world you end up sharing docs and sheets with MS office users and that is where things start to go sideways. Office 365 should work swimmingly for this use case.
- ralls_ebfe 6y ago
  Had to use Office356 recently, because libreoffice kept putting strange, large, unremovable rectangles in the spreadsheet I got handed. I wished, i would not have to touch this Microsoft filth, but I had work to do and libreoffice kept bugging.
- 1_player 6y ago
  Personally £7.99 a month for a piece of software I use 1 hour every 6 months is definitely not worth it. Though I'd pay £100 for it no questions asked. Subscription plans are stupid.