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So you think Excel was an "innovative piece of software" in the first place? It wasn't. Many spreadsheets existed before that. A much more practical angle: the

So you think Excel was an "innovative piece of software" in the first place? It wasn't. Many spreadsheets existed before that. A much more practical angle: there is no MS Office or equivalent for operating systems such as Linux and BSD, so the OS people had to write their own. To be honest I think the developers of LibreOffice are heroes. Not many people in the open source scene want to be seen working on 'boring clone' projects like an office productivity suite, and would rather innovate. But the fact is, it is a necessary evil for many users, and the availability of OO has helped Linux adoption a lot.

iwwr 15y ago
For a long time Excel was/is the best (feature-wise, UI) spreadsheet program out there. Even if OO/LibreOffice or other F/OSS have duplicated most of the functionality, it still makes sense to get an actual licensed copy if you need it for business. To the grandparent poster, even if F/OSS is copying features, you still have the advantage of being first mover; it just means you have to keep updating and refining. There is also the non-trivial advantage in being paid to do this work. Moreover, if customers find it better to just switch from your product, incurring inevitable transfer costs, there is something wrong already.
onan_barbarian 15y ago
You appear not to have read the post you are responding to. I'm particularly baffled as to why you are reassuring me that other spreadsheets existed pre-Excel given that my post mentions VisiCalc and Dan Bricklin. As we used to say in high school: "No shit, Sherlock". Nor are you making a germane response to my post, which is not that LibreOffice is bad and Excel is good, but that if the creator of Visicalc had been in the situation where a few short months after he created his spreadsheet someone was going to clone it and give it away for free, he may not have bothered.

iwwr 15y ago

For a long time Excel was/is the best (feature-wise, UI) spreadsheet program out there. Even if OO/LibreOffice or other F/OSS have duplicated most of the functionality, it still makes sense to get an actual licensed copy if you need it for business. To the grandparent poster, even if F/OSS is copying features, you still have the advantage of being first mover; it just means you have to keep updating and refining. There is also the non-trivial advantage in being paid to do this work. Moreover, if customers find it better to just switch from your product, incurring inevitable transfer costs, there is something wrong already.

onan_barbarian 15y ago

You appear not to have read the post you are responding to. I'm particularly baffled as to why you are reassuring me that other spreadsheets existed pre-Excel given that my post mentions VisiCalc and Dan Bricklin. As we used to say in high school: "No shit, Sherlock". Nor are you making a germane response to my post, which is not that LibreOffice is bad and Excel is good, but that if the creator of Visicalc had been in the situation where a few short months after he created his spreadsheet someone was going to clone it and give it away for free, he may not have bothered.