5 ms·

This is the kind of story that would have been cheered on on Slashdot twenty years ago. But here we are in 2021 and a major organization having the temerity to

This is the kind of story that would have been cheered on on Slashdot twenty years ago. But here we are in 2021 and a major organization having the temerity to not pay the Microsoft tax is newsworthy. This is not what a free market looks like.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
Didn't Berlin attempt to convert to Linux but had to revert back because all their end users were too stupid/scared to learn a new OS? I know a German city did that at one point.
wahern 5y ago
It's the kind of story that was cheered on on Slashdot. Multiple times. I can't count the number of times I've seen "Some German [agency|municipality|state] [is planning to adopt|has adopted|cancels adoption|reverses adoption] of [StarOffice|OpenOffice|Libreoffice|Linux]". I think it's some kind of meme, the product of peculiar German administrative politics, or a result of vigorous Free Software activism in Germany because I don't see such headlines nearly as often for any other locality.
- nivenkos 5y ago
  Also there a _lot_ of different cities and municipalities in Europe. And when it succeeds you don't usually hear about it. Like when I worked at an MPI in Germany, all the machines used Ubuntu. In Catalonia, most of the universities also use Ubuntu. The Ayuntamiento uses LibreOffice (and maybe also Ubuntu in some parts) - and for the most part, it all just works. It was the same in Zaragoza too. You only notice it when they accidentally send a .odt file to someone who is only using Windows for example.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- marcodiego 5y ago
  This is mostly because the "Munich case" was a star example for a long time. Also, star division, the company that started star office, is from Germany.
  - kzrdude 5y ago
    That's why Germany is a great place that would adopt open source more, because they have prominent "own" projects like Suse Linux or that office suite. Now, nothing much has come of that in that way (but the German university I briefly studied at, did use Suse, of course).
chrisseaton 5y ago
It’s not true that there is a MS tax on office software - you can now run Google Suite, so there is at least one major competitor.
- freeflight 5y ago
  One major competitor who's also a massive corporation and has an even more questionable approach to handling user data. So while it might not be a pure "MS tax" anymore, in a way there still is a corporate monopoly tax.
  - frockington1 5y ago
    Why is it that nobody can compete? I've tried various versions of excel/word clones and none seem to operate as well despite it seeming relatively straightforward
    - BlueTemplar 5y ago
      These days it's more and more the lack of online collaborative tools that is a problem.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    How many different implementations of basic office software do we need? There's no point having hundreds of companies independently building the same thing.
    - freeflight 5y ago
      Putting all your eggs into one basket is a bad approach for pretty much anything, particularly when that basket is one that has its own monetary interests as its main motivator. You want valid alternatives to keep the products offered competitive, and the competitors honest, as entrenched monopolies are rarely conductive to innovation and often extremely opposed to consumer interests.
agumonkey 5y ago
I think it's misguided. 1) Some orgs are stuck with older LO versions 2) veresions that aren't good enough, MS marketing team probably doesn't have to make a lot of efforts to entice organizations to pay for their stuff. For instance Writer custom fields UI is way too hard to use (to the point i'm not sure it's not a bug). You can't make people work with that no matter how trained they are.
Arainach 5y ago
>This is not what a free market looks like What do you mean by this? Companies choosing the best option rather than the cheapest option is perfectly compatible with a free market. MS Office has been designed for decades to be easy to manage and support and has plenty of training resources available. LibreOffice still has plenty of rough edges in those areas. As an individual user, maybe those are worth overlooking for you. At the scale of a company where time is money, it's much more important to get something reliable. Also, an unregulated free market always turns into a monopoly (or at best an oligopoly) eventually. It's been shown time and time again.
- loudmax 5y ago
  > an unregulated free market always turns into a monopoly (or at best an oligopoly) eventually Free doesn't mean unregulated.
ThinkBeat 5y ago
There are several commercial alternatives to MS Office I prefer WPS Office or Softmaker Office to OpenOffice. In my personal opinion OpenOffice is not a suitable alternative. I still let MS suck money with Office365 due to great grammar and spell checking (in multiple languages), A set of features I use a lot that are not available in the competition, A couple of useful add ins/integratioF Full compatibility with other Office365 victims. Plus, a huge set of templates are available for free or for purchase. Corel Word Perfect Suite https://www.wordperfect.com/en/product/office-suite/ https://www.wordperfect.com/en/product/office-suite/ WPS Office Suite https://www.wps.com/ https://www.wps.com/ Quite a few people I know switched to WPS Office Suite when Microsoft demanded subscription fees. It seems ok for most things. Much easier for people to adopt coming from Office than Open Office. The Apple Office Apps Softwaker Free Office (German) https://www.softmaker.com/en/ https://www.softmaker.com/en/ https://www.freeoffice.com/en/ https://www.freeoffice.com/en/

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

Didn't Berlin attempt to convert to Linux but had to revert back because all their end users were too stupid/scared to learn a new OS? I know a German city did that at one point.

wahern 5y ago

It's the kind of story that was cheered on on Slashdot. Multiple times. I can't count the number of times I've seen "Some German [agency|municipality|state] [is planning to adopt|has adopted|cancels adoption|reverses adoption] of [StarOffice|OpenOffice|Libreoffice|Linux]". I think it's some kind of meme, the product of peculiar German administrative politics, or a result of vigorous Free Software activism in Germany because I don't see such headlines nearly as often for any other locality.

nivenkos 5y ago
Also there a _lot_ of different cities and municipalities in Europe. And when it succeeds you don't usually hear about it. Like when I worked at an MPI in Germany, all the machines used Ubuntu. In Catalonia, most of the universities also use Ubuntu. The Ayuntamiento uses LibreOffice (and maybe also Ubuntu in some parts) - and for the most part, it all just works. It was the same in Zaragoza too. You only notice it when they accidentally send a .odt file to someone who is only using Windows for example.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
marcodiego 5y ago
This is mostly because the "Munich case" was a star example for a long time. Also, star division, the company that started star office, is from Germany.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  That's why Germany is a great place that would adopt open source more, because they have prominent "own" projects like Suse Linux or that office suite. Now, nothing much has come of that in that way (but the German university I briefly studied at, did use Suse, of course).

chrisseaton 5y ago

It’s not true that there is a MS tax on office software - you can now run Google Suite, so there is at least one major competitor.

freeflight 5y ago
One major competitor who's also a massive corporation and has an even more questionable approach to handling user data. So while it might not be a pure "MS tax" anymore, in a way there still is a corporate monopoly tax.
- frockington1 5y ago
  Why is it that nobody can compete? I've tried various versions of excel/word clones and none seem to operate as well despite it seeming relatively straightforward
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    These days it's more and more the lack of online collaborative tools that is a problem.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  How many different implementations of basic office software do we need? There's no point having hundreds of companies independently building the same thing.
  - freeflight 5y ago
    Putting all your eggs into one basket is a bad approach for pretty much anything, particularly when that basket is one that has its own monetary interests as its main motivator. You want valid alternatives to keep the products offered competitive, and the competitors honest, as entrenched monopolies are rarely conductive to innovation and often extremely opposed to consumer interests.

agumonkey 5y ago

I think it's misguided. 1) Some orgs are stuck with older LO versions 2) veresions that aren't good enough, MS marketing team probably doesn't have to make a lot of efforts to entice organizations to pay for their stuff. For instance Writer custom fields UI is way too hard to use (to the point i'm not sure it's not a bug). You can't make people work with that no matter how trained they are.

Arainach 5y ago

>This is not what a free market looks like What do you mean by this? Companies choosing the best option rather than the cheapest option is perfectly compatible with a free market. MS Office has been designed for decades to be easy to manage and support and has plenty of training resources available. LibreOffice still has plenty of rough edges in those areas. As an individual user, maybe those are worth overlooking for you. At the scale of a company where time is money, it's much more important to get something reliable. Also, an unregulated free market always turns into a monopoly (or at best an oligopoly) eventually. It's been shown time and time again.

loudmax 5y ago
> an unregulated free market always turns into a monopoly (or at best an oligopoly) eventually Free doesn't mean unregulated.

ThinkBeat 5y ago

There are several commercial alternatives to MS Office I prefer WPS Office or Softmaker Office to OpenOffice. In my personal opinion OpenOffice is not a suitable alternative. I still let MS suck money with Office365 due to great grammar and spell checking (in multiple languages), A set of features I use a lot that are not available in the competition, A couple of useful add ins/integratioF Full compatibility with other Office365 victims. Plus, a huge set of templates are available for free or for purchase. Corel Word Perfect Suite https://www.wordperfect.com/en/product/office-suite/ https://www.wordperfect.com/en/product/office-suite/ WPS Office Suite https://www.wps.com/ https://www.wps.com/ Quite a few people I know switched to WPS Office Suite when Microsoft demanded subscription fees. It seems ok for most things. Much easier for people to adopt coming from Office than Open Office. The Apple Office Apps Softwaker Free Office (German) https://www.softmaker.com/en/ https://www.softmaker.com/en/ https://www.freeoffice.com/en/ https://www.freeoffice.com/en/