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I have never, in 20 years in the business world - and that includes long years working closely with people in controlling - see anyone do something in Excel tha

I have never, in 20 years in the business world - and that includes long years working closely with people in controlling - see anyone do something in Excel that could not be achieved in LibreOffice with similar effort. Yes, there is no 100% feature parity. But there is feature parity in the things that people actually use.

vertis 4y ago
Yes, I think MS Office / Libre Office is a bad example. Adobe Cloud (Photoshop) to GIMP and Maya (or equiv) to Blender are far better points and counter points. The Adobe Creative Cloud ecosystem has very strong lock in todo with workflow and collaboration (amoung other things). It's not that you couldn't do the vast majority of those things with another tool (open or not, e.g. Affinity), it's that the company you're going to work for is going to look at your Resume for experience with Adobe, and issue you a laptop with adobe on it, expect you to produce AI and PSD files (and now of course Figma for certain subsets). GIMP is clunky and is not pushing the boundaries. Some of the newer smart tools in Photoshop are impressive in their ability to select and delete objects. Even Affinity which offers very polished products is going to struggle. Blender on the other hand is a prime example of where an open tool can make strides to break the stranglehold. It has a very focused team of collaborators and a clear roadmap that is taking it from a tool that was quite hard to learn even if it was powerful into something that could become the industry standard. The UX of Blender compared to what it was 5-10 years ago is so much better. I'm not sure the same could be said of GIMP. That power comes both from strong direction and a growing and active community.
- toastal 4y ago
  Godot also fits the bill quite well.
mschaef 4y ago
> - see anyone do something in Excel that could not be achieved in LibreOffice with similar effort. > Yes, there is no 100% feature parity. But there is feature parity in the things that people actually use. It's not close to being wholly about the capability of the product itself. Excel has the incumbency advantage - more people are familiar with it and more people already have it. Switching to LibreOffice therefore often means switching to a tool you don't know as well and then living with interop issues with your co-workers that are still on Excel. For LibreOffice (or any other competitor) to do something with "similar effort", it has to overcome those headwinds. If you look at the history of spreadsheets, there is a long history of "better" products coming along, but only a few that were good enough to be able to displace the incumbent. * VisiCalc - The First * Lotus 1-2-3 - Runs on the PC, has graphics, and a bunch more capacity than VisiCalc * Excel - GUI support * Google Sheets (maybe) - Online real-time collaboration, etc. There were many others along the way, and many of them could make the same claim you're making here about LibreOffice. (Multiplan, Improv, WingZ, Quattro Pro, Framework, etc.....) Parity is ok, but the goal really has to be 'so much better that it justifies all of the switching costs'....
- toastal 4y ago
  To not deal with those headwinds because it is difficult to pick-up a new tool—especially if you haven’t in a long time or aren't interested in the tool/technology—we should priortize kids learning FOSS tools. Especially if it's not often used, I think most folks we be happy with both meanings of ‘free’ as something to pick up every once in a while. Most of the differences matter only once you're a power user. I use LibreOffice for the reason because I open up a document once a month, not my daily work.

vertis 4y ago

Yes, I think MS Office / Libre Office is a bad example. Adobe Cloud (Photoshop) to GIMP and Maya (or equiv) to Blender are far better points and counter points. The Adobe Creative Cloud ecosystem has very strong lock in todo with workflow and collaboration (amoung other things). It's not that you couldn't do the vast majority of those things with another tool (open or not, e.g. Affinity), it's that the company you're going to work for is going to look at your Resume for experience with Adobe, and issue you a laptop with adobe on it, expect you to produce AI and PSD files (and now of course Figma for certain subsets). GIMP is clunky and is not pushing the boundaries. Some of the newer smart tools in Photoshop are impressive in their ability to select and delete objects. Even Affinity which offers very polished products is going to struggle. Blender on the other hand is a prime example of where an open tool can make strides to break the stranglehold. It has a very focused team of collaborators and a clear roadmap that is taking it from a tool that was quite hard to learn even if it was powerful into something that could become the industry standard. The UX of Blender compared to what it was 5-10 years ago is so much better. I'm not sure the same could be said of GIMP. That power comes both from strong direction and a growing and active community.

toastal 4y ago
Godot also fits the bill quite well.

mschaef 4y ago

> - see anyone do something in Excel that could not be achieved in LibreOffice with similar effort. > Yes, there is no 100% feature parity. But there is feature parity in the things that people actually use. It's not close to being wholly about the capability of the product itself. Excel has the incumbency advantage - more people are familiar with it and more people already have it. Switching to LibreOffice therefore often means switching to a tool you don't know as well and then living with interop issues with your co-workers that are still on Excel. For LibreOffice (or any other competitor) to do something with "similar effort", it has to overcome those headwinds. If you look at the history of spreadsheets, there is a long history of "better" products coming along, but only a few that were good enough to be able to displace the incumbent. * VisiCalc - The First * Lotus 1-2-3 - Runs on the PC, has graphics, and a bunch more capacity than VisiCalc * Excel - GUI support * Google Sheets (maybe) - Online real-time collaboration, etc. There were many others along the way, and many of them could make the same claim you're making here about LibreOffice. (Multiplan, Improv, WingZ, Quattro Pro, Framework, etc.....) Parity is ok, but the goal really has to be 'so much better that it justifies all of the switching costs'....

toastal 4y ago
To not deal with those headwinds because it is difficult to pick-up a new tool—especially if you haven’t in a long time or aren't interested in the tool/technology—we should priortize kids learning FOSS tools. Especially if it's not often used, I think most folks we be happy with both meanings of ‘free’ as something to pick up every once in a while. Most of the differences matter only once you're a power user. I use LibreOffice for the reason because I open up a document once a month, not my daily work.