9 ms·

Open source versus Microsoft: The new rebellion begins

115 points by xlinux 2y ago

zwnow 2y ago
This is funny considering I live in the center of Schleswig-Holstein and work in IT. People barely know how to work with Excel, they most likely won't figure out anything remotely different...
- bobim 2y ago
  They might only need a calculator then. It's not ok to throw a spreadsheet at every problem.
  - b3lvedere 2y ago
    Half the world is ruled by Excel.
    - SuperHeavy256 2y ago
      This is (unfortunately) true.
      - k8sToGo 2y ago
        Why? It’s a great tool
        bobim 2y ago
        The tool is great, it's what you can build with it that has a tendency to end up in an horrid unmaintainable vba mix kludge.
    - Woodi 2y ago
      I read once a story: some IT guy was fed up with answering basic questions about Office or part of it. So hi made effort to teach users that basics and some more. And then peoples started calling with more complicated questions :) So: maybe teach Excel crowd about data normalization, one table per sheet ? ;)
      - zwnow 2y ago
        That's basically what I do half of my day... I am supposed to develop, but can't get into a productive state due to my colleagues calling me all day with stupid questions I answered like 3 times already.
- therouwboat 2y ago
  If you dont know excel, then there is very little to learn about libreoffice spreadsheet.
- mxuribe 2y ago
  The problem i see too often is that users use verbiage like "I know/don't know Excel...", or "I know/don't know Word...", etc. However, many users that i see would be equally as lost in front of say, Google docs, or LiobreOffice Writer or Calc....i think we should go back to decades ago when people would use more general terms like "document" or spreadsheet"...but of course, that's likely not possible because microsoft has been quite successful at selling theki brand and associated brand names...and as much as i support efforts like what is happening in Germany and other areas of the world, the challenge is not only one of tech compatibility or training, but very especially around branding and mind-share. I say that sadly, because i want open source options to exist as equally *VISIBLE* choices in the marketplace.
  - zwnow 2y ago
    I feel that. I work in tech since only 4 years now, but I see a more general problem. People need to be taught in a more software agnostic way. Like, how to properly use a search engine to research a software related issue instead of going into panic mode and call IT. Once people are able to research software specific issues, switching products won't be as much of a problem
    - mxuribe 2y ago
      > "People need to be taught in a more software agnostic way...switching products won't be as much of a problem" Yep, I agree 100% right there!!! Not only does it help to ease support of those people, but they actually learn things better that way and gain much more independence! The weird thing is that some portion of the people who do not know how to be independent in basic computing are fiercely independent in other areas of their lives...which often speaks to lack of enough computing literacy some among populations...and while it might statistically be with older people, that is not always the case! I've seen some older folks be able to learn some computing basics FASTEr than some supposed digital natives. Not always of course, but more than i ever expected.
    - water-data-dude 2y ago
      It used to be that tech was one of those areas where you could search for things and actually find answers fast, but lately I’ve noticed that the search results have gotten a lot worse. The techie blogspam took a while to catch up with more mainstream topics, but at this point it’s almost as bogged down in useless crap. It’s still the best answer, but you might need to teach them how to recognize crap and THEN get them in the habit of doing web searches.
- pquki4 2y ago
  I'd argue LibreOffice is not going to make things any better. If you want to do something in Excel but don't know how, a simple Google search will lead you to tons of toturial articles, Q&A pages from IT departments of random universities and YouTube videos. Even if it's a missing feature, chances are that someone has asked about it, and another person points out it's not available and potentially suggest a workaround. On the other hand, if you run into an issue with LibreOffice...
davisr 2y ago
Many people use the term "open-source", but this is truly a matter of software freedom. Microsoft won't ever be able to compete with free/libre and self-determination because their business model is predicated upon capturing and exploiting their customers, and it's gotten to the point where governments -- perhaps their most lucrative and complacent customers -- have had enough.
- mistrial9 2y ago
  management executives also "capture and exploit their customers" in particular, their employees but also their contractors.. MSFT is enabling that model. All the participants know it. An individual person is not the decision maker. MSFT desktop OS appeals to the decision makers, for better and for worse.
- subharmonicon 2y ago
  > Microsoft won't ever be able to compete with free/libre and self-determination That's an interesting take that doesn't seem to line up very well either with history or the article, which points out that governments have made moves like this in the past, only to return to Microsoft products at some point in the future. Since at least the late 90's I've been hearing prognostications that Microsoft was doomed because of open source and how it's only a matter of time, and they are now the most valuable company listed on US stock exchanges.
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  https://companiesmarketcap.com/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/ - Microsoft is the number one most valuable (publicly traded) company on the planet. Microsoft has been "competing with free/libre and self-determination" for literally decades and they have been able to do it because free/libre isn't something most people care for in the slightest, and self-determination struggles to do the boring bits well - and that's most bits - or to offer any compelling integrated vision, or to compromise to make disparate tools work together for the greater good of the customer.
  - fpgamlirfanboy 2y ago
pjmlp 2y ago
This Microsoft hating article misses that now, Microsoft couldn't care less. They have their own Linux distribution, all these years after the lawsuit they have become a Java distribution provider, recently added their own Go build for Azure, speaking of which, even if powered by Hyper V/Windows Host OS, 60% of Azure workloads are Linux based, more so if count ChatGPT/CoPilot stuff. Then there is Github holding a big deal of FOSS universe as well. VSCode and its forks used by cloud providers as Web IDEs, completly outshadow vim/emacs clones, to the point JetBrains felt pressured to come out with Fleet. Their sales champions in 2023 were XBox, Azure and Microsoft 365.
- SuperHeavy256 2y ago
  What's your point actually?
  - mxuribe 2y ago
    I think the point that @pjmlp was making was that "Microsoft couldn't care less." But, while that may or may not be true, I see it more like microsft using open source software against possible open source customers...or rather against customers who have the potential to leverage open source. And, if that's true, then i would gather that microsoft does indeed care...its merely using a different set of tactics and tools (open source software), as compared to its tactics and tools from decades ago.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      They don't care as long as the money drops into the bank one form or the other. Just like Google, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, Oracle, Intel, AMD, NVidia and everyone else whose paychecks support FOSS projects cheered in HN and other forums.
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        I don't see those companies doing the same embrace, extend, extinguish moves, though? Maybe Amazon a bit.
Vox_Leone 2y ago
The passing of years and historical dynamics have perhaps changed the nature of this debate. The conflict has evolved conceptually, and although equivalent to the previous spirit, it now seems to be characterized as local [F/OSS] vs cloud [BigTech].
flembat 2y ago
The reason the plan always fails is because the actual secret plan is just to get an extra discount, the plan may succeed if Microsoft stop doing that...
- AtlasBarfed 2y ago
  That may win when the budget deadlines come. But underlying this was the European Union not liking being dependent upon the American monopoly of operating systems and other key software, particularly closed source proprietary American government controlled software. And really Linux is European software. They should have been doing this decades ago of course. I think everyone is looking around and seeing that the era of free trade, relative peace, and good relations based on trade is dead with the Ukraine war heralding a new age.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    >And really Linux is European software. Excuse me, but WHAT?
    - justinclift 2y ago
      Interestingly, the wikipedia page for Linux Torvalds says he's "Finnish / American" rather than just Finnish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds So "European" probably has some validity through this chain, though "American" probably does too. :)
      - Rinzler89 2y ago
        Firstly, Linus is an Finish-American citizen of born in a Swedish minority in Finland, living in the US, so how how would that make Linux in any way "European"? Even if he weren't a US citizen living in the US, it would still be hard to call Linux "European" due to the following point: Linux the project is a collaboration from contributors from across the world, so how would that make it "European"? Just because the project was started by an EU citizen in the EU over 3 decades ago, doesn't really give the EU claims of ownership over what is essentially a public open project, even if the EU were to somehow ever attempt to claim it as theirs.
dangus 2y ago
Any article that brings up LibreOffice as the driving force behind a move away from Microsoft has me both skeptical and amused. Sure, it’s wonderful that LibreOffice exists, don’t get me wrong. It’s a piece of software that’s famously better at opening ancient Word-formatted documents better than Word itself. It’s lovely that it’s free and supported by a great community. But I’ll be damned if it isn’t my very last choice for productivity software. It just is not somewhere I want to spend my time. Idealistic prose about data sovereignty is nice and all but I’ve never seen an organization have an ounce of hesitation about Microsoft’s enterprise data privacy and security. Really this manifesto is limited to organizations who have specific need to avoid things like search warrants, and in many cases all you’re doing is changing the search warrant from Microsoft to your company’s servers. Really if your information is that sensitive you probably need a more bespoke solution anyway. Finally, this article misplaces the value that Microsoft provides. Software as a service means that the software is providing a service: in other words, companies aren’t subscribing to 365 because they need a better spreadsheet program than LibreOffice, they’re subscribing so that they don’t have to administer servers for email, documents, communication, etc. Open Source offers no such thing.
- resource_waste 2y ago
  Libre Office is really bad. Its kind of amazing that when I opened the powerpoint variant that I couldn't find text size.... Seems like something that should be on the regular main menu. I'm convinced there is some M$ operative inside that makes LibreOffice a bit worse. They claim they are 'cutting edge UX' or some Gnome style claim.
adriangrigore 2y ago
There is no try. :D
resource_waste 2y ago
FYI: The most premium OS I've ever had was Fedora Cinnamon. I had thought Windows was the nicest because I had been dabbling in Ubuntu/Mint and free software was... cheap... Nah: I had been using Debian-family. If you ever thought Linux was worse than Windows, I challenge you to use Fedora. You most likely had used a Debian-family distro, and those are not designed for the average user.
- DustinBrett 2y ago
  This is the year of Linux on desktop! Right?
  - b3lvedere 2y ago
    Thanks to Sharepoint and Windows 11 things seem to deal less and less with drive letters. Mac users already have no drive letters. It all seems to blur and look alike. Users don’t care that much, as long as they can do their job on the magic screen thingy without any problems. They HATE all the problems. They do not care about Mac or Android or Microsoft or Linux. They want to put data in things and machines so other users take that data and put it in their things and machines. So make all the connections super stable, give excellent user support (which is not telling users to read man pages), let them connect to all their devices seamlessly and instantly and you will have your century of the Linux.
- googh 2y ago
  Could you explain what Fedora does better than the Debian-family of distros? I find Fedora's overall performance to be worse than other distros (including Ubuntu).
  - resource_waste 2y ago
    Way less terminal commands. Basically 0, although I was impressed at how easy it was to open the firewall for my kids minecraft server on linux vs Windows. Things just work out of the box. I don't mean using a GUI to download stuff. Everything you need is already there.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
grujicd 2y ago
> upping hardware specs for Windows 11 for no good reason This could very much be the main reason for this transition to succeed this time, more than any ideological points. In October 2025 millions of perfectly good computers will become obsolete. Windows 10 reaches end of support and Windows 11 won't work on other CPUs and mainboards without TPM. And everyone will have a choice to either throw them all away and purchase new ones, or to start paying Microsoft a yearly fee for extended support. I don't think we ever saw this kind of forced upgrade with so little benefits for the end user. In 80s and 90s when upgrades were more frequent a new computer was substantially more powerful than the old one and you were very much looking forward to upgrade. Not this time though. If your 10 old computer has SSD, 16+ GB RAM, and 4+ core CPU, for many use cases it will be as powerful as the new computer. I can easily buy a cheaper new computer that will be worse than one of my 10+ year old higher end machines - less storage, less memory, etc. Sure, if I buy higher end it will be much better for video encoding and few more tasks, but for general office use or even development there won't be much difference.

115 points by xlinux 2y ago

This is funny considering I live in the center of Schleswig-Holstein and work in IT. People barely know how to work with Excel, they most likely won't figure out anything remotely different...

bobim 2y ago
They might only need a calculator then. It's not ok to throw a spreadsheet at every problem.
- b3lvedere 2y ago
  Half the world is ruled by Excel.
  - SuperHeavy256 2y ago
    This is (unfortunately) true.
    - k8sToGo 2y ago
      Why? It’s a great tool
      - bobim 2y ago
        The tool is great, it's what you can build with it that has a tendency to end up in an horrid unmaintainable vba mix kludge.
  - Woodi 2y ago
    I read once a story: some IT guy was fed up with answering basic questions about Office or part of it. So hi made effort to teach users that basics and some more. And then peoples started calling with more complicated questions :) So: maybe teach Excel crowd about data normalization, one table per sheet ? ;)
    - zwnow 2y ago
      That's basically what I do half of my day... I am supposed to develop, but can't get into a productive state due to my colleagues calling me all day with stupid questions I answered like 3 times already.
therouwboat 2y ago
If you dont know excel, then there is very little to learn about libreoffice spreadsheet.
mxuribe 2y ago
The problem i see too often is that users use verbiage like "I know/don't know Excel...", or "I know/don't know Word...", etc. However, many users that i see would be equally as lost in front of say, Google docs, or LiobreOffice Writer or Calc....i think we should go back to decades ago when people would use more general terms like "document" or spreadsheet"...but of course, that's likely not possible because microsoft has been quite successful at selling theki brand and associated brand names...and as much as i support efforts like what is happening in Germany and other areas of the world, the challenge is not only one of tech compatibility or training, but very especially around branding and mind-share. I say that sadly, because i want open source options to exist as equally *VISIBLE* choices in the marketplace.
- zwnow 2y ago
  I feel that. I work in tech since only 4 years now, but I see a more general problem. People need to be taught in a more software agnostic way. Like, how to properly use a search engine to research a software related issue instead of going into panic mode and call IT. Once people are able to research software specific issues, switching products won't be as much of a problem
  - mxuribe 2y ago
    > "People need to be taught in a more software agnostic way...switching products won't be as much of a problem" Yep, I agree 100% right there!!! Not only does it help to ease support of those people, but they actually learn things better that way and gain much more independence! The weird thing is that some portion of the people who do not know how to be independent in basic computing are fiercely independent in other areas of their lives...which often speaks to lack of enough computing literacy some among populations...and while it might statistically be with older people, that is not always the case! I've seen some older folks be able to learn some computing basics FASTEr than some supposed digital natives. Not always of course, but more than i ever expected.
  - water-data-dude 2y ago
    It used to be that tech was one of those areas where you could search for things and actually find answers fast, but lately I’ve noticed that the search results have gotten a lot worse. The techie blogspam took a while to catch up with more mainstream topics, but at this point it’s almost as bogged down in useless crap. It’s still the best answer, but you might need to teach them how to recognize crap and THEN get them in the habit of doing web searches.
pquki4 2y ago
I'd argue LibreOffice is not going to make things any better. If you want to do something in Excel but don't know how, a simple Google search will lead you to tons of toturial articles, Q&A pages from IT departments of random universities and YouTube videos. Even if it's a missing feature, chances are that someone has asked about it, and another person points out it's not available and potentially suggest a workaround. On the other hand, if you run into an issue with LibreOffice...

davisr 2y ago

Many people use the term "open-source", but this is truly a matter of software freedom. Microsoft won't ever be able to compete with free/libre and self-determination because their business model is predicated upon capturing and exploiting their customers, and it's gotten to the point where governments -- perhaps their most lucrative and complacent customers -- have had enough.

mistrial9 2y ago
management executives also "capture and exploit their customers" in particular, their employees but also their contractors.. MSFT is enabling that model. All the participants know it. An individual person is not the decision maker. MSFT desktop OS appeals to the decision makers, for better and for worse.
subharmonicon 2y ago
> Microsoft won't ever be able to compete with free/libre and self-determination That's an interesting take that doesn't seem to line up very well either with history or the article, which points out that governments have made moves like this in the past, only to return to Microsoft products at some point in the future. Since at least the late 90's I've been hearing prognostications that Microsoft was doomed because of open source and how it's only a matter of time, and they are now the most valuable company listed on US stock exchanges.
jodrellblank 2y ago
https://companiesmarketcap.com/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/ - Microsoft is the number one most valuable (publicly traded) company on the planet. Microsoft has been "competing with free/libre and self-determination" for literally decades and they have been able to do it because free/libre isn't something most people care for in the slightest, and self-determination struggles to do the boring bits well - and that's most bits - or to offer any compelling integrated vision, or to compromise to make disparate tools work together for the greater good of the customer.
- fpgamlirfanboy 2y ago

pjmlp 2y ago

This Microsoft hating article misses that now, Microsoft couldn't care less. They have their own Linux distribution, all these years after the lawsuit they have become a Java distribution provider, recently added their own Go build for Azure, speaking of which, even if powered by Hyper V/Windows Host OS, 60% of Azure workloads are Linux based, more so if count ChatGPT/CoPilot stuff. Then there is Github holding a big deal of FOSS universe as well. VSCode and its forks used by cloud providers as Web IDEs, completly outshadow vim/emacs clones, to the point JetBrains felt pressured to come out with Fleet. Their sales champions in 2023 were XBox, Azure and Microsoft 365.

SuperHeavy256 2y ago
What's your point actually?
- mxuribe 2y ago
  I think the point that @pjmlp was making was that "Microsoft couldn't care less." But, while that may or may not be true, I see it more like microsft using open source software against possible open source customers...or rather against customers who have the potential to leverage open source. And, if that's true, then i would gather that microsoft does indeed care...its merely using a different set of tactics and tools (open source software), as compared to its tactics and tools from decades ago.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    They don't care as long as the money drops into the bank one form or the other. Just like Google, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, Oracle, Intel, AMD, NVidia and everyone else whose paychecks support FOSS projects cheered in HN and other forums.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      I don't see those companies doing the same embrace, extend, extinguish moves, though? Maybe Amazon a bit.

Vox_Leone 2y ago

The passing of years and historical dynamics have perhaps changed the nature of this debate. The conflict has evolved conceptually, and although equivalent to the previous spirit, it now seems to be characterized as local [F/OSS] vs cloud [BigTech].

flembat 2y ago

The reason the plan always fails is because the actual secret plan is just to get an extra discount, the plan may succeed if Microsoft stop doing that...

AtlasBarfed 2y ago
That may win when the budget deadlines come. But underlying this was the European Union not liking being dependent upon the American monopoly of operating systems and other key software, particularly closed source proprietary American government controlled software. And really Linux is European software. They should have been doing this decades ago of course. I think everyone is looking around and seeing that the era of free trade, relative peace, and good relations based on trade is dead with the Ukraine war heralding a new age.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  >And really Linux is European software. Excuse me, but WHAT?
  - justinclift 2y ago
    Interestingly, the wikipedia page for Linux Torvalds says he's "Finnish / American" rather than just Finnish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds So "European" probably has some validity through this chain, though "American" probably does too. :)
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      Firstly, Linus is an Finish-American citizen of born in a Swedish minority in Finland, living in the US, so how how would that make Linux in any way "European"? Even if he weren't a US citizen living in the US, it would still be hard to call Linux "European" due to the following point: Linux the project is a collaboration from contributors from across the world, so how would that make it "European"? Just because the project was started by an EU citizen in the EU over 3 decades ago, doesn't really give the EU claims of ownership over what is essentially a public open project, even if the EU were to somehow ever attempt to claim it as theirs.

dangus 2y ago

Any article that brings up LibreOffice as the driving force behind a move away from Microsoft has me both skeptical and amused. Sure, it’s wonderful that LibreOffice exists, don’t get me wrong. It’s a piece of software that’s famously better at opening ancient Word-formatted documents better than Word itself. It’s lovely that it’s free and supported by a great community. But I’ll be damned if it isn’t my very last choice for productivity software. It just is not somewhere I want to spend my time. Idealistic prose about data sovereignty is nice and all but I’ve never seen an organization have an ounce of hesitation about Microsoft’s enterprise data privacy and security. Really this manifesto is limited to organizations who have specific need to avoid things like search warrants, and in many cases all you’re doing is changing the search warrant from Microsoft to your company’s servers. Really if your information is that sensitive you probably need a more bespoke solution anyway. Finally, this article misplaces the value that Microsoft provides. Software as a service means that the software is providing a service: in other words, companies aren’t subscribing to 365 because they need a better spreadsheet program than LibreOffice, they’re subscribing so that they don’t have to administer servers for email, documents, communication, etc. Open Source offers no such thing.

resource_waste 2y ago
Libre Office is really bad. Its kind of amazing that when I opened the powerpoint variant that I couldn't find text size.... Seems like something that should be on the regular main menu. I'm convinced there is some M$ operative inside that makes LibreOffice a bit worse. They claim they are 'cutting edge UX' or some Gnome style claim.

adriangrigore 2y ago

There is no try. :D

resource_waste 2y ago

FYI: The most premium OS I've ever had was Fedora Cinnamon. I had thought Windows was the nicest because I had been dabbling in Ubuntu/Mint and free software was... cheap... Nah: I had been using Debian-family. If you ever thought Linux was worse than Windows, I challenge you to use Fedora. You most likely had used a Debian-family distro, and those are not designed for the average user.

DustinBrett 2y ago
This is the year of Linux on desktop! Right?
- b3lvedere 2y ago
  Thanks to Sharepoint and Windows 11 things seem to deal less and less with drive letters. Mac users already have no drive letters. It all seems to blur and look alike. Users don’t care that much, as long as they can do their job on the magic screen thingy without any problems. They HATE all the problems. They do not care about Mac or Android or Microsoft or Linux. They want to put data in things and machines so other users take that data and put it in their things and machines. So make all the connections super stable, give excellent user support (which is not telling users to read man pages), let them connect to all their devices seamlessly and instantly and you will have your century of the Linux.
googh 2y ago
Could you explain what Fedora does better than the Debian-family of distros? I find Fedora's overall performance to be worse than other distros (including Ubuntu).
- resource_waste 2y ago
  Way less terminal commands. Basically 0, although I was impressed at how easy it was to open the firewall for my kids minecraft server on linux vs Windows. Things just work out of the box. I don't mean using a GUI to download stuff. Everything you need is already there.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

grujicd 2y ago

> upping hardware specs for Windows 11 for no good reason This could very much be the main reason for this transition to succeed this time, more than any ideological points. In October 2025 millions of perfectly good computers will become obsolete. Windows 10 reaches end of support and Windows 11 won't work on other CPUs and mainboards without TPM. And everyone will have a choice to either throw them all away and purchase new ones, or to start paying Microsoft a yearly fee for extended support. I don't think we ever saw this kind of forced upgrade with so little benefits for the end user. In 80s and 90s when upgrades were more frequent a new computer was substantially more powerful than the old one and you were very much looking forward to upgrade. Not this time though. If your 10 old computer has SSD, 16+ GB RAM, and 4+ core CPU, for many use cases it will be as powerful as the new computer. I can easily buy a cheaper new computer that will be worse than one of my 10+ year old higher end machines - less storage, less memory, etc. Sure, if I buy higher end it will be much better for video encoding and few more tasks, but for general office use or even development there won't be much difference.