7 ms·

There’s plenty of developer talent. You don’t see microsoft office competitors because it’s a bad business to start. “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper

by rprend 10mo ago

There’s plenty of developer talent. You don’t see microsoft office competitors because it’s a bad business to start. “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work. I’m sure dozens of people have tried.

shiroiuma 10mo ago
There's a bunch of competitors to MS Office already: Libre/OpenOffice, Google Docs, Collabora, etc. Some of these are totally free to use, some open-source too. Have people switched en masse to them? Nope. Personally, I think MS needs to massively increase their prices here: they're leaving a lot of money on the table. Companies, especially, (and governments) just aren't going to switch, no matter what. So why not increase the prices ten-fold?
- xstas1 10mo ago
  They're working on it.
  - vee-kay 10mo ago
    Starting with the ads. Windows 11 was launched for precisely this purpose. Because what better way to milk daily revenue from existing millions of Windows PCs than to show desktop-level ads. The actual product price increases are an added boost to the M$ coffers. Microsoft thinks that most students/home users will not run away instead to Linux and OpenOffice/LibreOffice, and maybe it's right, since they had decades to do so.
    - shiroiuma 10mo ago
      They are right, but they're too slow in realizing this. I of course switched to Linux decades ago, but for ages now, I've constantly heard people swearing "this is the last straw Microsoft! I'm going to switch to Linux!" because of some transgression and then they never do. A few people might convert, but tightening the screws on the rest of them will by far more than make up for the ones they lose. MS needs to make the most of this and raise prices enormously, 10-100 times what they are now. Even if 5% of users defect, a 10x price increase will still mean a 9.5x increase in profits. And they might as well bake some more ads and other malware into Windows and Office too, while they're at it, to increase profits even more. They're missing out on a lot of profit by not putting more ads into their corporate products especially. Sure, people will complain, but so what? The users don't make the purchasing decisions at companies anyway, so who cares about pissing them off?
      - vee-kay 10mo ago
        Oracle did the same cheap dirty trick for profits, when it is bundled adware/spyware (Ask toolbar) by default on its JRE (Java Runtime Installer) used on millions of corporate and student/home PCs, because it knew Java/JRE would already be whitelisted on those machines (Java gets updates, so IT admins tend to whitelist its EXEcutable and its installer (JRE installer), since it is necessary for corporate work (many legacy software depend on Java)). Suddenly, many IT admins were in a tough spot explaining to many internal customers (including senior management; even CxO's have Java on their office laptops) why their PCs were suddenly flooded with popup ads and even ads on intranet sites (because Ask toolbar integrated into the browser)). Google used to have a motto/policy of "Do Not Evil", but it silently dropped that approach. It had to do so, because its biggest rivals had already adopted and profited from the evil attitudes, so it too simply followed the evil tide. The world has always been ruled by the oligarchs (the richest and most powerful people), but in modern era, it is the biggest corporates (especially trillion dollar valuation companies) that call the shots. And they continue do as they please, bending even powerful nations to their will.
- lovich 10mo ago
  Every now and then I forget why the common man hates our industry nowadays, but luckily this forum always reminds me
  - dabockster 10mo ago
    HN is such a meme at this point for all the bad reasons. It's why I'd bail on this site again if other social media wasn't worse. "Hacker News commenters are frequently unaware that their use cases and customer preferences do not reflect the average customer demand in the market." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46192577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46192577
- pxeboot 10mo ago
  > Have people switched en masse to them? Nope. Business, sure, but there are millions of consumers who exclusively use Google Docs, iWork, or other Office alternatives.
  - shiroiuma 10mo ago
    Yeah, but they're already gone, and you can only milk them for so much. Businesses and governments are a totally different matter: they're not going to switch to the alternatives no matter what, so MS could make a lot more profit by jacking up their prices massively. $10,000 per user per year is totally doable I think.
    - esafak 10mo ago
      Governments in Europe are increasingly ditching Microsoft, goaded by souring relations between the continents.
      - 6510 10mo ago
        Don't underestimate the rage from citizens who receive important documents and sheets in formats they can't open. Or you can open them but with a warning that some functionality might be lost. (reads like: you might go to prison)
        couscouspie 10mo ago
        That's a Microsoft problem, not a FOSS problem though.
        anonzzzies 10mo ago
        My gov is moving 100% of documents, forms, official stuff to web based without browser plugins. Of course unfortunately if you want to download/print (...) it will be pdf, but outside that, all filling in, editing, reading etc of all citizen facing materials must be possible with a modern web browser. If PDF is only the export for the final doc, I am ok with it; I can fill ut with whatever browser on whatever device. This should be the mandatory basics imho.
- 6510 10mo ago
  HarmonyOS is gaining a lot of traction in China and has WPS pre-installed https://www.wps.com https://www.wps.com I've never used it but apparently it comes with ingame purchases.
  - tallanvor 10mo ago
    Which is perfectly fine for China, but no western government or company who hopes to do business with them will consider this, and for good reason.
    - 6510 10mo ago
      hah, my comment appears much more naive than I thought possible. WPS apparently has 80% market share in Chinese government and state owned enterprise. They used MS from 2000-2005, In 2006 they released Uniform Office Format (UOF) which MS doesn't support(!?) UOF works better with Chinese fonts. 2012 Kingsoft offered Enterprise WPS and became the standard.
      - dabockster 10mo ago
        And ODF is largely a EU standard that people online love to pretend is universally used.
- paulddraper 10mo ago
  Suggesting libreoffice as an alternative to Office 365 is crazy.
  - MangoToupe 10mo ago
    Why? What feature does office 365 have that is so difficult to replace? I'm guessing support but... is there something more obvious? Full disclosure, I haven't used microsoft office in a few decades.
    - lll-o-lll 10mo ago
      One word. Cloud. Sharepoint, onedrive, teams. Everything is integrated and collaborating is trivial. You can’t replicate that with open source.
      - MangoToupe 10mo ago
        Ok, but surely google docs does that just as well or even better? I have never even heard of sharepoint and onedrive!
        what-the-grump 10mo ago
        [flagged]
        rewgs 10mo ago
        Google Docs is not the comparison here. Google Workspace is.
        protocolture 10mo ago
        Nope.
        lenkite 10mo ago
        I can believe you not hearing about Sharepoint. But not hearing about Onedrive is basically impossible if you have used a Windows machine in the last decade.
- chii 10mo ago
  You are looking from the perspective of a user of the software - sure, these have enough feature parity to "compete". But that's the butt end of the equation. The real issue is enterprise administration. A user never thinks about this problem, because they do not ever encounter it as a problem in their private lives. How does permission work? How does a new hire get an account? How does account/permission revoking work? How does audit work? And that's just the surface. Needs for large enterprises, where you cannot just have John from HR make a new account for the new hire, are often not met by the opensource world.
  - shiroiuma 10mo ago
    Large enterprises were doing this stuff with Unix and mainframes long before Microsoft figured out what preemptive multitasking was.
    - sharpy 10mo ago
      And decided that it was cheaper and easier to just outsource it to Microsoft. Because doing it in today's environment - different work computers, backend servers, mobile devices, etc - is much more complicated than just managing permissions on a mainframe.
      - deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
      - 1718627440 10mo ago
        Distributed databases are a solved problem (besides maybe performance). Offloading account management to arbitrary databases too. Why everyone is using Microsoft is, because then they have someone to blame, instead of needing to point at themselves.
        lomase 10mo ago
        ActiveDirectory is million times better than any other solution on the market.
- wombatpm 10mo ago
  You are arguing the Oracle strategy, raise prices until it hurts, throw up roadblocks to switching and raise them some more.
  - calenti 10mo ago
    Yeah, capitalism. Our sense of fairness hate it but our portfolios love it.
- cHaOs667 10mo ago
  As chiii already pointed out, you are looking at the wrong end of the spectrum. Decision in Enterprise organizations are not done by the end user and non of your options, not even Google Docs, offers the equality of features. M365 is far more than just Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams (apart from some apps depending on the M365 tier you are in like Access, Project, Visio etc.), you buy a whole workspace. Users can seamlessly share and work together on documents, not only in their organization but also with others. It's easy to process information from one app to the other etc. Yes, Google Docs might be the closest thing when it comes to features (but no match), however, looking at local restrictions and laws, Microsoft is one of the few companies that can host you M365 solution in an environment that, for example, matches european laws. And that is the big problem, there are no alternatives for companies that are already on M365 and using the features of it.
  - calenti 10mo ago
    "Seamless" may be irrationally exuberant but it's better than the others _at scale_. LibreOffice, etc. may see similar from the UI end but if you're scaling across multiple sites/archetypes/employee models/regulatory environments, -and- want access to a wide and deep pool of administrative labor, M365 is seamless by comparison.
- dabockster 10mo ago
  > Personally, I think MS needs to massively increase their prices here: they're leaving a lot of money on the table. Companies, especially, (and governments) just aren't going to switch, no matter what. So why not increase the prices ten-fold? *bald eagle screeches* Ahem... https://www.ftc.gov/ https://www.ftc.gov/ They may have an issue with that.
Glyptodon 10mo ago
In all fairness I think Notion and Google have made some level of headway for FWIW.
- vee-kay 10mo ago
  Zoho is another player in that "alternative to Micro$oft for office/corporate needs" market. Its products are nice and affordable, and especially suitable for SOHO customers.
typon 10mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPS_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPS_Office 500 million users. Just because you haven't heard it doesn't mean an alternative doesn't exist.
- G3rn0ti 10mo ago
  While there does not seem to be a maintained snap or flagpole package available, the company behind WPS Office releases DEBs and RPMs it seems: https://www.tech2geek.net/how-to-install-wps-office-on-linux-complete-step-by-step-tutorial/ https://www.tech2geek.net/how-to-install-wps-office-on-linux...
- 71bw 10mo ago
  Issue is, the WPS office suite is more bloated with ads than even Microsoft's offerings are, and, overall, is quite a doozy to navigate. If you want a true and good alternative, I'd recommend ONLYOFFICE[1]. [1] https://www.onlyoffice.com/ https://www.onlyoffice.com/
  - reciprocity 10mo ago
    OpenOffice is no longer actively developed. It was replaced by LibreOffice quite awhile ago.
    - its_notjack 10mo ago
      The comment links to OnlyOffice, which is a different app suite from OpenOffice.
      - reciprocity 10mo ago
        I appreciate the correction; I misread that. Thanks.
  - dabockster 10mo ago
    WPS Office is Chinese. OnlyOffice is Russian. Those really only exist because of Western tech sanctions.
JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
> plenty of developer talent > number of humans that are literate enough in business, marketing, communications, and software development to pull this off There aren’t the same thing. > “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work Probably not. But adapt open-source software for New Zealand’s government can. It just takes a rare combination of technical skill, executive function, leadership ability and emotional self-control to pull off.
- DeathArrow 10mo ago
  >Probably not. But adapt open-source software for New Zealand’s government can. It just takes a rare combination of technical skill, executive function, leadership ability and emotional self-control to pull off. It would be a huge undertaking. You have to use tens of different software packages who weren't designed to work with each other, unlike MS offering. Can you make it work? Yes. But does it make business sense to try it?
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
    > Can you make it work? Yes. But does it make business sense to try it? Maybe, if you can rally public resources behind you. Probably not given the value you can command in the private sector. That’s the point. These people are expensive. Because they’re rare. There is a talent deficit at the top of tech, and if I had to describe it broadly, it’s in folks who can (a) write a letter to an elected representative that doesn’t get thrown in the nutter pile and (b) raise money.
- dabockster 10mo ago
  > plenty of developer talent > number of humans that are literate enough in business, marketing, communications, and software development to pull this off > There aren’t the same thing. That's exactly what I'm saying! Heck, I just talked to a senior dev from AWS a week ago that was a massive technical expert, but obviously couldn't code their way to an actual product on their own. Which is fine, and hence my original comment on the current rarity of those skillsets. > “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work Ehhhhhhh hard to say really. The one-time payment versions of Office still exist, work totally fine, and have excellent add-on extension support. You could move the economics around a bit between consumers and extension developers, but that would probably be it.
rzerowan 10mo ago
If doing it from scratch, if jumping off from an already established product - could work, along with name recognition. If there was one that i would put that could go head to head and possibly pull it off would be Corel[1], their suite is pretty comprehensive along with their collaborative suite. Althogh from their businesss model seems they are content to maintain a narrow market and possible still remember getting burned by MS in the early days. [1] https://www.corel.com/en/all-products/ https://www.corel.com/en/all-products/
- aleph_minus_one 10mo ago
  > If there was one that i would put that could go head to head and possibly pull it off would be Corel[1], their suite is pretty comprehensive Or SoftMaker ([1], [2]) with their product SoftMaker Office ([3], [4]). [1] https://www.softmaker.com/en/ https://www.softmaker.com/en/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftMaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftMaker [3] https://www.softmaker.com/en/products/softmaker-office https://www.softmaker.com/en/products/softmaker-office [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftMaker_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftMaker_Office

by rprend 10mo ago

shiroiuma 10mo ago

There's a bunch of competitors to MS Office already: Libre/OpenOffice, Google Docs, Collabora, etc. Some of these are totally free to use, some open-source too. Have people switched en masse to them? Nope. Personally, I think MS needs to massively increase their prices here: they're leaving a lot of money on the table. Companies, especially, (and governments) just aren't going to switch, no matter what. So why not increase the prices ten-fold?

xstas1 10mo ago
They're working on it.
- vee-kay 10mo ago
  Starting with the ads. Windows 11 was launched for precisely this purpose. Because what better way to milk daily revenue from existing millions of Windows PCs than to show desktop-level ads. The actual product price increases are an added boost to the M$ coffers. Microsoft thinks that most students/home users will not run away instead to Linux and OpenOffice/LibreOffice, and maybe it's right, since they had decades to do so.
  - shiroiuma 10mo ago
    They are right, but they're too slow in realizing this. I of course switched to Linux decades ago, but for ages now, I've constantly heard people swearing "this is the last straw Microsoft! I'm going to switch to Linux!" because of some transgression and then they never do. A few people might convert, but tightening the screws on the rest of them will by far more than make up for the ones they lose. MS needs to make the most of this and raise prices enormously, 10-100 times what they are now. Even if 5% of users defect, a 10x price increase will still mean a 9.5x increase in profits. And they might as well bake some more ads and other malware into Windows and Office too, while they're at it, to increase profits even more. They're missing out on a lot of profit by not putting more ads into their corporate products especially. Sure, people will complain, but so what? The users don't make the purchasing decisions at companies anyway, so who cares about pissing them off?
    - vee-kay 10mo ago
      Oracle did the same cheap dirty trick for profits, when it is bundled adware/spyware (Ask toolbar) by default on its JRE (Java Runtime Installer) used on millions of corporate and student/home PCs, because it knew Java/JRE would already be whitelisted on those machines (Java gets updates, so IT admins tend to whitelist its EXEcutable and its installer (JRE installer), since it is necessary for corporate work (many legacy software depend on Java)). Suddenly, many IT admins were in a tough spot explaining to many internal customers (including senior management; even CxO's have Java on their office laptops) why their PCs were suddenly flooded with popup ads and even ads on intranet sites (because Ask toolbar integrated into the browser)). Google used to have a motto/policy of "Do Not Evil", but it silently dropped that approach. It had to do so, because its biggest rivals had already adopted and profited from the evil attitudes, so it too simply followed the evil tide. The world has always been ruled by the oligarchs (the richest and most powerful people), but in modern era, it is the biggest corporates (especially trillion dollar valuation companies) that call the shots. And they continue do as they please, bending even powerful nations to their will.
lovich 10mo ago
Every now and then I forget why the common man hates our industry nowadays, but luckily this forum always reminds me
- dabockster 10mo ago
  HN is such a meme at this point for all the bad reasons. It's why I'd bail on this site again if other social media wasn't worse. "Hacker News commenters are frequently unaware that their use cases and customer preferences do not reflect the average customer demand in the market." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46192577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46192577
pxeboot 10mo ago
> Have people switched en masse to them? Nope. Business, sure, but there are millions of consumers who exclusively use Google Docs, iWork, or other Office alternatives.
- shiroiuma 10mo ago
  Yeah, but they're already gone, and you can only milk them for so much. Businesses and governments are a totally different matter: they're not going to switch to the alternatives no matter what, so MS could make a lot more profit by jacking up their prices massively. $10,000 per user per year is totally doable I think.
  - esafak 10mo ago
    Governments in Europe are increasingly ditching Microsoft, goaded by souring relations between the continents.
    - 6510 10mo ago
      Don't underestimate the rage from citizens who receive important documents and sheets in formats they can't open. Or you can open them but with a warning that some functionality might be lost. (reads like: you might go to prison)
      - couscouspie 10mo ago
        That's a Microsoft problem, not a FOSS problem though.
      - anonzzzies 10mo ago
        My gov is moving 100% of documents, forms, official stuff to web based without browser plugins. Of course unfortunately if you want to download/print (...) it will be pdf, but outside that, all filling in, editing, reading etc of all citizen facing materials must be possible with a modern web browser. If PDF is only the export for the final doc, I am ok with it; I can fill ut with whatever browser on whatever device. This should be the mandatory basics imho.
6510 10mo ago
HarmonyOS is gaining a lot of traction in China and has WPS pre-installed https://www.wps.com https://www.wps.com I've never used it but apparently it comes with ingame purchases.
- tallanvor 10mo ago
  Which is perfectly fine for China, but no western government or company who hopes to do business with them will consider this, and for good reason.
  - 6510 10mo ago
    hah, my comment appears much more naive than I thought possible. WPS apparently has 80% market share in Chinese government and state owned enterprise. They used MS from 2000-2005, In 2006 they released Uniform Office Format (UOF) which MS doesn't support(!?) UOF works better with Chinese fonts. 2012 Kingsoft offered Enterprise WPS and became the standard.
    - dabockster 10mo ago
      And ODF is largely a EU standard that people online love to pretend is universally used.
paulddraper 10mo ago
Suggesting libreoffice as an alternative to Office 365 is crazy.
- MangoToupe 10mo ago
  Why? What feature does office 365 have that is so difficult to replace? I'm guessing support but... is there something more obvious? Full disclosure, I haven't used microsoft office in a few decades.
  - lll-o-lll 10mo ago
    One word. Cloud. Sharepoint, onedrive, teams. Everything is integrated and collaborating is trivial. You can’t replicate that with open source.
    - MangoToupe 10mo ago
      Ok, but surely google docs does that just as well or even better? I have never even heard of sharepoint and onedrive!
      - what-the-grump 10mo ago
        [flagged]
      - rewgs 10mo ago
        Google Docs is not the comparison here. Google Workspace is.
      - protocolture 10mo ago
        Nope.
      - lenkite 10mo ago
        I can believe you not hearing about Sharepoint. But not hearing about Onedrive is basically impossible if you have used a Windows machine in the last decade.
chii 10mo ago
You are looking from the perspective of a user of the software - sure, these have enough feature parity to "compete". But that's the butt end of the equation. The real issue is enterprise administration. A user never thinks about this problem, because they do not ever encounter it as a problem in their private lives. How does permission work? How does a new hire get an account? How does account/permission revoking work? How does audit work? And that's just the surface. Needs for large enterprises, where you cannot just have John from HR make a new account for the new hire, are often not met by the opensource world.
- shiroiuma 10mo ago
  Large enterprises were doing this stuff with Unix and mainframes long before Microsoft figured out what preemptive multitasking was.
  - sharpy 10mo ago
    And decided that it was cheaper and easier to just outsource it to Microsoft. Because doing it in today's environment - different work computers, backend servers, mobile devices, etc - is much more complicated than just managing permissions on a mainframe.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    - 1718627440 10mo ago
      Distributed databases are a solved problem (besides maybe performance). Offloading account management to arbitrary databases too. Why everyone is using Microsoft is, because then they have someone to blame, instead of needing to point at themselves.
      - lomase 10mo ago
        ActiveDirectory is million times better than any other solution on the market.
wombatpm 10mo ago
You are arguing the Oracle strategy, raise prices until it hurts, throw up roadblocks to switching and raise them some more.
- calenti 10mo ago
  Yeah, capitalism. Our sense of fairness hate it but our portfolios love it.
cHaOs667 10mo ago
As chiii already pointed out, you are looking at the wrong end of the spectrum. Decision in Enterprise organizations are not done by the end user and non of your options, not even Google Docs, offers the equality of features. M365 is far more than just Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams (apart from some apps depending on the M365 tier you are in like Access, Project, Visio etc.), you buy a whole workspace. Users can seamlessly share and work together on documents, not only in their organization but also with others. It's easy to process information from one app to the other etc. Yes, Google Docs might be the closest thing when it comes to features (but no match), however, looking at local restrictions and laws, Microsoft is one of the few companies that can host you M365 solution in an environment that, for example, matches european laws. And that is the big problem, there are no alternatives for companies that are already on M365 and using the features of it.
- calenti 10mo ago
  "Seamless" may be irrationally exuberant but it's better than the others _at scale_. LibreOffice, etc. may see similar from the UI end but if you're scaling across multiple sites/archetypes/employee models/regulatory environments, -and- want access to a wide and deep pool of administrative labor, M365 is seamless by comparison.
dabockster 10mo ago
> Personally, I think MS needs to massively increase their prices here: they're leaving a lot of money on the table. Companies, especially, (and governments) just aren't going to switch, no matter what. So why not increase the prices ten-fold? *bald eagle screeches* Ahem... https://www.ftc.gov/ https://www.ftc.gov/ They may have an issue with that.

Glyptodon 10mo ago

In all fairness I think Notion and Google have made some level of headway for FWIW.

vee-kay 10mo ago
Zoho is another player in that "alternative to Micro$oft for office/corporate needs" market. Its products are nice and affordable, and especially suitable for SOHO customers.

typon 10mo ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPS_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPS_Office 500 million users. Just because you haven't heard it doesn't mean an alternative doesn't exist.

G3rn0ti 10mo ago
While there does not seem to be a maintained snap or flagpole package available, the company behind WPS Office releases DEBs and RPMs it seems: https://www.tech2geek.net/how-to-install-wps-office-on-linux-complete-step-by-step-tutorial/ https://www.tech2geek.net/how-to-install-wps-office-on-linux...
71bw 10mo ago
Issue is, the WPS office suite is more bloated with ads than even Microsoft's offerings are, and, overall, is quite a doozy to navigate. If you want a true and good alternative, I'd recommend ONLYOFFICE[1]. [1] https://www.onlyoffice.com/ https://www.onlyoffice.com/
- reciprocity 10mo ago
  OpenOffice is no longer actively developed. It was replaced by LibreOffice quite awhile ago.
  - its_notjack 10mo ago
    The comment links to OnlyOffice, which is a different app suite from OpenOffice.
    - reciprocity 10mo ago
      I appreciate the correction; I misread that. Thanks.
- dabockster 10mo ago
  WPS Office is Chinese. OnlyOffice is Russian. Those really only exist because of Western tech sanctions.

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago

> plenty of developer talent > number of humans that are literate enough in business, marketing, communications, and software development to pull this off There aren’t the same thing. > “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work Probably not. But adapt open-source software for New Zealand’s government can. It just takes a rare combination of technical skill, executive function, leadership ability and emotional self-control to pull off.

DeathArrow 10mo ago
>Probably not. But adapt open-source software for New Zealand’s government can. It just takes a rare combination of technical skill, executive function, leadership ability and emotional self-control to pull off. It would be a huge undertaking. You have to use tens of different software packages who weren't designed to work with each other, unlike MS offering. Can you make it work? Yes. But does it make business sense to try it?
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
  > Can you make it work? Yes. But does it make business sense to try it? Maybe, if you can rally public resources behind you. Probably not given the value you can command in the private sector. That’s the point. These people are expensive. Because they’re rare. There is a talent deficit at the top of tech, and if I had to describe it broadly, it’s in folks who can (a) write a letter to an elected representative that doesn’t get thrown in the nutter pile and (b) raise money.
dabockster 10mo ago
> plenty of developer talent > number of humans that are literate enough in business, marketing, communications, and software development to pull this off > There aren’t the same thing. That's exactly what I'm saying! Heck, I just talked to a senior dev from AWS a week ago that was a massive technical expert, but obviously couldn't code their way to an actual product on their own. Which is fine, and hence my original comment on the current rarity of those skillsets. > “Remake microsoft office suite, but cheaper” won’t work Ehhhhhhh hard to say really. The one-time payment versions of Office still exist, work totally fine, and have excellent add-on extension support. You could move the economics around a bit between consumers and extension developers, but that would probably be it.

rzerowan 10mo ago

If doing it from scratch, if jumping off from an already established product - could work, along with name recognition. If there was one that i would put that could go head to head and possibly pull it off would be Corel[1], their suite is pretty comprehensive along with their collaborative suite. Althogh from their businesss model seems they are content to maintain a narrow market and possible still remember getting burned by MS in the early days. [1] https://www.corel.com/en/all-products/ https://www.corel.com/en/all-products/

aleph_minus_one 10mo ago
> If there was one that i would put that could go head to head and possibly pull it off would be Corel[1], their suite is pretty comprehensive Or SoftMaker ([1], [2]) with their product SoftMaker Office ([3], [4]). [1] https://www.softmaker.com/en/ https://www.softmaker.com/en/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftMaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftMaker [3] https://www.softmaker.com/en/products/softmaker-office https://www.softmaker.com/en/products/softmaker-office [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftMaker_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftMaker_Office