I think you have to look at it from the other perspective: Would switching to Libre Office actually save me money or would it cost me money? People using MS O

I think you have to look at it from the other perspective: Would switching to Libre Office actually save me money or would it cost me money? People using MS Office are knowledge workers. They make money from their knowledge and their ability to manipulate knowledge tools such as MS Office. Without volume licensing, MS Office is $99 a year for each worker (and many companies pay a bit less than that). Let's say the average worker at your firm makes $50,000. If you have a full benefits package, that adds tens of thousands to their cost. Add in computers, office space, etc. and that worker could cost you upwards of $100,000 a year. Now look at that $99 a year cost for that one employee. Sure saving $99 would be nice, but what if switching made that employee 5 percent less productive? What if that employee has to interface with outside clients who use other programs and this causes issues with interoperability? For me, as a manager, $99 a year is nothing if it makes my employees more productive. On the other hand, saving $99 for something that makes my employees less productive costs me a ton of money. Nickel and diming knowledge workers is not a good way to make them productive or to keep them happy. This is why I don't care what programs employees like to use or even what OS they use. I want them as productive and happy as possible. At a previous job I was forced to use Windows, even though I've been an OS X users since 10.1. The reasoning was that a Windows machine was cheaper to purchase and maintain for the IT department. Let's say the difference was something like $250-500 over the course of that machine's life (which could be four years or so). Is the IT staff saving a few hundred bucks really worth a significant drop in productivity for an employee? Because my old job put computer and software purchases under IT, instead of my department, the IT department got to make their budget smaller by making my department less productive. Had the budget rested with my manager, of course I would have gotten the machine I wanted because a few hundred dollars for a big productivity boost is a no brainer for him. I know how to use Windows well and can get work done on it, but I am more productive with the OS of my choice (and the applications that go along with it). With knowledge work, five percent productivity gain here, five percent productivity gain there and you're talking about a lot of money.