A response to microsoft’s a few perspectives on openoffice.org

First just in case you haven’t seen it….

Okay So I am sure that we all have heard saw this bomb of a video that Microsoft has unleashed on the world. Apparently when your own product is really crappy the only way you can get ahead is by making these little videos attacking non-profit opensource projects like the Openoffice community. So as a way to vent and an exercise in futility lets go point by point through this thing and talk about the video.

So the first part of the video talks about the exorbitant cost and the lack of support for the product. Now the person originally said they were on PC’s running linux and had openoffice installed. I am not sure if they mean lack of support for linux or lack of support for openoffice. But either way it’s still kind of silly. Are you trying to tell me that you can call Microsoft and ask advice about putting together a spreadsheet or a word document? I don’t think so. Really what this is saying is “well I already knew word and didn’t want to learn anything else so I just went back to word”. Microsoft’s strategy is to get people hooked when they are in primary school. When you have been using something for 10 plus years in primary school you tend to forget how long it took you to learn that original product. Ultimately instead of viewing Openoffice as a learning curve people just see it as difficult to use. When in fact it is as easy to use you just need to be willing to learn how to use it. I personally have never really used MSOffice and the few times I had I found it really tough and difficult to use. And I suspect it is probably for the same reasons I listed.

Now I don’t understand what the exorbitant cost could be. Maybe retraining or something like that. I guess this company had never heard of a LUG or a LoCo but most groups like that either have workshops or they will just help you with your PC for free. But it’s a strange argument when you consider all the companies that have switched and find that they saved tons of money.

“If an opensource freeware product breaks who’s going to fix it?”

I would ask the same question of a proprietary software package. I have in the past had huge problems with certain proprietary packages and guess what no one ever fixed it for me. I have had issues with opensource packages too and guess what? I talk to the developers, or send them an email, or file a bug report. And guess what? It gets fixed. Yeah no joke little old me with no company backing can get stuff fixed just by filing bug reports. I have heard this argument so many times by people that just know plain nothing about the community and there is so many options for getting things fixed I just think they are not use to choice. Here are your options for getting things fixed…

Opensource/Free Software options for software issues

• Write the developers
• File a bug report
• Hire an in house developer
• Hire an out of house developer
• Use another program that does the same thing (tons of these in opensource community)

V.S.

Proprietary options for software issues

• Call Tech support (they can’t help you it’s an actual code problem)
• Ask for it to be fixed = get totally shafted

So there you go good luck with that proprietary software support. Okay lets continue on with this pathetic attempt to persuade anyone.

“A hugely disproportionate 30% of our IT resources was required for a period of months

to service open source an estimated 25% of additional staff time was routinely required to install and maintain Opensource-based systems”

When I heard this it made me instantly think “Why!” your IT people are just not trained or experienced in opensource. I can get a system up in running with all software packages installed in like 30 minutes. All you need to do is burn 100 CDs or make 100 bootable flash drives and have a script written with all the packages needed and your done. In fact there are packages out there that will let you setup one system the way you need it and then just make a custom distro based off that one system. What is with all this system maintenance? Even if it was all the updates that need to be run you can just remotely get into a system from your office and run apt-get upgrade from a shell is that so hard? If I was switching to opensource in a company I would hire IT people trained in it. But no everyone just thinks because your a technician your trained in everything that has to do with computers.

For a second or two in the video there is some blah blah blah about nothing. Then we have the next fun thing to talk about. I am not going to type it all out but the video goes into this long diatribe about how Openoffice has problems with .doc files and other proprietary Microsoft file formats. I have heard this complaint before. It has problems because these are proprietary formats people. Someone had to reverse engineer this crap and it probably took forever to get it to work as well as it does. What we should really ask is “hey why did a developer have such a hard time implementing this format?”.

Microsoft for a moment didn’t give the OpenOffice community one bit of help with interoperability. And it’s obvious why. They want you to keep using their office product so they create a format that no one else can open to create vendor lock in. and then on top of it they refuse to implement anyone else’s format to keep you from being able to send a sensibly formatted document. So for instance I could open a .doc even though some formatting might be a bit off. However I could not send someone with word a .odt file. Word can’t open .odt files so I have to reformat it as a doc and then on the other end their might be formatting problems opening it up. So the interoperability problem is not in Openoffice it’s with Microsoft Word. I suggest that if you are in favor of interoperability you go with Openoffice over word any day. I suppose seeing as you think Microsoft has such good support you could ask them to implement .odt but as you can see above that will just lead you to getting shafted.

Now the rest of the video goes on and on about how people are so use to using MSoffice and that going back to it was so nice. What this should instantly say to people is that we need to get a more diverse suite of software into schools. We are creating a culture based on the consumption of one companies product. We are actually using schools to market that product to kids. Then later on in life when they have businesses and could save a buck they are blocked because of their dependence on a certain product. Also by having it in schools we are supporting anti-inoperability by supporting a company who actively tries to not cooperate and play nice with others.

Of course there will always be the spin doctors at Microsoft that are able to make people think that they emanate some sort of heavenly glow. But most techies actually know better then that. If you don’t believe me just notice that in the you tube video they had to turn comments off. Also notice that the video has 236 likes and 2,439 dislikes. Hmm that’s what we call backlash people because guess what opensource and Free Software people pay attention. We are not just going to stand by in idle while you just harass us and defame our community. Even if our only defense is to post nasty comments and to dislike your you tube video a million times.

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